“It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, when He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.” And He said to them, “When you pray, say: ‘ Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. ‘Give us each day our daily bread. ‘And forgive us our sins, For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation.’ ””
‭‭Luke‬ ‭11‬:‭1‬-‭4‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬

Now we will be dissecting these verses today… In verse 1 we see that one of the disciples asked Jesus how to pray. I wanted to speak about this because some of us have found ourselves in a state where we don’t know how to pray. It could be that you recently accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Or it could be that you’ve been a Christian for a while now and you feel like you may not be praying correctly. I believe although God calls us to pray in this way, we may not understand its depth. More than us reciting a verse, he wants us to genuinely believe and do/say at heart.

Let’s go to verse 2: “And He said to them, “When you pray, say: ‘ Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come” Luke‬ ‭11‬:‭2‬ ‭NASB2020. Jesus is teaching us here when we pray we need to acknowledge our God, his being with reverence. Your kingdom come, that his will may be done as it is in heaven. A lot of times we have self centered prayers, but when we pray we need to pray that he do what he wants to do. We are not the creator, he is, which is why he knows best. His ways are higher than ours, he sees things you don’t.

Now verse 3: “Give us each day our daily bread” Luke‬ ‭11‬:‭3‬ ‭NASB2020.

We need to ask God to give us what we need, everyday. There is a difference between what we need and what we want.

Let’s go to verse 4: “And forgive us our sins, For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation” Luke‬ ‭11‬:‭4‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬.
Wow! This is really fire, let’s really really dig deep into this. Everyday, and I mean everyday we need to speak to God about this. Daily there are things we do or say that we may be conscious/unconscious about, that don’t please our God. We are human beings who are not perfect. Which means we will fail and make mistakes. Let’s remember a true Christian does not preplan to sin, but there are things sometimes that we don’t plan and it happens. Let me elaborate… someone who plans beforehand to lie to get his/her way, is already strategizing in his/her mind to plain-fully sin, that’s wrong. Now let’s say you were living your day, and accidentally in the moment you lied to your boss that you came on time when you didn’t. Now both are a sin and you need to repent for. But a true Christian doesn’t plan beforehand to commit a sinful act. Things happen, we aren’t perfect it’s in our nature. But we need to be daily killing our flesh and live a new life in Jesus Christ. Plus remember, our God knows what’s truly in the hearts of man (all people). So he knows whether you meant to do it or not. He knows if you are doing it to take advantage of his grace. We need daily renewing because in us isn’t good, we were born into sin. It is in our nature to want to do things to please ourselves and act like we don’t need saving/like we know it all. But we clearly know that we can’t do this life alone, we need a Savior, which is only found in Jesus Christ… He is the truth, the way and the life.

This prayer was also written in Matthew 6:9… I really love how it’s written there as well. If we look to the verse below in that Chapter it says… “For if you forgive other people for their offenses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive other people, then your Father will not forgive your offenses” Matthew‬ ‭6‬:‭14‬-‭15‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬. Which ties along to verse 4 in Luke. In the Word of God, he always calls us to forgive one another. It even says here if we forgive those who hurt us, he will even forgive us for our offenses. I find it crazy that whenever anyone sins, they sin against God, not you. When someone hurts you, I know it feels like they are hurting you. Which is why it says those “indebted to you”, we human beings when someone hurts us believe they “owe” us an apology. Although they have hurt us, essentially they are hurting God as well. The last thing said in Luke 11:4; And do not lead us into temptation. So saying, God please do not let me be tempted by the enemy/by evil. Keep your hand on me and lead me not there.

Now I love this prayer because clearly it’s important. But I want us to understand that more than repeating this in a routinely manner, he wants us to genuinely pray this prayer. We don’t have to word by word pray this. You don’t have to pray a perfect prayer, but this is a prayer we should model. When we pray we should acknowledge his greatness, ask for his will to be done, ask for forgiveness and forgive others; if you don’t know how to, ask for help to forgive those who have hurt you. Ask to not be led to be tempted by the enemy.

God bless you guys, I hope this helps you pray before our God Almighty. 😊

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