7 ‘When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.⁸Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

9 ‘Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,    hallowed be your name.
¹⁰   Your kingdom come.    Your will be done,      on earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹   Give us this day our daily bread.^*
12   And forgive us our debts,      as we also have forgiven our debtors.
¹³   And do not bring us to the time of trial,^*      but rescue us from the evil one.^*
14For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you;¹⁵but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Jesus was not very religious. Yes, that’s what I said. Jesus is hardly ever reported as saying the kinds of pious things religious people like. He’s not much concerned with worship, meditation, ceremony, holy books, sacraments, sentimental songs or sermons. More often he talks about how people treat each other and their honesty towards God. So when Jesus gives a prayer, we should be doubly ready to pay attention. It’s not a very religious prayer, but it is the one prayer that the son of God gave to his folllowers. Appropriately it’s the prayer of God’s Son who invites his disciples to share his relationship with God: Our Father in heaven. Heaven is where God’s will is perfectly done, that is, it’s not in our space or time. God is beyond, but he has given enough evidence of his goodness in this earth, that people are able to honour his name as the source of goodness by their own hopeful goodness here and now. God’s children hope that He will rule this world as perfectly as heaven.

God exercises that rule through his Spirit (The Spirit is not named in the prayer) who leads God’s children to share the daily bread which they receive as from the hand of God; and to cancel each others’ moral and material debts as each one’s debts are cancelled by God. In that Spirit disciples are not self-reliant superbelievers but weak and needy human beings who ask not be led to the place of hard testing but to be delivered by God from the power of the Evil One.

the place of testing

The Son of God himself is not mentioned in the prayer except along with his brothers and sisters, but he is there in every petition, honouring God’s name by his goodness, implementing God’s rule by his obedience, demonstrating the shared life of the Spirit in his teaching, healing and feeding of his people, yet never settting himself up as superman but confessing his weakness and relying on the father to deliver him from the power of the Evil One-yes, the Son of God is present in every word of this prayer. That’s why it’s so immeasurable precious to Jesus’ disciples by whom it should be used every day.