“He was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘Whenever you pray, say, Father, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us. And do not bring us into temptation.’” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Throughout the season of Advent, we are to be preparing ourselves for Jesus’ arrival. One of the best ways to do this is through the spiritual disciplines. Of these several lines of ancient practice intended to put us into a posture of readiness for the action of God in, through, and around us, prayer sits among the most foundational. Knowing how to pray is something we often wonder about. Thankfully, Jesus gave us some instructions. Let’s talk about them.

The Lord’s Prayer is easily one of, if not the most widely known prayer in the world. There are two basic schools of thought when it comes to what we are to do with it. The first and perhaps most common is that it was intended for us to be a prayer to pray word for word and in total. The disciples asked Jesus how to pray here in Luke, and Jesus told them how to pray. When you pray, say this. That pretty much settles the matter.

The other approach is to take the prayer as a model. Jesus was not intending to tell them the precise words to use when they prayed, but was rather giving them a basic model to follow. While we certainly can use the actual words in or as our prayer, that wasn’t their main intention. The simplest justification for this approach is that we have the records of Jesus’ praying in other places in the Gospels, and He doesn’t use these exact words in any of them. In His high priestly prayer in John 17, He doesn’t even really use the model. Personally, I tend to fall in this latter camp in my thinking and application of His instructions here.

Assuming in this direction for the moment, if you have ever wondered how to pray, what Jesus offers here is a pretty good foundation to build on. It breaks down into five parts. This doesn’t mean you need to include all five parts in every single prayer you pray, but these are the basic categories to use as building blocks when you do pray.

He starts with an acknowledgment of who God is. “Father, your name be honored as holy.” This line by itself acknowledges who God is in several different ways. It starts with God’s existence. You can’t address someone who doesn’t exist. It goes on to His nature. God is Father. That is, He is a figure of authority. He is someone who is worthy of respect and obedience. He is a source of wisdom. He is a person with whom we can have a relationship. He cares about us enough that talking to Him makes sense. Indeed, all of those are characteristics implied by God’s fatherhood, which is a theme we find throughout the Scriptures.

This first line also points to the fact that God is worthy of honor. That idea comes out of the concept of fatherhood as well, but Jesus is even more explicit that His name (that is, His character) should be honored as holy. God is holy. He is set apart as different from creation. He is not the same substance as creation. He is independent of it. He does not depend on it. He is also morally perfect. He is good. He is, in fact, the source of goodness. All of that is contained in the idea of His being holy.

So, we start by acknowledging who God is. If you want more aspects of His character to acknowledge, search the Scriptures. There’s plenty more to build on there. The second building block has us seeking the advance of His kingdom. That is, we are not merely acknowledging His authority, but seeking its application to our lives and to the world around us. His will is greater than ours, and is worth pursuing with our lives. We want for His kingdom – a clear theme throughout the Gospels – to be advanced. This necessarily implies that ours won’t be.

When we pray, we are seeking Him and His plans, not merely us and ours. Prayers that are primarily focused on what we want are not likely to be prayers we find answered. Indeed, if you feel like your prayers aren’t ever getting answered the way you want them to be, it is probably a worthwhile exercise to examine the things you are praying for. Why are you praying for those things? Whose will are you hoping to accomplish by their being done the way you want? Are you open to the idea that God may have other plans than the ones you are seeking to see fulfilled? It’s easy to fall into the pattern of asking God to give us what we want all the time, and then being disappointed when our prayers seem like they never get answered. But it is at least worth considering that the problem is on our side of the equation, not God’s.

The third building block has us seeking God’s provision. Much has been written about the idea of our pursuing God’s provision of our daily bread. For most people in this culture (although certainly not all), a daily provision of food isn’t something to which we give much thought. We have full fridges and freezers and pantries. If we couldn’t get to the well-stocked grocery stores for a few weeks, we’d probably be okay. In Jesus’ day, and, honestly, for much of human history, procuring food was actually a daily exercise that didn’t come with many guarantees. People in Jesus’ day knew hunger in a way we generally can’t imagine.

The point of this building block, though, is not to focus our attention specifically on food, but to put us more generally in a posture of reliance on God for our needs. Now, does this mean we should pray this and then sit back and wait for God to drop everything into our laps? No, and what a silly thought. There’s nothing in the rest of the Scriptures that would give much in the way of support to that idea. God calls and expects us to work using the gifts and tools and resources He has made available to us. Those are the most common means of His provision.

So then, what is this part of the prayer really about? It is about putting us in a posture of acknowledging our need for Him. It is about helping us recognize that without His daily involvement and investment in our lives, we would have nothing. As Paul noted, all creation holds together in Christ. When we are willing to live with an awareness of our need and His provision, we will also live with a mindset of gratitude. That will have a profound impact on our lives.

Two last blocks. One is relational, and the other sits on the opposite side of the coin of acknowledging God’s character in the first block. First the relational. We seek God’s forgiveness. Now, there is a whole pile of assumptions baked into that particular cake, but we aren’t going to go into all of those right now. The basic idea is that if God is sovereign, then obeying His commands really matters. When we don’t obey His commands – which is pretty much always – then our relationship with Him gets broken. Seeking forgiveness (which implies repentance on our part) is how that relationship gets restored. Happily, forgiveness is available freely in Christ, so this is a petition we can know will be granted.

This seeking of forgiveness, though, is paired with another idea: our granting forgiveness. Throughout the Gospels, our receiving forgiveness from God is always conditioned on our granting forgiveness to those around us who have hurt us. The two go together as a packaged deal. You can’t have one without the other. Notice that this isn’t even a request for help in forgiving others. The request is for God’s forgiveness. The assumption is that we are already living with forgiveness toward the people around us who have hurt or offended us in some way. If you want to enjoy God’s forgiveness in Christ, you need to make sure that you are living with forgiveness toward the people around you. That includes past hurts that you don’t like revisiting.

The final block sees us seeking God’s help to avoid temptation. The Greek word that is most commonly translated as “temptation” is the same word that can be translated as “test.” How do we know which is which? Context. Our response determines which we are facing personally. When something is characterized as a temptation, the implication is that we are going to fall for it and do whatever it is that is in violation of God’s holiness. When we resist whatever it is, it was only a test…that we passed. To put that in another way, a temptation is merely a test that we fail. There’s a reason Paul tells us to flee from temptation. Don’t engage with it. Don’t wait to find out if it will wind up as a test that we pass. Just run away from it.

Okay, but what would it look like for this request to be granted? Is God just going to eliminate all the evil and sources of temptation from our circle of influence? There’s no evidence that’s ever been His approach. Rather, He will give us the opportunity to grow in our reliance on Him and our conviction of His character. He will lead us to grow in our own grasp and reflection of His holiness through our engagement with the spiritual disciplines. The more we learn to stand firmly in who He is, the less the things of this world will have the opportunity to get their hooks into us.

Five blocks that make for a well-rounded prayer life. You don’t necessarily need to include every block in every prayer you pray. There are seasons when you are going to need to lean more into one block or another. But over time, regularly and faithfully building with all five blocks will find you growing in your appreciation for prayer and its application in your life. And, in the season we are in now, it will leave you more ready than ever to celebrate Jesus. So, get to work.