“In this manner (houtō: with this method), therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” (Matt. 6:9-13) Yesterday we covered, “Hallowed be Your name and Your will be done”
- Give us this day our daily bread: Jesus transitions into instructing us to pray for the provision of our needs, no matter how seemingly insignificant or mundane. We need daily bread in the sense that we need God to daily DWELL with us and GUIDE us, but also that we need literal daily bread to stay alive. God created us with bodies and souls that both need daily substance to sustain it. Pray for the things that you need and THANK HIM for all that He has already blessed you with.
- forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors: We need to regularly ask God to search our hearts and reveal our sin to us. We need to regularly be confessing those sins to God and asking Him to forgive us. This is vitally important in our walk with God. The mark of a truly humble heart is a genuine desire to APOLOGIZE FOR WRONGDOING AND SEEK FORGIVENESS. Do not leave any sin unconfessed; unrepented sin ERODES RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD and hinders intimacy with Him. We may not think that we regularly need to forgive others, but this doesn’t just refer to obvious conflicts. This can mean forgiving someone for disappointing us or letting us down as well as forgiving someone who has wronged us.
- do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one: Though God allows us to be tempted and tested, He is never the tempter “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone…” (James 1:13). We lead ourselves into situations where we are tempted. Here Jesus is showing us how to pray against this and keep us from being our own worst enemy. This part of prayer is important because our flesh is weak against temptation. Though we can withstand and overcome through the strength of God. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:13). It is better if we can steer clear of temptation from the beginning.
- Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen: We do not and cannot have a “KINGDOM”, we do not and cannot have the “POWER” and we do not and cannot have the “GLORY” these all belong to God and to God alone. There are many people on this earth who think they possess these things, one day they will awake to the reality that these are the DOMAIN OF THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY! (Matt. 6:9-13)
ONE THING WE CAN BE SURE OF IS THAT GOD WILL GREATLY BLESS US WHEN WE OBEY HIM AND PRAY AS HE HAS TAUGHT US TO PRAY…
-Bill Stockham