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Watch out! The Lord’s Prayer will ruin your life

By Jeremy Myers
10 Comments

Watch out! The Lord’s Prayer will ruin your life

A while back I wrote about the 8 most dangerous Christian prayers. Afterwards, I realized that one of the most dangerous prayers of all was the Lord’s prayer, which we have also looked at briefly before.

Let us now take a closer look at the Lord’s Prayer and see why it contains several dangerous prayer requests.

the Lords Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer is full of dangerous prayers which can destroy your life.

Each line of the Lord’s prayer is designed to invite God into your life to overthrow, upend, and destroy your life. When you pray the Lord’s prayer, God enters your life like a bull in a china shop.

Afterwards, however, God takes all the shards of crystal and glass that He left behind, and makes the most beautiful mosaic you have ever seen.

If you pray the Lord’s prayer, get ready for destruction … but the beauty that rises from the ashes will be incomparable to whatever plans you had for your life previously.

Here is a quick run-through of how each line in the Lord’s Prayer will upend, overturn, and destroy your life as you know it.

Hallowed be thy name

In praying this, we announce that we want God’s name to be glorified. Sounds good, right?

Yes, except that usually, when we pray this, what we mean is “Hollowed be they name in and through me.” We want God to be gloried, and we want to ride His coat tails to some glory of our own.

But the prayer doesn’t say this will happen. It is a prayer for God’s name to be glorified; not our name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven

This seems fairly safe, right? Haven’t many of us been taught to close out our prayers with “Not my will, but thy will be done?” Don’t we want God’s will to be done on earth?

Sure!

… Just not in our lives.

When it comes to our own lives, we want our own will to be done. God’s will for our lives usually looks much less enjoyable than our plans for our own life.

And besides, God’s will often seems to lead into death, slavery, obscurity, and suffering. Who wants that? Not me.

So this prayer is dangerous when we include ourselves in it.

Give us this day our daily bread

Daily bread means “enough food for today.” It means barely scraping by. But who wants that? I need a full fridge and a growing retirement account. I need a new car, a shinier cell-phone, a faster internet connection, and maybe an Apple iWatch.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgiven those who trespass against us

Of course we want God to forgive us, but are you ready to forgive the person who has wronged you?

… Um, maybe not yet.

Enough said.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

God doesn’t actually lead anyone into temptation, so this phrase probably means something closer to “Help us resist temptation when it comes.”

But regardless, we don’t really mean it. We like our pet sins. We don’t want God to point them out to us, nor do we want to get rid of them.

Instead, what we usually do, is invent other “sins” that we “struggle” so that we can make ourselves feel better about the small victories we gain over these fake sins while completely ignoring the bigger sins we harbor in our lives every day.

What sorts of sins? Oh, greed, pride, anger, and judgmentalism to name a few.

The Lord’s Prayer is Dangerous

So be careful about praying the Lord’s Prayer. Every phrase is a minefield just waiting for you to step on it so that your life can get turned upside down.

Here is a video in which I teach a bit more about the Lord’s Prayer:

The Disciple’s Prayer – Matthew 6:9-13

Do you want to pray like never before?

Do you what to talk to God like you talk to a friend? Do you want to see more answers to prayer?

If you have these (and other) questions about prayer, let me send you some teaching and instruction about prayer to your email inbox. You will receive one or two per week, absolutely free. Fill out the form below to get started.

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God is Redeeming Life, Redeeming Scripture Bible & Theology Topics: answers to prayer, Books I'm Writing, Discipleship, how to pray, Luke 11:1-13, Matthew 6:9-13, pray to God, prayer, What is prayer

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Lord, Teach us to Pray (Luke 11:1)

By Jeremy Myers
6 Comments

Lord, Teach us to Pray (Luke 11:1)

If there is one thing we learn from the Lord’s prayer in Luke 11:1, it is that the best ways to think about prayer is to view it as simply having a conversation with God.

If you can talk to a spouse, coworker, friend, or neighbor, they can talk to God in prayer. No special training or vocabulary is needed. No special posture and location are necessary.

Whatever you would talk to a friend about, you can talk to God about. Wherever you might speak to a friend, you can speak to God.

You do not need to be gathered together with others, though sometimes that is helpful for the sake of the conversation. You do not have to be in a certain building or room, though sometimes, that is helpful so you can focus on what is being said.

Even still, some people are uncertain of what to say when they pray, since having a conversation with God seems different than having a conversation with a friend. So it is helpful to give people some ideas of the sorts of things that can be said in conversation with God. In the next few posts, we will look at four places in Scripture some people find helpful as they learn to converse with God.

Lord, Teach us to Pray

The Disciples’ Prayer

The passage that many people think of as The Lord’s Prayer might better be called “The Disciples’ Prayer.”

Near the middle of the three years of Jesus’ ministry, His disciples noticed that He spent a lot of time in prayer, and they came to Jesus, asking Him to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1).

They did not ask this because they did not know how to pray, for the Jewish people had many daily and weekly times of prayer. But most of these prayers were memorized and recited, and were formal, ceremonial prayers for particular events and holidays.

The disciples must have noticed that Jesus prayed differently. He seemed to talk with God as a man talks to a friend, or a Father. For Jesus, prayer was natural and normal, and the disciples wanted to pray this way as well.

So Jesus taught His disciples how to pray (Luke 11:2-4; Matt 6:9-13).

He lists several things to say to God, and several types of prayer requests. But despite how many use this prayer today as something that should be recited on a regular basis, I don’t think Jesus was telling His disciples exactly what they should pray, but was giving them examples of the sorts of things they could pray for. He wasn’t giving them exact words to pray for, but was giving them broad themes and ideas.

And what are these themes and ideas?

They include giving praise and glory to God, and requests for the rule and reign of God to expand on earth, that God provide for our daily needs, and that He would forgive us for the ways we have failed to keep His will, and protect us from further failures. These are basic requests, and can be prominent themes of any person’s prayer life.

When you pray, you can pray similarly. Don’t worry too much about what you are saying or how to say it. Just talk to God the way you would talk to anyone else about whatever is on your heart and mind. That’s how Jesus prayed, and how He taught us to pray as well!

Now, the Lord’s Prayer contains some dangerous prayer requests, which we will look at next time.

Do you want to pray like never before?

Do you what to talk to God like you talk to a friend? Do you want to see more answers to prayer?

If you have these (and other) questions about prayer, let me send you some teaching and instruction about prayer to your email inbox. You will receive one or two per week, absolutely free. Fill out the form below to get started.

Membership-become-a-member

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,
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If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to
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God is Redeeming Church, Redeeming Life Bible & Theology Topics: Close Your Church for Good, Discipleship, how to pray, Luke 11:1, Luke 11:1-13, The Lords Prayer

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