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The Lord's Prayer - simplicity, brevity, and directness.

The Lord's Prayer

The Lord's prayer, or the Our Father as it is sometimes called, is more -- much more -- than something to be memorized for points in Vacation Bible School. Jesus gave it to His disciples when they realized how inadequate their prayer lives were in comparison to His.

These few short phrases recorded by Matthew and Luke can be a gold mine of spiritual truth for us. Among other things, Jesus in this prayer says absolutely nothing about a special "prayer language." When Jesus' disciples came to Him asking to be taught to pray, Jesus did not give them a lesson in unknown tongues. He did not say, "Begin repeating over and over again some word of praise." 

What did Jesus hold up to His followers as the perfect type of prayer? His response is a model of simplicity, brevity, and directness. It is clear from the passage in Luke that God wants us to communicate with Him in words that most naturally express our feelings. This model prayer -- the Lord's Prayer, we call it -- is clear and concise. There is no staccato, hollow repetition, or unintelligible syllables.

Jesus' teaching clearly demonstrates that He doesn't want us to enter God's presence thoughtlessly. Prayer based on Jesus' model will include expressions of reverence and acknowledgment of the coming Kingdom.

Jesus taught us how to talk to God about our daily needs. He also models a prayer for forgiveness, both the receiving and the giving, and shows us that we have the privilege of asking for divine guidance.

Then our Lord follows up this model prayer with an emphasis on the need for perseverance in prayer.

He assures us that God is good to those who wait (meaning trust or hope) upon Him and that our prayers will be answered.

In all this, there is no hint of a secret, heavenly language. Surely, if there were a better way to pray than the intelligent use of our native language, Jesus would have told us.

One of the most delightful books on prayer I've ever seen is based on the premise that God wants us to pray with words and phrases that truly reflect us. It is titled  I first saw a copy of it at the missionary editor's home in the mountains of Haiti.

The book is a collection of prayers by Haitian Christians, illustrated with black and white photographs of Haitian life. The prayers are colorful, simple, brief, and direct. They obviously flow right out of the daily lives of those believers. They are exactly the kind of prayer Jesus taught us to pray in Luke 11.

I have often heard the same kind of praying in Italy. Freed from the fetters of an over-ritualized religion, Italian evangelicals have a refreshing prayer life. Having realized that they don't have to drone on and on through memorized prayers, they pray right out of their hearts. That type of praying is the kind of natural expression that the Lord taught His disciples.

It's the kind of free, open communication with the Creator that our hearts long for. It is the type of relationship that He wants us to have with Him.

- Dr. Howard Culbertson spent 15 years as a missionary for the Church of the Nazarene and has now been an adjunct professor for NBC for 25 years.