Lord’s Prayer

• Lord’s Prayer

100:7.16The Mas­ter was a pat­tern of rev­er­ence. The prayer of even his youth be­gan, “Our Fa­ther who is in heaven, hal­lowed be your name.” He was even re­spect­ful of the faulty wor­ship of his fel­lows. But this did not de­ter him from mak­ing at­tacks on re­li­gious tra­di­tions or as­sault­ing er­rors of hu­man be­lief. He was rev­er­en­tial of true ho­li­ness, and yet he could justly ap­peal to his fel­lows, say­ing, “Who among you con­victs me of sin?”

144:3.1But the apos­tles were not yet sat­is­fied; they de­sired Je­sus to give them a model prayer which they could teach the new dis­ci­ples. Af­ter lis­ten­ing to this dis­course on prayer, James Zeb­e­dee said: “Very good, Mas­ter, but we do not de­sire a form of prayer for our­selves so much as for the newer be­liev­ers who so fre­quently be­seech us, ‘Teach us how ac­cept­ably to pray to the Fa­ther in heaven.’”

144:3.2When James had fin­ished speak­ing, Je­sus said: “If, then, you still de­sire such a prayer, I would pre­sent the one which I taught my broth­ers and sis­ters in Naz­a­reth”:

144:3.13It is not strange that the apos­tles de­sired Je­sus to teach them a model prayer for be­liev­ers. John the Bap­tist had taught his fol­low­ers sev­eral prayers; all great teach­ers had for­mu­lated prayers for their pupils. The re­li­gious teach­ers of the Jews had some twenty-five or thirty set prayers which they re­cited in the syn­a­gogues and even on the street cor­ners. Je­sus was par­tic­u­larly averse to pray­ing in pub­lic. Up to this time the twelve had heard him pray only a few times. They ob­served him spend­ing en­tire nights at prayer or wor­ship, and they were very cu­ri­ous to know the man­ner or form of his pe­ti­tions. They were re­ally hard pressed to know what to an­swer the mul­ti­tudes when they asked to be taught how to pray as John had taught his dis­ci­ples.

144:3.14Je­sus taught the twelve al­ways to pray in se­cret; to go off by them­selves amidst the quiet sur­round­ings of na­ture or to go in their rooms and shut the doors when they en­gaged in prayer.

144:3.15Af­ter Je­sus’ death and as­cen­sion to the Fa­ther it be­came the prac­tice of many be­liev­ers to fin­ish this so-called Lord’s prayer by the ad­di­tion of—“In the name of the Lord Je­sus Christ.” Still later on, two lines were lost in copy­ing, and there was added to this prayer an ex­tra clause, read­ing: “For yours is the king­dom and the power and the glory, forever­more.”

144:3.16Je­sus gave the apos­tles the prayer in col­lec­tive form as they had prayed it in the Naz­a­reth home. He never taught a for­mal per­sonal prayer, only group, fam­ily, or so­cial pe­ti­tions. And he never vol­un­teered to do that.

144:3.17Je­sus taught that ef­fec­tive prayer must be:

144:3.181. Un­selfish—not alone for one­self.

144:3.192. Be­liev­ing—ac­cord­ing to faith.

144:3.203. Sin­cere—hon­est of heart.

144:3.214. In­tel­li­gent—ac­cord­ing to light.

144:3.225. Trust­ful—in sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s all-wise will.

144:3.23When Je­sus spent whole nights on the moun­tain in prayer, it was mainly for his dis­ci­ples, par­tic­u­larly for the twelve. The Mas­ter prayed very lit­tle for him­self, al­though he en­gaged in much wor­ship of the na­ture of un­der­stand­ing com­mu­nion with his Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

144:6.5The first item the group agreed upon was the adop­tion of the prayer which Je­sus had so re­cently taught them. It was unan­i­mously voted to ac­cept this prayer as the one to be taught be­liev­ers by both groups of apos­tles.

126:3.3Dur­ing this year Je­sus first for­mu­lated the prayer which he sub­se­quently taught to his apos­tles, and which to many has be­come known as “The Lord’s Prayer.” In a way it was an evo­lu­tion of the fam­ily al­tar; they had many forms of praise and sev­eral for­mal prayers. Af­ter his fa­ther’s death Je­sus tried to teach the older chil­dren to ex­press them­selves in­di­vid­u­ally in prayer—much as he so en­joyed do­ing—but they could not grasp his thought and would in­vari­ably fall back upon their mem­o­rized prayer forms. It was in this ef­fort to stim­u­late his older broth­ers and sis­ters to say in­di­vid­ual prayers that Je­sus would en­deavor to lead them along by sug­ges­tive phrases, and pres­ently, with­out in­ten­tion on his part, it de­vel­oped that they were all us­ing a form of prayer which was largely built up from these sug­ges­tive lines which Je­sus had taught them.

126:3.4At last Je­sus gave up the idea of hav­ing each mem­ber of the fam­ily for­mu­late spon­ta­neous prayers, and one evening in Oc­to­ber he sat down by the lit­tle squat lamp on the low stone ta­ble, and, on a piece of smooth cedar board about eigh­teen inches square, with a piece of char­coal he wrote out the prayer which be­came from that time on the stan­dard fam­ily pe­ti­tion.

136:2.4When the re­turned and now ex­alted Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster had thus spo­ken, all was si­lence. And while the four of them tar­ried in the wa­ter, Je­sus, look­ing up to the near-by Ad­juster, prayed: “My Fa­ther who reigns in heaven, hal­lowed be your name. Your king­dom come! Your will be done on earth, even as it is in heaven.” When he had prayed, the “heav­ens were opened,” and the Son of Man saw the vi­sion, pre­sented by the now Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster, of him­self as a Son of God as he was be­fore he came to earth in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, and as he would be when the in­car­nated life should be fin­ished. This heav­enly vi­sion was seen only by Je­sus.