The Lord’s Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer

Our Father in heaven,may your name be kept holy.May your Kingdom come soon.May your will be done on earth,as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6:9-10

One day Bobby and Tony—missionary kids in New Zealand—were walking down Tinakori Road in Wellington. Always doing the one-upmanship routine, Bobby and Tony challenged each other at every point in their friendship, usually teasing.

Tony tagged Bobby on the shoulder with a friendly punch and said, “Hey, Bobby, I’ll bet I know more Bible verses than you do.”

“No way!” replied Bobby, shoving Tony back easily.

“Man, I’ll bet you can’t even recite the Lord’s Prayer,” teased Tony.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I just bet you don’t know the Lord’s Prayer.”

“Of course I do: ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.’”

“Oh! Well, I apologize. I didn’t think you knew it.”

My preacher dad used to say that the prayer in Matthew 6 was not really the Lord’s personal prayer. Instead, this was the Lord’s example prayer. It was the pattern he gave us to follow as we learn to pray on our own.

The Lord’s real personal prayer is in John 17—his plea to God for his followers to “be one, just as you and I are one” (verse 21). The Lord prayed for unity among his believers so that the world would know who he really was. By unity his disciples present a solid front against Satan and his angels. Without that unity, so much is lost.

It seems to me that we’ve done a great job of memorizing the Lord’s example prayer and repeating it. There’s nothing wrong with that. My question is whether we have learned the prayer of his heart—his desire for unity. What do you think?

Father, I pray that we will all be one, just as you and Jesus are one, so that the world will believe and be saved. Amen.