Probably the most famous part of the bible is known at the “Lord’s Prayer.” There is good reason that this simple little prayer is famous… It was a model for prayer that Jesus expected his followers to regularly use in their own relationships with God.
Within 100 years of Jesus teaching this prayer, the early church were using it three times a day.
Being baptists we tend to steer away from anything that looks like tradition or could be construed as too much like what the catholic church might do, so we have tended not to regularly use this little prayer. In doing so I think we may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
The Lord’s prayer is a powerful summary of the teaching of Jesus and it declares the truths that we must hold on to with our whole hearts if we are truly to be his followers.
As N.T. Wright says:
The more I have studied Jesus in his historical setting, the more it has become clear to me that this prayer sums up fully and accurately, albeit in a very condensed fashion, the way in which he read and responded to the signs of the times, the way in which he understood his own vocation and mission and invited his followers to share it. This prayer, then, serves as a lens through which to see Jesus himself, and to discover something of what he was about.
Over the next couple of weeks we will be engaging with this revolutionary prayer. I hope that these few weeks will be the start of a deeper engagement with this prayer and that it might become part of our life together as Citywide Baptist church.
Matt