The Song of the Heart: Living the Lord’s Prayer

What is God’s Name?

When our oldest was in preschool, he would pray the “The Lord’s Prayer” (The “Our Father” to our Catholic brothers and sisters) at church every Sunday, loudly and proudly:

Our Father, Who art in heaven, Howard be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven…

Deliver us from eagles…

I can picture the god of our oldest, wearing the armor of a Roman gladiator, bow and arrow at the ready, taking out any predatory birds that might consider making small children a late night snack. Meanwhile, oldest can rest peacefully in his bed, all thanks to his buddy “Howard”.

Where did we go wrong?

Hearing our son misunderstand the prayer in such an extreme way, despite being able to recite it forwards and backwards led me to consider if I am all that different. I typically steer clear of the Lord’s Prayer and other rote prayers because as I recite them, my mind is everywhere but on the prayer itself, the words meaningless as they flow from my lips. Yet, Jesus had a reason for the words he chose and a proper understanding of the prayer’s meaning is warranted. For many, a short prayer recited with ease can be a preamble to deeper, more heartfelt contemplation and living. For all, the Lord’s Prayer provides a roadmap for a complete reordering of our lives to align to our Father’s will.

What if, instead of simple recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, the meaning of the prayer became the song of our hearts? Let’s take a deep dive into the heart of the “Our Father”. In doing so, perhaps our hearts and the life-songs will align closer to the will of our father in heaven.

The Lord’s Prayer Part 1: Putting God on the throne of our lives

Our Father, who art in heaven

Hallowed by thy name.

In these first two lines, Jesus gets right down to business. He commands us to consider who is on the throne of our lives.

Though I have been a Christian since toddlerhood and was a believer in high school, it wasn’t until college that I “gave my life to Christ”. Different denominations use different wordings. Some friends said I “was saved.” For me, the transformation felt more like a change in identity. Up until then, I found my identity in who I was dating. If I wasn’t dating someone, there was a hole inside of me. That night, Jesus spoke directly to my heart and I knew that he alone could fill that empty place within me. I realized that my identity was in God, not in any human relationship. As the David Crowder song “You’re Everything” played, I gave my heart to Christ.

After an hour long celebration of my “conversion”, the leaders of our campus group gave me a little booklet. One page in the small pamphlet stuck out to me. There were two images of a chair, one with a symbol representing the self seated on the chair, the second with a cross on the chair, the self yielding control to Christ. The second image captured what I felt that night. I had surrendered my heart and control over my life to God.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus ensures that we first get our relationship with God in order. He is our Father. He runs the show, and He is holy–set apart. We realize our smallness in comparison, let go of our egos, and actively acknowledge his place on the throne of our lives.

To live the heart of the prayer, our lives should be a continued surrendering to God.

The Lord’s Prayer Part 2: Heaven on Earth

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done

On Earth as it is in heaven.

Now we are broadening the scope a bit. God is not only king of our lives, He is also on the throne of the Earth.

At first, this seems a simple extension of the former two lines. If we genuinely mean the words of this prayer, “God’s will be done”, however, we are signing up to be God’s agents in the world. This requires far more than a recitation of the words. Simple recitation can pave the way to something deeper, but we must go beyond mere words. To live this part of the prayer requires a complete overhaul of our lives.

A Little Home Remodeling

When I was in my late teens, my mom invited/dragged me to a tour of a home designer showhouse. In a showhouse, a different company or individual designs each room of a rather large house and gardens. Despite my initial reservations, I enjoyed the tour, especially one of the bedrooms, which was decorated in a LOTR theme. A gorgeous rendition of a map of Middle Earth stretched across the ceiling. I’m fairly confident I uttered the words, “I wish my room looked like that,” at some point. Though my memory is terrible, I’m also fairly confident my mom rolled her eyes.

How serious was I? In my case, it was pure lip service. Perhaps I would drop my name into a drawing for a free redesign of my home bedroom. But my dedication ended there.

If we are honest, that is as serious as most of us are when we pray for God’s will to be done on Earth.

Sure God, if you want to drop in and make this place a little better, I’d be down with that. Just let me know when you’ll be by and I’ll roll out for a couple days for you to finish the job.

If I had been serious about redoing my room, I would have contacted the designer and requested a quote. Perhaps I would have increased my hours at my after-school job to afford the remodeling. Or, if it was out of my price range, I would have taken an art class, bought some paint, and given it a try myself.

Action

Likewise, if we are serious about doing God’s will and bringing heaven to Earth, our actions must match our words. If we pray this from the heart, the Lord’s Prayer transforms from a thirty-second prayer to a full life commitment.

First, getting serious about the redesign requires spending some time with the designer. We commit to spending extensive time in prayer (20+ minutes a day minimum–Jesus spent hours), listening to God’s voice. It’s awfully hard to bring about the kingdom of God on Earth when we’ve barely been to/lived in the kingdom ourselves!

