While the sphere of
prayer may be narrowed in certain directions by what we know of
nature's processes, it has been greatly widened in other directions.
THE MODEL PRAYER
This is the Lord's Prayer which Christ gave His disciples when He
preached the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9-13) and when one of His
disciples said to Him, "Lord teach us to pray" (Luke 11:2-4). "It is
the prayer of prayers. It is the best and most beautiful, the simplest
and yet the deepest, the shortest and yet the most comprehensive of
all forms of devotion. Only from the lips of the Son of God could such
a perfect pattern proceed. It embraces all kinds of prayer--petition,
intercession and thanksgiving; all essential objects of prayer,
spiritual and temporal, divine and human, in the most suitable and
beautiful order."
It has been divided, and this is the natural division, into three
parts, an address, six petitions and a doxology.
The Address.--"Our Father who art in heaven" (Matthew 6:9). This
phrase "Our Father" shows the paternal relation which the Almighty
sustains to us in Christ and the filial relation which we bear to Him
through faith in Christ. It also reminds us that since we have a
common Father in God, we are all brothers in Christ. The phrase, "Who
art in heaven" shows us our heavenly origin and that our home is in
our Father's house.
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