Many times you may talk to people and they may ask you about how to pray to God. In a certain sense, it is an odd question because we understand that God is with us all the time as a born again Christian. It is Christ in you, the hope of glory. On the day of Pentecost God gave his believers the gift of holy spirit; the promised comforter. So we have that relationship such that no matter where we are or what we are doing we have an audience with the almighty. In other words, you don't ask how to talk to a best friend or a spouse. That relationship is built on trust and love and it grows over time. With God, it grows as you spend personal time in the Word.
In another sense, the apostles had asked Jesus how to pray. At this point in time it was the Gospel period, so we need to keep this in mind as we read Jesus' answer in Matthew chapter 6. The apostles and disciples may have had spirit upon but not spirit within. That was not available yet. They could lose their spirit. They had to approach God a different way than we do today. Reading the Lord's Prayer, you need to have this awareness. This being said, however, there is much you can learn from the Lord's Prayer.
RSV Matthew 6:7 And when you are praying, do not keep repeating the same phrases, like the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.
The REV Commentary tells us that: "keep repeating the same phrases." is the Greek word is battalogeō, and it means to use the same words again and again. It also means "to babble" in the sense of trying to achieve success in prayer by heaping up repetitions. Williams translates it as "keep on repeating set phrases." That is what many religions do, repeat set prayers because "they think that they will be heard becauase of their many words." That's kind of what many people do with the Lord's Prayer. They repeat it endlessly to the point where most people don't pay attention to what they are saying.
Looking at "like the Gentiles do." We see that many pagan religions had formulaic prayers that were repeated over and over, or they repeated the names of the gods over and over. God is not swayed by such behavior. He looks on the heart, and the earnestness of the person praying. Simple, heartfelt prayers associated with the circumstances in which one needs God's help are the prayers that God answers.
RSV Matthew 6:8 Therefore do not be like them, because your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
The REV commentary continues: People see "your Father knows what you need." and often say, "If God knows what I need before I even ask Him, why I need to ask Him?" The reason has to do with the fact that God gave people free will to choose their own way and their own life. Many people do not want God's help and/or they choose not to have Him help, and God cannot give people the power to accept or reject His help but then take that choice away from them by barging into their lives when they need Him.
Parents often experience this with their children. A child may need help with their homework but not want any help. In that situation, the parent has to wait until the child figures things out for themselves or asks for the help. Similarly, we may need help, and God knows we need help, but until we ask Him for it, He is not free to give it. That is why prayer is so vital to the Christian life. Prayer is asking God for things, and when we ask God for the help we need, He is free to give it.
No wonder God says to be steadfast in prayer (Rom. 12:12; Col. 4:2) and to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). Here in Matthew 6:8, Jesus told the people that God knew what they needed before they asked him, but he was teaching about prayer, so the context was that the people would be asking God for things as part of their prayers. Jesus' comment that God already knew what they needed even before they asked was to give them confidence in their prayer life that God cared for them and was listening to them.
RSV Matthew 6:9 So pray in this way: 'Our Father, who is in heaven, may your name be treated as holy.
The commentary continues: "So pray in this way." Matthew 6:9-13, five verses, are commonly known as "The Lord's Prayer," and it is found here in the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus also taught it in an abbreviated form months later (Luke 11:2-4). The two prayers are quite similar, but Matthew's prayer consists of seven requests and Luke has five. Luke omits the requests, "May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," and "Deliver us from the Wicked One."
The Lord's Prayer is a model prayer, pointing out things that are important for us to pray for, but as we see from reading the entire New Testament, especially the epistles, there are lots of different things that believers need to be praying for.
The commentary continues: "in heaven." The Greek text literally reads "in the heavens." "May your name be treated as holy." This is a reference to the coming kingdom when the people will "keep My name holy" (Isa. 29:23 and Ezekiel 36:23). "May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." The will of God is not always done on earth, and so we need to pray that it is. Also, the will of God occurring on earth starts with each Christian doing the will of God. If we are going to pray that the will of God is done on earth we need to start by doing the will of God ourselves.
Ephesians 6 talks about being equipped to fight in the spiritual competition. It's not only about protecting ourselves and the people we love, it's about fighting the good fight of faith with the Word. The whole earth is a war zone between God and the Devil; between Good and Evil. Some battles are won by God, and some are won by the Devil.
