Prayer

In this piece, I will like to focus on the intention of Jesus Christ in his teaching of the Lord's Prayer and attempt to tease out what is intended by Jesus when he said this is how you should pray. It will be helpful to explore what Jesus was doing prior to the request by his disciples to teach them how to pray, the scriptures state as follows:

“Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place,” All the records of Jesus as accounted for in the Bible did not suggest that he engaged in some verbal exercise as many Christians do today. What we know this from Jesus:

“But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”

Matthew‬ ‭6:6‬ ‭NKJV‬‬.

WHAT, HOW & WHY

The passage in the book of Matthew 6 gives us the clearest indication of what Jesus was doing that has been recorded as prayer.

First, to pray, we must go into our room. Which room is Jesus referring to? If we consider the fact that Jesus established that the father does not dwell in a building that has been made by men then we can safely conclude that was one that he has withdrawn into in soul to engage with the father (the spirit within). What Jesus was doing was therefore something that could not simply be mimicked by just doing. He was more in a deep meditative state and the disciples could clearly see that there was something going on beyond the normal and it was that which they desired to learn how to do.

Going into our soul, and shutting out the world is what Jesus was doing that the disciples saw and remarked as follows:

... when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.”

We cannot go to our secret place in noise. In fact, to shut our doors mean to shut down anything that is coming to us through our senses, particularly our ears and eyes, and anything that will keep us from having communion with the spirit.

The next thing of note is that he said to them, “When you pray, say:

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The keyword to know in Jesus’ response is the word ‘say’. What he is asking his disciples to do is not to speak human words or language but rather say, through our intentions. We must remember that everything about prayer is supposed to be happening within our secret place. In our secret place, human language is a limitation. This same kind of communication is that which was used in the very beginning by the spirit to make us who we are. It is the same as when the Bible indicates in Genesis that: ‘And God said ...’ This statement by the spirit of God was not human words but rather the creative intentions of the spirit.

This perhaps is the most important mystery in the Lord's prayer - the specific things to focus, meditate or intend. We are to visualise the things that we wish to become or gain mastery. It is not for us to figure out how. Our task is to be clear in our intentions about what is it that we seek. Once we become clear in our vision of what we seek and take our vision into prayer as Jesus taught, our father who sees in secret will actualise our vision in public.

Let me put it in another way. Let's say you are a young woman who desires to get married. Your task, according to the spiritual principle that Jesus taught us to be able to visualise, in exact detail, what is it that you wish to become. Doing this requires that you shut the door (anything that tries to tell you what you must do or how things must be), and listen to your heart. We must be able to shut the chattering of our conscious mind to allow us to hear from the spirit within.

Now that we have an idea of the meaning of the prayer that Jesus asked his disciples to pray, the next thing is to figure out the ultimate purpose of The Lord's Prayer and to understand the purpose, we can look at the initial phrases of the prayer that Jesus taught.

(1) "Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come."

The purpose of prayer is established in this teaching by Jesus as to re-establishing the kingdom of the father. Prayer is an exercise that aims at restoring the kingdom of the father which was lost in the very beginning through mankind’s desire to live by the principle of knowing good and evil.

Jesus made this point very clear in his very first comments where he stated his mission as leading mankind to ‘repent for the kingdom of God is at hand’. The repentance here is in reference to the original sin.

(2) "Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.” Luke‬ ‭11:1-2‬ ‭NKJV‬‬