Have you met a Christian who couldn’t be made to feel guilty about their prayer life, and very often part of the problem is that we simply don’t know what to pray for. Yes we know God cares and loves us, but should prayer just be about our needs? Yes God has given us the great privilege of prayer but when all is said and done are we really using this privilege in the way we should? Well one way to know how we should pray is to use the prayers of the Bible as our model. There are many examples in the Old and New Testament’s but the best known is of course the “Lord’s” prayer. Jesus never intended this to be memorized and said in a meaningless rote fashion. We know this because the version in Matthew 6 is worded slightly differently than in Luke 11. No, Jesus gave this prayer to be used as a pattern or outline. Indeed somebody once said that we should view each section like a marker in a cross-country race. When you pass each marker, you move into a different theme.
Thinking of it in this way we can see that this prayer has 2 dimensions – a vertical dimension and a horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension has to do with God and his concerns while the horizontal dimension has to do with us and our concerns. So yes we are to bring our petitions to God, but it’s interesting that according to this pattern, his concerns are to take priority.
So why don’t you try it. Use the “Lord’s” prayer as a model and use what Jesus says as a pattern to shape and mould what we pray for each day.
