The Model Prayer

'Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven…”' Matthew 6:9.

Every teacher knows the power of an example. He not only tells the child what to do and how to do it but shows him how it really can be done. In condescension to our weakness, our Heavenly Teacher has given us the very words we are to take with us as we draw near to our Father. We have in them a form of prayer in which there breathe the freshness and fullness of Eternal Life. So simple that the child can lisp it, so divinely rich that it comprehends all that God can give.

A form of prayer that becomes the model and inspiration for all other prayers, and yet always draws us back to itself as the deepest utterance of our souls before our God. ‘ Our Father in heaven! ’ Matthew 6:9. To appreciate this word of adoration right, I must remember that none of the saints had in Scripture ever ventured to address God as their Father. The invocation places us at once in the centre of the wonderful revelation the Son came to make of His Father as our Father too. It comprehends the mystery of redemption—Christ delivering us from the curse that we might become the children of God. The mystery of regeneration—the Spirit in the new birth giving us new life. And the mystery of faith—ere yet the redemption is accomplished or understood, the word is given on the lips of the disciples to prepare them for the blessed experience still to come. The words are the key to the whole prayer, to all prayer. It takes time, it takes life to study them; it will take an eternity to understand them fully.

The knowledge of God's Father love is the first and simplest, but also the last and highest lesson in the school of prayer. It is in the personal relation to the living God, and the personal conscious fellowship of love with Himself, that prayer begins. It is in the knowledge of God's Fatherliness, revealed by the Holy Spirit, that the power of prayer will be found to root and grow. In the infinite tenderness, pity, and patience of the infinite Father, in His loving readiness to hear and to help, the life of prayer has its joy. Oh, let us take time until the Spirit has made these words to us spirit and truth, filling heart and life: 'Our Father in heaven.' Then we are indeed within the veil, in the secret place of power where prayer always prevails.

' Hallowed be your name. ' Matthew 6:9. There is something here that strikes us at once. While we ordinarily first bring our own needs to God in prayer and then think of what belongs to God and His interests, the Master reverses the order. First, Thy name, Thy kingdom, Thy will; then, give us , forgive us , lead us , deliver us . Matthew 6:10- 13. The lesson is of more importance than we think. In true worship, the Father must be first, He must be all. The sooner I learn to forget myself in the desire that He may be glorified, the richer the blessing that prayer will bring to me. No one ever loses what he sacrifices for the Father.

This must influence all our prayers. There are two sorts of prayer: personal and intercessory. The latter ordinarily occupies the lesser part of our time and energy. This may not be. Christ has opened the school of prayer specially to train intercessors for the great work of bringing down, by their faith and prayer, the blessings of His work and love in the world. There can be no deep growth in prayer unless this is made our aim. The little child may ask the father only what it needs for itself; and yet it soon learns to say, “Give some for sister too.” But the grown-up son, who only lives for the father's interest and takes charge of the father's business, asks more largely and gets all that is asked. And Jesus would train us to the blessed life of consecration and service, in which our interests are all subordinate to the Name, Kingdom, and the Will of the Father. Let us live for this, and let, on each act of adoration, Our Father! there follow in the same breath, Your Name, Your Kingdom, Your Will;—for this, we look up and long.

'Hallowed be your name...' Matthew 6:9. What name? This new name of Father. The word Holy is the central word of the Old Testament; the name Father of the New. In this name of Love, all the holiness and glory of God are now to be revealed. And how is the name to be hallowed? By God Himself: 'And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations.' Ezekiel 36:23. Our prayer must be that in ourselves, in all God's children, in the presence of the world, God Himself would reveal the holiness, the Divine power, the hidden glory of the name of Father. The Spirit of the Father is the Holy Spirit: it is only when we yield ourselves to be led by Him , that the name will be hallowed in our prayers and lives. Let us learn the prayer: 'Our Father, hallowed be your name.'

