“And he said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.” Luke 11:2 ESV
Reflection: is prayer a ritual, a request, or something else?
Perhaps our biggest act of faith is prayer. We are speaking to whom we cannot see. Asking for things that are impossible for us to do, and don’t understand. And, we trust that some action will be taken based on our words of prayer. Even people who claim to be agnostic or atheist might find themselves praying at some point. But, since you are reading this devotional, I probably don’t have to convince you of why we should pray to our Heavenly Father. But, we can wonder sometimes whether we are praying correctly, right?
Some churches teach and perform prayer as liturgy, meaning said as “a rite or body of rites prescribed for public worship”. It is done as a ritual. Some combine a few prayers said in unison in the congregation, as a ritual, while others are more free form. And then some churches are completely free form, where the worship leader or pastor is praying based on the needs of the church. Prayer is done to music in song, spoken in words, and even said quietly in our minds. So, it is understandable why we might wonder how to pray “correctly”.
Even the disciples, who walked and talked with Jesus every day had questions about how to pray, so we are in good company here. Notice in our focus verse today that Jesus is very willing to teach about prayer, when the disciples asked him. So what can we learn from his teaching?
Let’s start with the basics. We know that Jesus went to a quiet place early in the morning to pray, so that is probably a good thing for us to model. To start the day, alone with our Heavenly Father. And then I want you to notice something I think is very important here. Jesus starts out the lesson on prayer saying,
“When you pray, say:”
This would indicate strongly that we must say, or speak out loud, what is to follow. This part of the prayer is verbalized. And we are probably familiar with what comes next, which means this is a proclamation. To summarize, the starting point of our prayer is that,
We speak out loud “The Lord’s Prayer”.
Why is this important? If you think about each stance of the Lord’s Prayer, they are mostly statements, or proclamations. Such as first recognizing who our Father is, that He is Holy. That we want His kingdom to come. His will to be done. The proclamation is to the spiritual realm, who or Father God is, who we are, and what we intend.
Now, AFTER this proclamation, we see Jesus then teach the disciples the second part of prayer, which is to ask, to bring our requests before the Lord. So let’s dig into that tomorrow. But as you come before the Lord today to pray, I encourage you to practice what Jesus taught us, to say out loud “Our Father, …”. In addition, I encourage you to really think through each stance, so that you truly mean what you proclaim.