Second, whatever we hear in prayer, we commit to making happen. We offer our lives as a living sacrifice to God. When we live in obedience to Jesus’ commands and leading, we are his true disciples, doing what he asks us both in the Scripture and in the silence of prayer.

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.

Matthew 7:21 (NIV)

The Lord’s Prayer Part 3: Ultimate Trust

Give us this day our daily bread.

Apparently, Jesus isn’t big on traditional manners. If our boys worded their request for dinner this way, I’d stand there giving them the stink eye, waiting for “please.” Even if they were asking for a second helping of vegetables…

There are two key parts of this request: First, “This day”. On the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus urged us to be focused on today and on this present moment (Matthew 6:25-34). Here again, in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus emphasizes the importance of living in the present. When fully present here and now, we trust God with the future and release the past. We realize that serving God now, in this moment, is all that matters.

The second portion that sticks out to me is the word “bread”. In the times of Jesus, bread was the pantry staple. You could get by on bread and water, but you wouldn’t be living the high life. In modern America, I suppose the prayer would be worded “Give us our daily Ramen,” or “Give us our daily chicken nuggets and green beans.” We are not asking for filet mignon, shrimp and pasta, or even for a brownie and ice cream for dessert.

Jesus is urging us to trust God with our needs and to find contentment in the simple things–in having our basic needs met. On the surface, this sounds like another round of giving up all the good stuff to be a Christian. Yet, what Jesus offers here is truly beautiful.

There are entire self-help books that spend 200+ pages saying what Jesus managed to get across in seven English words:

First, through the command to live in the present moment, Jesus is offering us freedom from worry and guilt. Second, in teaching us to trust God for our needs, Jesus helps us to cultivate grateful hearts and minds that are capable of genuine happiness. Finally, as Jesus helps us to understand what we truly need, we are able to trade what is unfulfilling and empty for what gives us and others abundant life.

The Power of Gratitude

Gratitude for those necessities changes us. When we find joy in the small things, we become happier, more joy-filled people.

Neuroscience backs this up. Gratitude produces the neurotransmitters that produce “feel good” chemicals in the brain. As a sweet bonus, the more that we practice gratitude, the more we see the world as a positive place.

Jesus was on to something.

In living the Lord’s Prayer from the heart, we, like Jesus, learn to live our lives in the here and now, focused on serving God in the present moment, grateful for the blessings before us.

The Lord’s Prayer Part 4: Forgiveness

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

In the Gospels, Jesus models forgiveness through his parable of the prodigal son and his own actions on the cross. In the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18: 21-35), Jesus also commands us to forgive one another.

Jesus gave his own life so that we can freely enter the kingdom, both in this life and in the life to come. But this isn’t an invitation for one. God invites us all back home to him. We can’t pick and choose who joins us there for dinner.

Yeah, God, I’ll be by around 5 PM. Jan’s not invited, right?

The kingdom of heaven includes all of us. We all go home together.

This is also a 13 word summary of an entire shelf of self-help books. Accepting God’s forgiveness for ourselves and releasing our resentment of others is incredibly transformative.

The finale: Keep us connected to you, Lord

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

The Our Father ends with a plea for help in staying on the right road. James 1:13 explains that God doesn’t tempt us, but we are certainly surrounded by the temptations of this world, the thorns of this world that choke out God’s truth. Jesus knows that we don’t want temptations and trials. In the prayer, we are getting real with God, admitting that we’d rather not deal with any particular hard trials, even though they are good for us. More importantly, we are reminding ourselves that we need God’s help. This world is a very tempting and distracting place.

We need God to be in our minds and hearts. Once again, just saying or thinking the words only gets us so far. There’s only so much a parent can do for the child who yells, “Hey Dad, keep me safe from lions!” and then runs headlong into the lion’s den. It is an absolute must that we cling to Him. We must spend time with God, rooting ourselves in the Word and in God’s truth through prayer and meditation (listening to God). Living the prayer means daily time spent with God, allowing him to create in our hearts a safe refuge from the pull of this world.

The Heart of the Lord’s Prayer

In final reflection, the Lord’s Prayer is more a handbook for Jesus’ way of being in the world and relating to God rather than a template for rote prayer. Though the prayer may start as a meaningful recitation, ultimately, praying the “Our Father” from the heart requires a complete reworking of our lives, from the inside out.

We first put God on the throne of our lives. By spending extensive time reading the Word, praying, and listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit within us, we learn to put our full trust in God, express gratitude for our blessings, and live in peace with our brothers and sisters. We commit ourselves to serving God in the present moment, free from the worries of the future and the regrets of the past. We are Jesus’ true disciples, bringing His kingdom to Earth, living the Lord’s Prayer from the depths of our hearts.