Seeds for 06-05-2023 - Matthew 6:9-13, part 1

Scripture: ⁹ “This, then, is how you should pray:

‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
¹⁰ your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us today our daily bread.
¹² And forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.
¹³ And lead us not into temptation,
    but deliver us from the evil one.’”

Observation: Having told how not to pray in verses 7-8, Jesus gives us an example of how to pray. This, of course, has become “The Lord’s Prayer” for Protestants (like myself) or the “Our Father” for Catholics. Many of us say it weekly in worship at our churches as a communal prayer. Some of us pray it daily in our private prayers and devotions. Is there are more wide-reaching and influential prayer in Christendom? I can’t think of one.

Let’s begin here for today. This prayer is first about God, then about us. Jesus begins by addressing God the Father. The first half of the prayer is about who God is and what God wants. The second half of the prayer is about our needs. This isn’t because God is less interested in our needs. He knows them before we ask—as Jesus just pointed out in the previous text. The question is: Are we more interested in what God wants or what we perceive we need or want?

I’ve learned and taught various acronyms for how to pray: ACTS, PRAY, etc. They go like this:

ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication

PRAY: Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield

I quite like these. They are simple, useful, and a wonderful aid to prayer because we humans usually do best with some balance of structure and spontaneity. Some like more structure, some more spontaneity, but the point remains. These provide that. Still, I am more than capable—as I’ve proven on multiple occasions—of rushing through some perfunctory Adorations, Confessions, and Thanksgivings so I could get on with the Supplications that were so urgent to me.

The prayer Jesus taught, like those simply acronym prayers, puts God first because that’s where He should be in our lives. The formation of our heart, mind, and soul is towards this end. If we are filled with love for God, then we will have a greater desire and capacity to want what He wants rather than fixating on the needs and wants we perceive for ourselves. They’re not unimportant. They’re in the prayer after all. But this prayer helps us learn to put first things first.

Application:

• How can using the Lord’s Prayer in your personal prayers help you put God first?

• What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?

Prayer: Lord, give me a heart to put you first in my praying, that I may learn to put you first in my living. Amen.

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“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)

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