Prayer is meant to be an act of worship. To begin with, it’s a blessing that we can have conversations with God and he can return to our utterances and requests in one form or another.
There was a time when the disciples of Jesus had no knowledge or understanding of what it meant to pray or to say a prayer to God.
Here in this article, we’ll be discussing useful insights from the prayer Jesus Christ taught to his disciples and how we can apply these insights in this modern day.
Acknowledging the sovereignty and the power of God
“Our Father who art in heaven may your name be kept holy”
One of the things that’s interesting about saying prayers is the fact that praying to God requires faith. Because to start it all, we cannot see God; we can only see him with the eyes of faith.
To have strong, effective and continuous communication with the spirit of God, there’s a need to surrender to the almightiness of God. Jesus Christ began teaching his disciples by acknowledging that there’s a sense of relationship we have with God by using the expression “our Father”
There’s a wrong way people go about praying to God these days and that’s largely because many do not see or take God to be their true father. To foster and develop a more secure communication experience with the spirit of God, the father factor has to be acknowledged. Not necessarily using the exact words Jesus used but something similar. But more than the choice of words spoken or said, the father’s conviction has and needs to be cemented in the heart first.
Submitting to God’s will even in the middle of our prayer request
There’s this misconception that people often have when they’re approaching God in prayer. There are a lot of misconceptions about the topic of prayer. To straighten out these misconceptions isn’t an attempt to make prayer mechanical either because prayer is quite dynamic depending on the leading of the spirit.
Many people see God as a request-granting deity. The invisible one they tell what they want and the things they want him to do for them. How wrong is that?
As we pointed out in the first point of this article, effective prayer requires coming to God from a place of someone who’s having a developing relationship with him.
In the middle of Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray, he made mention of thy kingdom in the middle of making his request known to God.
Now, “thy kingdom come” as short and brief as the statement looks is a very powerful statement. After the statement, Jesus went on to say “May your kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth”
If God is a selfish God he wouldn’t give us the ability or the opportunity to ask things from him in prayer. And so as a way of honouring God’s beautiful gift of being able to pray to him, we need to let our desires be secondary to the will of God and let/allow/permit his own will to be the primary thing in our hearts when or while we pray to him. Whatever we want that might lead us to pray to him, we must surrender it to his name and his will first.
Prayer is a way we help God to co-create earth into his kingdom that it was meant to be before the influences of darkness. And so while we’re co-creating the kingdom with him in prayer, we must see to it that we bow our desires to fit into his kingdom. It’s God’s wish and will for us to prosper but not to the detriment of our souls. Our prayers must be in strict accordance with the spirit and will of God no matter what they might be.
Humility in prayer
“Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses.”
The spirit of God is close to the one who’s humble and far away from the one whose heart is full of pride. Because we have jobs and we keep families, we pay bills and get to buy food for ourselves we can easily fall into the unconscious belief that we’re the ones feeding ourselves. This mode of living is an unconscious mode of playing the role of God over our own lives.
The Spirit of God is easily drawn and friendly towards the one who’s humble at heart, and when we get to depict that Spirit of humility in our worship of God in prayer, our prayer is expected and almost promised to be a fruitful worship. Because such prayer isn’t just mere utterances. It’s an act that confirms worship and humility.
To ask God for forgiveness in our prayer is to accept our frailty as humans who are God’s creations. Humility towards men and most especially towards God is not humiliation or self-debasement. Humility in itself is another way to worship God. To look to God for feeding is an act that depicts true humility. Because we’re not in control of much as we take ourselves to be or as we might unconsciously assume that we are.
Asking God for forgiveness is a way to crown our humility before his throne. It’s a way of conforming and aligning with the spirit of God that we’re looking up to him and him alone for spiritual rightness with him. Spiritual ego is a thing that’s not all that uncommon. Spiritual ego is when an individual looks or depends on his understanding of spiritual things. And every individual understanding of the things of spirit is limited. No matter how knowing such a person is, he or she is still limited. The pride sets in when the person starts to depend on his knowing for spiritual rightness. It’s another way of playing God. Another shade of -spiritual- pride.
Not beyond temptation
An effective prayer should be encompassing. By saying that prayer should be encompassing, we mean a prayer should be a balance of spiritual things and material things.
Before Jesus Christ got to the part where he asked for the daily bread in his prayer rendition, he had already worshipped God and acknowledged God. He had already prayed for matters that required more haste than having bread, and that was requesting that the kingdom of God show up on earth.
To seek God in prayer is to seek Infinite wisdom through prayer. Jesus Christ rounding off with the prayer request of not falling into temptation is perhaps to ask for that one thing that’s somewhat of a super miracle. The world even at the times of Jesus Christ was well-laden with temptations of all sorts and different kinds. Jesus Christ’s asking to be fortified in prayer against temptation is a way of asking for a superior miracle.
Conclusion: Lessons to be learnt
Balance
One of the foremost things you should take away from reading this article about having effective prayer sessions with insights from the Lord’s Prayer is to understand that balance is one primary thing that’s required for effective prayer.
It’s almost automatic to put our request first but how about putting God first in our prayer request? But God doesn’t need anything from us you might think. Well, probably not anything material. As a result of this, it’s crucial to see prayer as a way of worship. If our prayer isn’t edifying God but just our needs and our requests that are not necessarily kingdom-centered, then we need to rethink.
Thine kingdom come
Take for instance an individual who’s asking God for a Mercedes Benz c300 in his prayer request. And at the end of the day, he never gets to see the results of his requests. Perhaps one of the reasons why such an individual doesn’t see the results of his prayer isn’t the fact that he shouldn’t ask for anything material in prayer.
There’s always a place for having things. But all and everything must be in alliance with the idea of thine kingdom come which is the supreme will and the order of God. Perhaps if such an individual is granted a Benz as quickly as his human nature desires, that individual will constantly struggle with creating time for worship of God in prayer and that automatically defeats the purpose of prayer which is to see the kingdom of God come on earth.
In totality, we’re meant to seek the face of God in prayer with humility and a heart that’s largely beating and functioning to see the kingdom of God come here on earth. A lot of people pray but very few know or experience what it means to worship God through prayer. Approaching prayer from a place of worship not only makes prayers effective, it also makes anyone approaching prayer from that standpoint an affectionate child of God.