The Lord's Prayer: Seven Requests for Learning to Pray

Introduction

In this second session on prayer at "Sunday Form," the teacher starts from a very concrete observation: even when we decide to pray, we often don't know what to say. Distractions, a blank mind before God, an avalanche of worries scattering in every direction… We need to learn to pray. And the school is Jesus. The Lord's Prayer, so familiar that we sometimes recite it without thinking, is not a magic formula: it's a model. Seven requests that give the structure and priorities of an entire life of prayer. Taking time here means letting Jesus correct our blind spots and set our heart back in front of the Father's heart.

Message Outline

1. We need to learn to pray

• Many of our times of prayer look like a blank mind, an anxious list of worries, or a blessing rushed through at the end of the day.
• Last time, five excuses were reviewed: doubts about God's goodness, doubts about his sovereignty, doubts tied to our sin, not knowing what to say, distractions.
• The first three have already been addressed: God is a good father, his sovereignty is a reason to pray, our sin is no longer an obstacle thanks to Jesus's work.
• What remains is the most practical question: what to say? In Luke 11:1, the disciples themselves ask Jesus: "Lord, teach us to pray." We need to learn to speak to our heavenly Father.

2. The Lord's Prayer: a model, not a magic formula

• Introducing the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13, Jesus says: "This is how you should pray," not "this is what you should pray."
• It is neither a formula to recite, nor a punishment to repeat, nor a string of words with magic power.
• It's a model to draw inspiration from: the kinds of subjects that should take priority when we pray.
• The Lord's Prayer breaks down into seven requests, in two halves: first the Father's purposes, then our needs.

3. Pray first for the Father's purposes

• Hallowed be your name, God's name reflects who he is: the incomparable creator who tied his name (Yahweh, "I will be who I will be") to his promise to save a sinful people. Praying for his holiness to be honored means asking that God be known, contemplated, and worshiped as God. It's asking for a telescope, not a microscope. It means including contemplation and worship in your prayer life.
• Your kingdom come, Since the garden of Eden, those who were meant to govern the world under God's reign have been at war against him. God's kingdom is liberation. It comes in two stages: when people bow the knee before Jesus today, and when Jesus returns to establish a new world. Do we pray for the conversion of unbelievers? Do we pray for Jesus's return?
• Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, His decretive will (what he has decided) and his preceptive will (what he asks of us). We ask God to help us understand his plan, to carry it out, and to help us obey him. We ask that the earth become as full of obedience as heaven is.
• These three requests are three aspects of the same thing: that the Father be known and glorified, as we wait for Jesus's return. These are not small things. Jesus wants us to pray centered on the Gospel, not on our own navel. We are invited into God's family business: his purposes become our purposes.

4. Then pray for our needs

• Give us today our daily bread, Jesus wants us to express our needs to God. His message is always: stop worrying, pray. Daily bread is our material needs, everything comes to us from God's hand, whatever our level of security or precariousness. It is also spiritual food to cross the desert of this life until the promised land, the new creation.
• Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, Even already forgiven in Christ, we ask for forgiveness regularly because God is our Father: this way we avoid hardening and drifting away. And Jesus explicitly ties the forgiveness we receive to the forgiveness we grant: failing to forgive others means we have not yet understood the forgiveness we received.
• Lead us not into temptation, We will be tempted; we need God's help when it happens. Many commentators understand this mainly as the temptation to abandon our trust in God, as Israel did in the desert. "Father, help me keep faith in you no matter what happens."
• Deliver us from evil, More precisely "from the evil one," the devil. Prayer is like our wartime walkie-talkie: when bitterness, indifference, or lukewarmness begin creeping into our heart, we pick it up.
• Two reasons to pray for our needs: God wants to keep us from self-sufficiency and anxiety (reminding us of our dependence on the Father in everything), and he wants us to be clear about our real needs, not becoming a property owner or climbing the social ladder, but our means of subsistence and our relationship with him.

