What Did We Miss?
Does the Lord’s Prayer cover everything we need to pray for?
Verse of the Day
“Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.”
Today’s Devotional
We have just spent the last nine days reading and studying the Lord’s Prayer as a means to learn how to pray from Jesus. Which leads me to the question: Does the Lord’s prayer cover everything we need to be praying?
Let’s be clear. My answer to that question is “I don’t know.” What I do know is that we are called to be people who regularly and habitually express our gratitude to God. Read today’s verse again: “Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.” Does the Lord’s Prayer include gratitude?
One of the authors suggested that Jesus’s instructions for us to address God as “Father” is a call for gratitude. Think about it. The God of heaven, The Creator of the universe, The Living God invites us to be His children and call Him “Father”. If that doesn’t create gratitude in us, then we may not understand the magnitude of that invitation.
We are taught in the Lord’s Prayer to offer our God our adoration. We do this not only when we call Him Father, but also when we are declaring His holiness. One of the ways we adore God is by thanking Him. Richard Foster teaches that “There are two sides to the Prayer of Adoration: thanksgiving and praise. The usual distinction between the two is this: in thanksgiving we give glory to God for what he has done for us; in praise we give glory to God for who he is in himself.”
Even though the Lord’s Prayer does not specifically teach us to be grateful, Jesus models it for us in other parts of the New Testament. In John 6:11, Jesus gives thanks to God before He feeds the 5,000 with only five loaves of bread and two fish. In Luke 10:21, Jesus thanks the Father for revealing spiritual truths to those who are childlike (and hiding them from those who think they are wise.)
Simply put, gratitude needs to be part of who we are, both in prayer and in the way we live our lives.
According to today’s verse, there are two more things that need to define our prayers: devotion and alertness. Devotion to prayer means that it is something we do daily, if not many times a day, no matter what else we have going on. Think of an elderly man who is devoted to the care of his sick wife. Nothing can stop him from attending to her, being with her, feeding her, making sure that she has what she needs. We need to practice prayer until we become so devoted to it that nothing could possibly deter us from being with our Father. There is some debate about the call to be “alert”, but most scholars agree that this means we need not be careless or thoughtless in our prayers. We come to God with purpose and deliberate intent. We remain “awake” to anything He has to say, ever watching for what He is teaching us.
As with all things of importance, we must learn, we must practice, and we must persevere to become children of the Father who pray well. For today, we begin exactly where we are. We learn mainly by doing, so we pray. We offer our thanks, we admit our weaknesses and our needs, and we adore the Father who wants to be with us.
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
How often do you thank God?
How can you express your gratitude to God for His desire to be your Father?
How can you become more devoted to prayer?
How are you actively listening to and learning from God in prayer?
What are you grateful for today?