Thursday, February 10, 2011

The Lord's Prayer


Mathew 6:5-15
The Lord's Prayer

The first part of this section is where the Lord teaches His disciples how not to pray. The first way not to pray is to pray hypocritically. We do this when we pray in public so that the people who are around us can see how "holy" we are. We do so this to bring glory to ourselves. At that time, when Jesus taught this, the hypocrites he was talking about were the religious leaders. They loved to pray, to babble for hours... so that the people would be impressed. The Lord says here that the ones who do this will have their reward, but their reward will come from men.

The Lord shows that He will bless us when we pray in secret for the sake of taking our petitions and prayers to God. When we do this, the Lord says, He will even reward us openly.

These are several things that hinder prayer:
  1. Secret sins,
  2. Not hearing the law,
  3. Obsession with ourselves,
  4. The lack of listening and asking God for mercy,
  5. Marital breakdown (1 Peter 3:7),
  6. Faithless asking.
The Lord also tells us not to pray with many words thinking that that is the reason we will be heard.

In verse 8 we see that the Lord knows the things that we need before we ask for them. Some people say that because of this they do not have to pray. But God is our father, and like a father waiting for his struggling child to ask him for help, God is waiting for us to ask Him as our loving father.

The first part of the prayer given by the Lord shows that when we pray we have to hollow the name of the Lord in words and the way we pray. In a sense, when we pray, we are glorifying God.

The second part of the prayer shows us we should pray for the kingdom of God to come. The kingdom of God, in this passage, is the true presence of God in His people on earth.

The Lord loves when we come to him with our everyday needs, just like any good father, except He is the best father.

When we come to the Lord in prayer, we should come in humility and with the knowledge that we are in debt to God. And because of our debt, we should come to Him begging for the forgiveness of the many grievances we have committed against Him and His law.

Nearing the end of the prayer, the Lord shows that we should forgive because when we don't, the Lord will not forgive us.
In verses 14 and 15 we see that if we do not forgive the trespasses of others, the Lord will not forgive our trespasses.

When we become sons and daughters of Christ, we will not be free from the evil of this world. The Lord sometimes tempts us to test our love for Him. Also, the Lord, if we continually disobey Him may just give us up to the evil one.

Again, we see that we should always acknowledge God as the one with all power and glory.

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