The Script
Or rather, The Blueprint
Before we begin, a quick note. Most of the ideas, methods, and thoughts I’m spelling out in this series on prayer come from two main resources: a class I took in college on the Spiritual Disciplines (shout-out Freed-Hardeman prof. Matt Cook), and the textbook for that class, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Don Whitney. Prayer has a lot of cross-over with the other spiritual disciplines, so if you’re looking for a place to dig deeper, Whitney’s work is a great place to start.
“Dear God,
Ummmmmmmm…
In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
Every prayed that one?
I have.
Humans are often at a loss for what to say.1 Sometimes, it’s difficult to find the words that communicate exactly what we want to put out there. We say the wrong thing, or think something sounds better than it does, and then the conversation replays itself and we ourselves cannot even fathom an answer to the question of “why did I put those words in that order and allow them to escape my mouth?”
I think there’s an extent to which that attitude can hinder our prayer life. I don’t know what to say, or how to say it, so I don’t say much of anything to God at all. Or maybe you don’t worry about having the right words, hoping they’ll just come to you. And sometimes they do, but other times, not so much.
That’s why Jesus gave us a script. Not in the traditional sense, of course. Maybe a blueprint is a better comparison. In Luke 11, the disciples request that Jesus teach them to pray. Jesus gives them what we call The Lord’s Prayer, which along with more of Jesus’ teachings on prayer is also recorded in Matthew 6:5-18. Part of that teaching is the expectation that we will pray. Matthew 6:5 begins with Jesus saying, “But when you pray…” and He repeats that twice more. Jesus expects each one of us to go before God on purpose, and teaches us how to do so. Eventually, we’ll revisit the surrounding verses, but for right now, let’s take the Lord’s Prayer line by line.
Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your name.
Begin by magnifying God’s name to remind yourself just exactly Who you’re talking to. This is essential for two reasons, I think.
1) You don’t enter the throne room without acknowledging the King. I think of Esther when she is considering going before the king on behalf of the Jews. She makes sure she is presentable and she takes great care in how she enters his throne room. Now, God won’t smite us down, and the Gospel is much more of a “come as you are” type of approach to our King, but I think we should all want to do what we can to go to God with honor. So, we begin our prayers by magnifying His name, and acknowledging His holiness and Lordship over lives.2
2) It reminds us Who we are talking to, not just for the respect but for the relationship. This is particularly relevant when you notice, out of all the titles Jesus could have used to address God, when teaching us to pray, He uses “Father.” Prayer, as our connection to the Author and Source of Life, rests on understanding this relationship. God wants to give us good things. He wants to know about our struggles, our hopes, and our questions. He wants to hear from us and spend time with us, His children. Prayer is how we maintain our relationship with our Heavenly Father, Who has already given us so much. Understanding this relationship opens us up to a prayer life of connection, devotion, and love, not feeling as though we must report to the Master every so often.
So, we begin our prayers by magnifying our Father’s name, because we know to Whom we speak, and what He can and wants to do for us.
Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
When we pray, our first concern should be an evaluation of our desire for the work of God to be done here on Earth. As Christians, doing God’s will and seeing it made manifest in our lives should be our biggest priority. Is God’s will happening in your home, your church, your office? What can I do, beyond what I’ve done, for God’s Kingdom? We don’t often think of ourselves as being able to “do things for God”, but as the saying goes, “We are the hands and feet of Jesus.” If we believe that and want an active faith, we must evaluate what we’re working with God to do for the Kingdom before anything else. And this isn’t just limited to my work as a Christian. I think the underlying idea here is that we are praying for good things to happen and for God to remain in control of lives and our world, just as He is in control of Heaven. Jesus here calls us to reflect on how grateful we are for that control, and how well we are offering ourselves up to it.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Now we turn to ourselves. Notice how far into the prayer we are before personal concerns get brought up. Our prayers show us our priorities. What do you pray for first? What do you pray for most often? One of my favorite ways to pray is by writing. When I first started doing it, I was able to see what I was actually talking to God about, and it had way more to do with me than Him. I wasn’t prioritizing God’s work in the lives of others, I just wanted Him to work in mine. But since making the conscious effort to pray less about me (beyond being thankful for God providing for my basic needs and His gracious gifts beyond that, because prayer is first and foremost a place of thanksgiving) and more about God’s kingdom, I have surrendered myself to greater opportunity to do the work of Christ, and because of that, seen God’s hand more powerfully at work in my life.
