Be Mindful of These Five Prayer Touchpoints

I can still hear it in my mind. A group of us youth closing a Wednesday evening Bible study by reciting together the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. . .”

Perhaps like me you, too, memorized the Lord’s Prayer when you were younger, though maybe from a different Bible version. But while we might be able to quote Matthew 6:9-13 in its entirety, complete with dramatic pauses and intoned emphasis here and there, how much have we learned from what we’ve memorized? Here are five prayer touchpoints to move from long-term storage to daily use.

Our Father

We all know the Lord’s Prayer starts this way. If the pastor called on us to start the prayer for everyone else to join in, we could do it. But what does it mean? In a world with absent fathers, distant fathers, and abusive fathers, do we even know what it means for someone to be a father, much less for God to be our Father?

• God the Father is sovereign. That’s a big, churchy word that means no person, no thing, no power, and no combination of persons, things, and power can match Him. He’s over them all.

• God the Father is holy. None of the short comings, cruelty, indiscretions, or any other failure we might have seen in our own fathers or other fathers around us ever makes its way into this Father.

• God the Father is Yahweh. That’s the name God used in the Old Testament when He wanted to stress the relationship He had or desired with His people. He still desires relationships today. He desires a relationship with you.

• God the Father is good. Yes, He’s majestic. Yes, He’s mighty beyond comprehension. Yes, He’s the God of justice. But in all these, He is also good.

• God the Father is our Father, or at least He desires to be if we will let Him. He’s not a bully, you know. He won’t force Himself upon you. But He will be your Father if you trust Him.

Your Kingdom Come

God the Father is a King. We get that. And as a King, it only follows that He must have a kingdom. But what does it mean to pray, “Your kingdom come”? It’s a plea. It’s a recognition that God’s will is not “done on earth as it is in heaven,” though it should be. It’s an earnest plea that God would make earth more like heaven.

Praying for God’s kingdom to come also implies volunteering to help in that process. Surely, we wouldn’t want God’s kingdom to come but to leave us on the outside looking in. No, the prayer is an acknowledgment of our willingness to participate in His kingdom, to proclaim its coming, to personify it with our lives, to pursue it with our hearts.

Our Daily Bread

Most of us have such an abundance we never worry about where our next meal is coming from. But what if Jesus meant soul nourishment rather than bodily food? After all, it falls between asking for God’s kingdom to come to earth and praying for forgiveness, both spiritual in nature. Does your soul receive an abundance of nourishment? Or, if you listen closely with spiritual ears, does it cry out in hunger?

And of course, the request if for “daily” bread. Just like our bodies, our souls don’t fare well if we gorge them at one point (Sunday morning?) but then let them starve for a long period of time (till next Sunday morning?). And unlike our bodily food, we can’t just run to the store to pick up spiritual nourishment—only our Father provides that, and we’re to ask for it “daily.”

Forgive Us

Do you know people—or maybe you’ve fallen into the trap yourself—that everything that happens to or around them is someone else’s fault or responsibility? To pray “forgive us” is to admit that we need forgiveness—that we have sinned, we have debts, it IS our fault.

But did you notice? We’re asking God to forgive us in the same way we forgive others. Ouch! How much room does our forgiveness of others leave for God to forgive us?

Deliver Us

Bad news. We need deliverance—even those of us who have received Jesus and eternal life. We live in a war zone and “the evil one” uses guerilla war tactics with ambushes, sneak attacks, and deception. If we have a peace-time mentality, we will end up as POWs to the cruelest forces of all time. But our sovereign Father, our unconquerable Commander, desires to “deliver us” when we adopt a war-time mentality and seek His deliverance.