If there was anyone who has ever lived who really knew how to pray, it was Jesus Christ. No one could pray like him.

Mind you, he could pray so well because he had a special relation­ship with his heavenly Father. He was the divine, incarnate Son of God, the second person of the Trin­ity in human flesh. And so, he ex­perienced a closeness with God that can never be matched.

His perfect, ultimate communion with his heavenly Father was ex­pressed in his praying, making him the best practitioner of prayer who ever lived.

Is it any wonder then, that his disciples, watching their teacher pray perfectly, would seek his guidance in this area? Is it any wonder that they would ask, “Lord, teach us to pray”?

We can be eternally thankful that Jesus heeded that request. He did this by providing them with the ultimate model of prayer. He gave them the perfect prayer: the Lord’s prayer.

This prayer has been used by Christians throughout the centuries, teaching Christians around the world how to pray.

Let us look at what Jesus taught us about how to pray. We will look briefly at the Lord’s prayer as a whole in this article, expanding somewhat on the individual parti­tions in coming articles.

The Essence of Prayer⤒🔗

But before getting to the prayer it­self, we should point out a couple of things Jesus did NOT say when responding to the request, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Jesus does not say anything about whether or not we should pray kneeling down or sitting or standing. Jesus does not say any­thing about whether or not we should pray with our hands clasped together, or if we should close our eyes. Jesus does not say anything about the times of the day when praying should be done, whether when waking up or when going to sleep or before meals or all of the above. Jesus doesn’t say anything specific here about whether we should pray out loud or silently.

This is not to say that these mat­ters are completely irrelevant. There can be a place for consider­ing such questions. Still, when it comes right down to it, these mat­ters are peripheral when it comes to the actual essence of prayer.

You can have all those things just right, but if you don’t have the right attitude in praying, then your prayer is meaningless. You might be in a quiet spot, at your regular time for praying, with your hands nicely folded and your eyes shut tight, but if you start praying that you might win the lottery and that your favorite professional sports team might win their next game, then you are missing the boat.

Prayer that has the proper tech­nique but the wrong attitude is use­less, if not worse than useless. Jesus does not focus on technique, but he focuses on what should be focused on: the essence of prayer.

And that is also what we should focus on first and foremost.

Who Do We Pray To?←⤒🔗

Okay then, let’s move on to con­sidering the essence of prayer. Question and Answer 117 of the Heidelberg Catechism is very useful for helping us to under­stand what the Lord’s Prayer is getting at. The first part of An­swer 117 says this:

First, we must pray from the heart to none other than the one true God, who has revealed himself in his Word, asking for everything he has com­manded us to ask for.

There are two basic ways we can pray: we can either pray to the real God, or we can pray to a false God. We can either pray to the true God who reveals himself in Scripture, or we can pray to some false image of God that we made up in our own imagination.

As sinners, if we pray at all, we’re naturally inclined to pray to a false image of God that we set up in our own minds. Perhaps we think that God exists only to meet our own selfish needs. And so we pray to such a God, demand­ing what we want from him. We imagine that he should listen to us, because he exists to serve us. This is not true prayer.

We must turn to the Word of God if we are to know who to pray to. We must look to what the Holy Spirit is telling us in Scripture about the God who hears the prayers of his people.

When we read the Lord’s prayer, it becomes obvious that God wants us to address him as “Our Father”. God reveals himself in his Word as the Father of his people. God is the Father who watches over his children, who cares for them, who loves them and who elects them to salvation.

This Father is unlike any other Father we have ever known. This Father is the Father who has made all things in heaven and on earth. And this Father is the Father who has been watching over and ruling over creation ever since the begin­ning of time.

Also, this Father is the Father who hates sin, and who promises to punish sin.

And this Father is the Father who has sent his Son Jesus Christ to die for the sins of his children, so that they would not have to experience his wrath against sin.

This Father is the Father who will draw all his children to himself, so that they will experience his fatherly love for all eternity.

Without God’s Word, we would not have the foggiest idea that this is the God to whom we are to pray. God’s people are to worship him in Spirit and in truth, and it is through the Bible that God’s Spirit reveals the truth about who God is. Without that truth we would only have our­selves to lean on, and that would mean our sinful nature would cor­rupt our prayers, and we would end up praying to false gods.

Who Do We Pray With?←⤒🔗

By the way, one of the implications of all of this is that only Christians can truly know how to pray, since only Christians are the true children of the heavenly Father who know him as such. Others may know how to meditate. But this does not at all mean that they know how to truly pray. Only the true Christian recog­nizes the truth of the way in which God has revealed himself in his Word. Only the Christian can pray to God as he is meant to be prayed to.

Can you pray with folks who practice Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism? No. You can never really pray with non ­Christians. You can only pray for them. You can’t pray with them, because they do not recognize the one true God for who he is.

Pray With a Penitent Heart←⤒🔗

The Heidelberg Catechism also says in Answer 117: “we must ac­knowledge our need and misery, hiding nothing, and humble our­selves in his majestic presence.” We must confess how undeserving we are. We must confess our un­righteousness and unholiness to the righteous and holy God.

In the Lord’s Prayer we recog­nize that God is righteous and holy. “Hallowed be your name, your king­dom come, your will be done.” You, O Lord, are the majestic God who alone deserves to have his will done.

Also, in the Lord’s prayer we rec­ognize how unrighteous and unholy we are. We do this when we ask, “forgive us our debts.” We can only truly pray this if we first believe that we have debts that need forgiving. If we are to confess our sins, then it stands to reason that we would first believe that we are sinful.

When you enter into the pres­ence of the Almighty, you are bound to recognize how weak you are. When you enter into the presence of the God who is love, you are bound to recognize how little love actually lives within your heart.

In Isaiah 6, when Isaiah had a vision of the glory of the Lord, the first thing he said was, “Woe is me, I am ruined, for I am a man of un­clean lips.” That’s what happens. If you try to pray as someone who has gotten his act altogether, then you are not really praying at all. You cannot help but be humbled when truly praying because the greatness of God is a humbling thing.

Pray With Assurance←⤒🔗

Answer 117 of the Heidelberg Cate­chism also says,

Third, we must rest on this unshakable foundation: even though we do not deserve it, God will surely listen to our prayer because of Christ our Lord. That is what he promised us in his Word.

Here is one of the beautiful as­pects of true Christian prayer: we can pray with confidence.

We are called to pray with as­surance. We are to pray knowing that our God is watching over us. We are to pray knowing that noth­ing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus. There is comfort to our prayer.

While we recognize that we cannot help but be humbled in the presence of God because of our sins, we also realize that Christ has already done what was nec­essary so that we could be cleared of our shame.

We do not approach a God who says, “Well, I might listen to your prayers, but then again, I might not, depending on what kind of day I’m having.” That is not the nature of our God at all. Instead, we approach the God who has said to us in John 14:14 — “You may ask anything in my name, and I will do it.”

This is assuming that what we ask is in conformity with the will of God. And of course, we don’t always know what the will of God is. There may be times when God answers our prayers in ways which we might not expect or even want. So sometimes we may have the appearance of unanswered prayer.

But we still have the promise that God will send his Spirit to dwell in our hearts. And we still have the promise that God hears our prayers, regardless of what it takes to have our prayers an­swered. And the promise of our God is an unshakable foundation.

When we look at the Lord’s Prayer in this light, we can see that it is a prayer that can be prayed with confidence. Father, your name will be hallowed. Your kingdom will come. You will give us each day our daily bread. You will forgive us our debts, because of the blood of Jesus Christ shed for us. We can pray to God this perfect prayer, this model for all true prayer, knowing that our God will hear us.