Don’t get me wrong- we can and SHOULD pray for ourselves. We just need to consider what are the most important things we need. In Jesus’ words, our basic needs, good relationships with others, and for our Father’s spiritual protection.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Not all translations still include this part, but if you learned the Lord’s prayer like I did, this is how it ended. It’s good to circle back and remember you’re talking to God and He is in control. I for one like to think back to times both in my life and in Scripture where God did amazing things for His people. It helps me end my prayers with faith. If God can split the Red Sea, protect Daniel in the Lion’s Den, save Paul from a shipwreck, or save my soul with the blood of Christ, He can surely take care of whatever insignificant problem I have to bring to Him. James tells us it is the “prayer of faith [that] will save the one who is sick.”3 The most important part of my prayer, and sometimes the hardest, is to actually believe that God will answer it, much less that I’ll be able to see it when He does. This final reminder to ourselves can point us in the right direction.
The last thing I’ll point out here is that the example of prayer Jesus gives us is only about 66 words, and in some versions even less. I think our goal should be able to sit and pour our hearts out to God, to sit with Him for hours and tell Him everything. But it’s good to know that when we begin learning to pray, and I think even as we grow in our walk, a few words are enough for God. Jesus prays a long prayer in John 17, followed by His simple, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will,” later that night in Gethsemane. We don’t need to have all the right words. We just need to make an effort. Thank God that He tells us even what to say when we talk to Him.
The prayer method that I think works with learning what to say when we pray is praying through Scripture. Now, I’d never heard of doing something life this until I was well into college, and it took me a while to fully understand it, but I’ve found it to be a great help in keeping my prayers focused and fresh.
It’s pretty simple- you pick a scripture and pray through it, talking to God about whatever it brings to your mind. What does the passage make you thankful for? What comfort does it bring? Do you need help implementing it in your life? In my Spiritual Disciplines class notes (again, shout out Matt Cook), I found this:
Rejoice- What about the passage causes you to rejoice/be thankful?
Repent- How do I measure up to this?
Request- What does this tell me I could use from God for His glory?
It’s a very simple process that helps us to find new things to pray about and new ways to pray about things we always want to pray about.
Here's Whitney describing how to use this with the 23rd Psalm. You can also go back and use the Lord’s Prayer, just praying it back in your own words.
At least, I hope it isn’t just me.
My favorite to use in my personal prayers is “God, Father, Creator, and Master of the Universe…” This covers all the ideas about God that I find helpful for my faith and the language of my prayers.
James 5:15
Great thoughts here. In the past year, I have quit "freestyling" so many of my prayers, especially when I am asked to lead the church in prayer and have started modeling my prayers around this one. It's obviously way better than anything I could come up with on my own and covers every area that needs to be covered.
One specific part of this prayer that stands out to me now is "forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." The book Gilead by Marilynne Robinson changed the way I look at this line. The character John Ames writes to his son about this line and says, "I believe it concludes quite effectively. It says Jesus puts His hearer in the role of the father, the one who forgives. Because if we are, so to speak, the debtor (and of course we are that, too), that suggests no graciousness is in us. And grace is the great gift. So to be forgiven is only half the gift. The other half is that we also can forgive, restore, and liberate, and therefore we can feel the will of God enacted through us, which is the great restoration of ourselves to ourselves." So now, each time I pray that line, I think about how it is a call to participate in the divine gift of grace, which, I think, is extremely compelling and beautiful.