Our Father Prayer

The Lord's Prayer "Our Father Who Art in Heaven"

Lordís Prayer, also called Our Father, Latin Oratio Dominica or Pater Noster, Christian prayer that, according to tradition, was taught by Jesus to his disciples. It appears in two forms in the New Testament: the shorter version in the Gospel According to Luke 11:2ñ4 and the longer version, part of the Sermon on the Mount, in the Gospel According to Matthew 6:9ñ13. In both contexts it is offered as a model of how to pray.

The Lordís Prayer resembles other prayers that came out of the Jewish matrix of Jesusí time and contains three common elements of Jewish prayers: praise, petition, and a yearning for the coming kingdom of God. It consists of an introductory address and seven petitions.

This, then, is how you should pray: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

As you read this Scripture, let it soak into your heart and begin to talk to God honestly and openly. He created you, loves you, and wants to hear from you! Use the Lord's Prayer as a way to walk through communicating with God!

The Father-Son relationship within the Trinity reveals our potential relationship with God. Christ, the Son of God, grants us the privilege of calling God Our Father by the grace of adoption (Galatians 4:4-7). As a "son of God," the Christian is called to love, trust, and serve God as Christ does the Father. We must note that God is not our Father simply because He created us. He is only Father to those in a saving and personal relationship with Him, a communion that only comes by the grace of adoption.

"Daily" is actually a misleading translation of the Greek epiousios, which is literally "above the essence," or "supersubstantial." The expression for daily bread indicates not merely bread for this day, for earthly nourishment; it is the bread for the eternal day of the Kingdom of God, for the nourishment of our immortal soul. This living, supersubstantial bread is Christ Himself. In the Lord's Prayer, then, we are not asking merely for material bread for physical health, but for the spiritual bread for eternal life.