By Bill Warren, Ph.D., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary Professor of New Testament and Greek
Question: Is it okay for Baptists to pray the Lord’s Prayer, and if so, why don’t we use it more often in our churches?
[img_assist|nid=6120|title=Bill Warren NOBTS Professor of New Testament and Greek|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=75|height=100]Bill Warren responds: To begin with a generalization, praying what Jesus taught us is always okay. Christians have treasured this prayer throughout the ages and used it in worship as well as personal devotional lives.
This has been the single most commonly used prayer among Christian groups throughout history, so using it in worship and private devotional life is definitely okay. To be sure, in Matthew 6:9-13, Jesus is teaching the disciples how to pray rather than actually voicing a prayer.
But very early the church began using this teaching of Jesus as actual prayer, as seen in the Didache, a Christian document from the late first to early second century, which right after giving the text of the Lord’s Prayer states: “Pray like this three times a day” (Didache 8:3).
Apparently the Christians addressed in the Didache (mostly Jewish Christians who continued to maintain a Jewish flavor in their worship and devotional practices) had adapted the Jewish practice of set times of prayer each day by using the Lord’s Prayer at those times.
As for the context for the giving of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus was countering the two tendencies for misusing prayer.
First, some were using the daily private prayer times as settings for public displays of their spirituality that sought to increase personal status rather than actually deepen the relationship with God.
Second, others (the Gentiles) were viewing prayer as a way of manipulating God so as to get an answer from a reluctant God. What we commonly call “The Lord’s Prayer” is a great corrective to these two relationship problems that affect prayer.
Since the most important aspect of prayer is the one to whom we pray, the Lord God Almighty, the prayer starts with a reminder about the one to whom we’re praying, “Our Father, who is in heaven.”
Jesus then centers on our commitment to the relationship by emphasizing that our heart-desire should be to see honor brought to our Father’s reputation, to see his influence extended, and to see his will being done.
Our needs are then presented, including the deepest need of keeping the relationship solid through forgiveness, a facet that cannot be separated from our relationships with other people.
After this, we pray that God would not test us beyond our ability to remain faithful to Him, and that He would deliver us from the evil that is found both in the testing and in life overall.
As for using this prayer in church, while repetition of the same prayer can cause it to become more of a routine than a meaningful prayer, Christians throughout the ages have found that a slow reading and meditation on the Lord’s Prayer is a powerful way of allowing God to teach us about prayer and to focus on what is most important about prayer.
Perhaps one way of keeping this prayer a vital part of our walk with God is to incorporate the various facets of the Lord’s Prayer into our overall approach to prayer, even if the specific words vary at times.