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Learning How to Pray “The Lord’s Prayer”


Thanks to one of Jesus’s disciples, billions of Christians have prayed and still pray a common prayer. It is probably the most widely known prayer in history.

Now it came to pass, as Jesus was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.”1

Below is King James Version of the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9-12.

Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

I am a senior citizen and this prayer has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. However, it wasn’t until I began my work on the Jewish Jesus that I realized my understanding of this short prayer and what praying it meant were very different from what Jesus actually said and intended for those who prayed it to do. This is the first in a series of blogs about the Lord’s Prayer. We will go through the prayer word-by-word (Hebrew words of Jesus) and view them through his Jewish culture, beginning with the next blog.

In this blog I want to focus on the Jewish view of prayer. It is very different from the way I was taught to pray in my church where prayers were spontaneous. We did not have Prayer Book. When someone was asked to pray, he or she spoke from the heart. Most were petitionary prayers that included giving thanks for things we have and requests for things we needed. After the “amen,” that was it for the person praying the prayer – the rest was up to God.

One thing Jesus did not have to teach his disciples was how to pray. They were all Jews, Hebrew speakers and had participated in the Shabbat and synagogue services as a regular part of life. Praying congregational prayers, which most members new from memory, were important parts of the Shabbat Service along with public readings from the Torah and other Scriptures, and sermons by well-known teachers and community leaders. Today the Prayer Book (siddur) plays a central role in synagogue services, but the earliest discovered so far come from the 9th century CE.

Based on what is found in writings from early Jewish sources, below are some of the important things about prayer that stood out to me. They definitely transformed the way I viewed the Lord’s Prayer and the potential it has to impact Christian lives today. As a matter of fact, it is the one thing that could begin a process that brings our divided nation together.

The first thing I learned about how Jesus viewed prayer is that “prayer is the human side of an unending dialogue between God and people.”

● God speaks to people in the grandeur of nature, the drama of history and through the Jewish Scriptures of His love for them, His purposes in having fashioned life, and of the ultimate goodness of all existence.

● Man’s response to God is prayer.

The earliest parts of Jewish prayer book are the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9; 11:13-21 & Numbers 15:37-41), the Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6:24-26), and the Shemoneh Esreh or the Amidah (traditionally ascribed to the Great Assembly in the time of Ezra in the 5th century BCE). It appears that these were part of synagogue and Temple services at the time of Jesus. He and his disciples, along with members of the rest of the Jewish society, heard and repeated those words at least once every week. Before we continue, take a moment to read the sections from the Bible before you continue.

Keep in mind that I am talking about congregational prayers, like those above. The Lord’s Prayer is a like other congregational prayers. Take another look at its words and notice the words “us,” “our” and “we.” “I,” “me” and “my” are not found in it. An important purpose of prayer in the Jewish culture is to educate those praying and hearing the prayer. Below are some of the things that Jewish prayers teach people.

● How to recognize more clearly what our true needs really are.

● Not to pray not for the trivial things, simply because we miss and long for them.

● Pray for the things which are of enduring value -- wisdom, health, sustenance, peace, wholeness, redemption from oppression, vindication of the righteous, Jewish renewal in the Holy Land and nearness to God,

● Be conscious of our dependence on God and be more receptive to divine influences.

● God will not replace our roles in making the things we pray for come to pass.

● God will be with each of us in our struggle against our deficiencies.

● We cannot expect God to heed our requests when they run counter to the needs of the world as a whole.

● We cannot expect God to lift us out of the limitations which are inherent in the human condition.

● The ultimate function of prayer in all its manifestations is to bring us closer to God, so that we may more faithfully perform His will -- not try to induce God to perform our will. Prayer does not seek to effect any change in God, who is the source of all that is eternal and beyond change. Prayer seeks rather to raise the human soul toward divine heights.2

Now take another look at the words of The Lord’s Prayer see if you can find answers to the questions below?

● What true needs are identified?

● What enduring values do you see?

● What roles do those praying the prayer have for making the things in the prayer come to pass?

● What roles do we have for making the things in the prayer come to pass?

As I said above, this is the first in a series of blogs about the Lord’s Prayer. We will begin going through The Lord’s Prayer word-by-word in the next blog.
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1 Luke 11:1
2 The Prayer Book: Weekday, Sabbath and Festival; translated and arranged by Ben Zion Bokser © 1983; Behrman House Publishers, Inc., New York, NY; pp. viii, ix.

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