THE LORD’S PRAYER FOR TODAY AND TO COME

By Rev. Lowell Avery, PPL Board Member

 

I cannot remember when I learned the “Lord’s Prayer.” I grew up connected to churches that prayed it frequently, so I probably learned it before I could read. It is a great model prayer, and I regularly still let it guide me in my praying. But I do remember that as a young adult Christian, I started calling it the “Disciples’ Prayer” or the “Our Father, ” and I started referring to John 17 as the “Lord’s Prayer. ” The longest of Jesus’s recorded prayers, it tells us what was on His heart as He anticipated dying, rising, and returning to the Father.

 

In John 17, Jesus began by praying for the Father to glorify Him as He had glorified the Father. He had accomplished the work the Father had given Him to do: making known in the earth both the only true God and “Jesus Christ, whom [He] had sent. ” I am so grateful that some believed in Him.

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Accordingly, He prayed for His immediate disciples, that the Father would keep them from the evil one and keep them fully devoted in the truth, the Father’s Word. He faithfully held them fast. So today, we have the Church and the Bible to tell us the truth of God that points us to eternal, abundant life.

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Then, as the Prophet that Moses had foretold, Jesus also spoke of His future disciples and prayed for them (us!) (Deuteronomy 18:15-19). His request of the Father was not just for our eternal presence with Him, but also for a unity that does two important things: it continually and persuasively expresses to the world that the Father sent the Son, and it demonstrates that the Father loves His Church as He loves Jesus. May our unity in prayer for the vulnerable ones made in God’s image continue to fulfill Jesus’s prayer for this world and for us.

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"Doctrine divides, but doctrine also unites.

It binds together the hearts of God’s people who celebrate the truth of God.” —R.C. Sproul
 

 

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