Donald Fehlauer posted on October 06, 2005 00:00
The greatest privilege of the life of faith is prayer. It is our personal conversation with God. We pray confidently and frequently, because we are certain that He hears and loves us. How do we pray? Jesus gives us the example in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:1-14).
The Lord’s Prayer can be paraphrased as follows. We pray to a loving Father with confidence asking that His Name would be on our lips, our hearts, and our lives. We pray that He would give us the Holy Spirit and rule our hearts through faith. We pray that God’s will and justice would be done especially by us. We ask for God to provide for all our bodily needs and bless us in this life. We ask for forgiveness and we pray for the ability to forgive as God has forgiven us in Christ. We pray that God would guard and protect us from the temptations of the devil, the world, and our sinful natures. We pray that God would rescue us from every evil of body and soul and finally graciously take us to heaven. We praise God for His glory and His love. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior, believing that, for His sake, God hears our prayer. We close our prayer with the statement of confidence, “Amen,” which means “Yes. It will be so!”