The commentary continues: "May your kingdom come." The "Kingdom" that Christ prayed about had not come in his lifetime and has still not come; it is still future. The Kingdom that Christ prayed about, and that the people wanted to come, was the future time when Christ will rule the earth and the earth itself will be restored to a paradise state. Although there are some aspects of Christ's future Kingdom that we enjoy today, such as the presence of the gift of holy spirit in believers, the fullness of the Kingdom is still future.
The commentary continues: "Give us today our daily bread." This is very similar in meaning to the line in Proverbs, "provide to me my portion of bread" (Prov. 30:8). That line is in the only prayer to God in all of Proverbs (Prov. 30:7-9). It is quite possible that Jesus got the idea for this line in his prayer from Proverbs, the Word of God.
Christ mentioned "our daily bread" because daily bread was a foundation of life. However, Christ did not mean this to just be about food. Christ was using "daily bread" as an example of something we needed that day. The proper way to think of Christ's prayer as a model prayer is that we are supposed to pray for the things we need in life—things that we need that day, that week, that month, that year. We are to pray for things that we need in life.
The commentary continues: "And forgive us our debts." In the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:12, the word "debts" is in the text instead of "sins," which is what Luke 11:4 has. The prayer is the same, and the Bible is telling us that one way God thinks of sin is that it is a debt that must be paid. The idea that sin was a debt seems to have existed to some extent in the minds of the Jews before the Babylonian Captivity (Lev. 26:34; Isa. 40:2; 50:1), but it became a common way of thinking under the influence of the Aramaic language during and after the Babylonian Captivity. In Aramaic, one of the words for "sin" also means "debt." That sin was thought of as a debt is clearly represented in the Aramaic Targums and is also represented in the New Testament.
When Matthew 6:12 reads, "and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors," but Luke 11:4 reads, "And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us," these are not two different teachings. The people listening to Christ and the early Christians reading the Gospels were used to thinking in terms of sin being debt, so to them, Matthew and Luke were simply saying the same thing in two different ways—and if Jesus was speaking Aramaic at the time he spoke his prayer, which he most likely was, then both "sin" and "debt" were meant in the same word. The more Greek audience of Luke would not be used to thinking of sin as a debt because "sin" and "debt" are totally different words in Greek, so in writing down the words of Christ, Luke would say "sin" to clearly communicate to his audience what Jesus was saying. Matthew, however, was the most Jewish of all the Gospels and his audience would understand that when Jesus says, "forgive us our debts," he meant "forgive us our sins," so Matthew has "debts." We can also tell that "debt" meant "sin" in the Gospel of Matthew because when Jesus starts explaining his prayer
The commentary continues: "Wicked One." The Greek is ponēros, , "pertaining to being morally or socially worthless; therefore, 'wicked, evil, bad, base, worthless, vicious, and degenerate.'"Ponēros is an adjective, but it is a substantive (an adjective used as a noun).
The Slanderer is the fount and foundation of wickedness. It was in him that wickedness was first found when he was lifted up with pride and decided to rebel against God. Ever since that time, he has been true to his name, "the Wicked One," and has been doing and causing wickedness wherever he can, which, since he is "the god of this age," is a considerable amount of wickedness.
The last part of the verse "For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen." Is not in some readings. There are some manuscripts that have this longer reading at the end of Matthew 6:13. Yet, the earliest and best manuscripts do not have this longer reading, and thus, following the Nestle-Aland 28th edition, this reading is not included in the REV.
There are a number of things to consider as believers when we pray. We know that God will supply our every need, but we need to recognize that all who live godly in Christ will suffer persecution. If we are under attack in some category we need to declare what the Word says and go to God in prayer. We don't mutter some meaningless memorized scripture as if it was a magic spell or special secret incantation. We speak the Word back to God because we want to partake in what he has promised. If we look at the Lord's Prayer as a check up on our prayer life, we will fill in the missing categories. Are we forgiving people? Are we asking forgiveness when we blow it? Is there an area in our life where the adversary is attacking? We address it in prayer. We have God with us all the time, we are never alone. Practice the presence of God.