5. Use the Lord's Prayer as a gauge and a springboard

• We don't have to always follow the same order. But the Lord's Prayer offers a model for evaluating our prayer life: where are my blind spots? Are there imbalances? Am I more focused on my own desires than on the Father's?
• We can structure our prayer time around the seven requests: a notebook, a chapter heading for each, and concrete topics that flow from them.
• Can we pray for other things? Yes, 1 Peter 5:7: "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." Your grandmother's sick cat and the dentist appointment count. But James 4:3 warns: God does not grant requests that feed our selfishness. A good father says no to whims.
• Session 2: take other prayers from the Bible (Ephesians 1:15-19, Ephesians 3:14-19, Philippians 1:9-11, Colossians 1:9-12, Psalm 13…) and use them as springboards for our own prayers.

6. A few practical reflections for your prayer life

• A suitable place, In one sense every place is good (Jonah prayed from the belly of a great fish). But Jesus insists on intimacy: "When you pray, go into your room, close your door, and pray to your Father who is there in the secret place." Avoid distractions, turn off screens, coordinate with your spouse if you have children.
• Real time, There's no rule about duration. But if you go a whole week without ever speaking to God, there's a problem in the relationship. Better to discipline yourself to 10 minutes a day than to aim for an hour and never do it.
• A structure, A prayer notebook to jot down topics and see over time how God answers. An app like PrayerMate to organize categories and topics without overthinking it. With children: "thank you, sorry, please."
• Just do it. The most important thing to remember.

Key Takeaways

• We are not born prayer warriors, we learn to pray. Even the disciples asked Jesus to teach them.
• The Lord's Prayer is not a magic formula but a model: seven requests that set the priorities of prayer.
• We pray first for the Father's purposes (his name, his kingdom, his will), then for our needs (bread, forgiveness, temptation, deliverance).
• Prayer reflects our place as sons and daughters invited into God's family business, his purposes become our purposes.
• A faithful prayer life is worth more than an intense one: 10 minutes every day beats an hour that never gets started. Just do it.

Personal Application

1. Take 30 minutes this week to meditate on the Lord's Prayer, one request at a time, and identify your blind spots. Which one do you rush through the fastest?
2. Do contemplation and worship really have a place in your prayer, or do you jump straight into your list of requests?
3. When did you last pray for the conversion of a specific unbeliever, or for Jesus's return?
4. Is there someone you don't want to forgive? How does that affect the way you receive the Father's forgiveness?
5. This week, what concrete discipline can you put in place: a place, a time, a notebook, an app? Choose one and start tomorrow morning.

Verses Cited

• Philippians 4:6-7
• Luke 11:1
• Matthew 6:9-13
• Exodus 34:6-7
• Matthew 6:6
• 1 Peter 5:7
• James 4:3
• Luke 18 (parable of the widow and the judge)
• Romans 10
• Ephesians 1:15-19

Further reading

• Daily Bible Reading: Building the Habit
• Which Book of the Bible Should You Start With?
• One-Year Bible Reading Plan

Frequently Asked Questions

Should we stop praying about something God doesn't seem to be answering?

When Jesus speaks about prayer, his message is rather to keep going (the parable of the widow and the judge in Luke 18). For everything found in the Lord's Prayer (Jesus's return, the advance of the Gospel), we never stop. For the salvation of a loved one, even after years, we keep going: Paul shakes the dust off his feet in the face of stubborn rejection, but he still writes in Romans 10 that his prayer for Israel is that they be saved. The rule given in the message: "I have a brother who isn't a Christian, I've been praying for him for 20 years. I'll keep praying for another 20 years, and I won't stop until it's no longer possible."

How should we read the imprecatory psalms that call down curses on enemies?

Two things to keep in mind according to the message. First, there is a transition between the old covenant (where God's people's enemies are physical) and the new covenant (where Paul clearly says our struggle is not against flesh and blood). New Testament adversaries are mainly spiritual. Second, in these psalms, what the one praying does is hand things over to God to bring about justice: "It's not up to me to break my enemies' teeth. I hand it over to God and let God judge."

Is it legitimate to pray about very ordinary concerns (a dentist appointment, a sick cat)?

Yes, without hesitation. 1 Peter 5:7 is very clear: "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." The link between a dentist appointment and the requests in the Lord's Prayer isn't always obvious (except perhaps "deliver me from the evil dentist"), but everything is legitimate to bring to the Father. The safeguard is James 4:3: God does not grant requests that will feed our selfishness. A good father sometimes says no to whims, because he's looking out for his child's true interests.