'Your kingdom come.' Matthew 6:10. The Father is a King and has a kingdom. The son and heir of a king has no higher ambition than the glory of his father's kingdom. In times of war or danger, this becomes his passion; he can think of nothing else. The children of the Father are here in the enemy's territory, where the kingdom, which is in heaven, is not yet fully manifested. What is more natural than that, when they learn to hallow the Father's name, they should long and cry with deep enthusiasm: 'Your kingdom come.' Matthew 6:10. The coming of the kingdom is the one great event on which the revelation of the Father's glory, the blessedness of His children, and the salvation of the world depends. In our prayers too, the coming of the kingdom waits. Shall we not join in the deep longing cry of the redeemed: 'Your kingdom come'? Let us learn it in the school of Jesus.

'Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.' Matthew 6:10. This petition is too frequently applied alone to the suffering of the will of God. In heaven, God's will is done , and the Master teaches the child to ask that the will may be done on earth just as in heaven: in the spirit of adoring submission and ready obedience. Because the will of God is the glory of heaven, the doing of it is the blessedness of heaven. As the will is done, the kingdom of heaven comes into the heart. And wherever faith has accepted the Father's love, obedience accepts the Father's will. The surrender to, and the prayer for a life of heaven-like obedience, is the spirit of childlike prayer.

'Give us this day our daily bread.' Matthew 6:11 . When first the child has yielded himself to the Father in the care of His Name, His Kingdom, and His Will, he has full liberty to ask for his daily bread. A master cares for the food of his servant, a general of his soldiers, and the father of his child. And will not the Father in heaven care for the child who has in prayer given himself up to His interests? We may indeed in full confidence say: Father, I live for your honour and your work; I know you care for me. Consecration to God and His will gives wonderful liberty in prayer for temporal things: the whole earthly life is given to the Father's loving care.

'And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.' Matthew 6:12. As bread is the first need of the body, so is forgiveness for the soul. And the provision for the one is as sure as for the other. We are children, but our right of access to the Father's presence we owe to the precious blood and the forgiveness it has won for us.

Let us beware of the prayer for forgiveness becoming a formality: only what is really confessed is really forgiven.

Let us in faith accept the forgiveness as promised: as a spiritual reality, an actual transaction between God and us, it is the entrance into all the Father's love and all the privileges of children. Such forgiveness, as a living experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to others: as forgiven expresses the heavenward, so forgiving the earthward, the relation of God's child.

In each prayer, to the Father, I must be able to say that I know of no one whom I do not heartily love. ‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil . ’ Matthew 6:13. Our daily bread, the pardon of our sins, and then our being kept from all sin and the power of the evil one, in these three petitions all our personal need is comprehended. The prayer for bread and pardon must be accompanied by the surrender to live in all things in holy obedience to the Father's will, and the believing prayer in everything to be kept by the power of the indwelling Spirit from the power of the evil one.

Children of God! it is thus Jesus who would have us pray to the Father in heaven. O let His Name, Kingdom, and Will, have the first place in our love; His providing, pardoning, and keeping love will be our sure portion. So the prayer will lead us up to the true child-life: the Father to the child, the Father for the child. We shall understand how Father and child, the Thine and the Our , are all one, and how the heart that begins its prayer with the God- devoted Thine, will have the power in faith to speak out the Our too. Such prayer will, indeed, be the fellowship and interchange of love, always bringing us back in trust and worship to Him who is not only the Beginning but the End: 'For thy is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, Amen.' Matthew 6:13.

Son of the Father, teach us to pray, 'Our Father.'

You who art the only begotten Son, teach us, we beseech you, to pray, 'Our Father.' We thank you, Lord, for these Living Blessed Words which you have given us. We thank you for the millions who in them have learned to know and worship the Father, and for what they have been to us. Lord! it is as if we needed days and weeks in your school with each separate petition; so deep and full are they. But we look to you to lead us deeper into their meaning: do it, we pray to you, for your name's sake; your name is Son of the Father.

Lord! You once said: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Matthew 11:27. And again: 'I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.'

John 17:26. Lord Jesus! reveal to us the Father. Let His name, His infinite Father-love, the love with which He loved you, according to your prayer, BE IN US. Then shall we say aright, 'Our Father!' Then shall we apprehend your teaching, and the first spontaneous breathing of our heart will be: 'Our Father, Your Name, Your Kingdom, Your Will.' And we shall bring our needs and our sins and our temptations to Him in the confidence that the love of such a Father cares for all. Blessed Lord! We are your scholars.

We trust you; teach us to pray, ' Our Father. ' Amen .

THE END