The Lord’s Prayer
The Lord's Prayer: Learning from Jesus on What, Why, and How to Pray
By: Kevin DeYoung
“If prayer usually feels dull and boring, I have to conclude that in large part I’ve lost a sense of who it is I’m praying to.”
Kevin DeYoung starts his book, The Lord’s Prayer, like this:
“Is there any activity more essential to the Christian life, and yet more discouraging in the Christian’s life, than prayer?… We admire those who do pray. And yet when it comes to actually praying, most of us feel like failures.”
And I don’t know about you, but this really resonates with me!
I feel like I’m constantly feeling guilty for not praying more or feeling like my prayers are petty or pointless. In fact, I’ve been working on a blog post called ‘Why Pray?’ because I think more people struggle with prayer than they’d like to admit and I think we should talk about that.
Reading this book was great research for my post and great truth for my heart.
I’m sure there are a lot of books written on the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a popular Bible passage. Probably people who don’t even go to church know what the prayer is.
What makes DeYoung’s book unique?
Honestly, I don’t really know. It’s short?
I’ve only read a few books specifically on prayer. Tim Keller’s book Prayer is also phenomenal, but a more fleshed out version of this one.
I read several of Kevin DeYoung’s books and I’ve always appreciated his writing and find it easy to understand and very applicable.
I found this book to be very insightful and helpful to reference as I struggle through my prayer life.
I think this book engages more with the ‘How’ and the ‘What’ than the ‘Why’ but he does say this:
“We don’t pray because God needs help running the universe. We don’t pray to change God’s mind. We pray because God has ordained means to accomplish his ends. He has arranged things so that he will give more grace to those who petition him for it. God doesn’t need prayer, but he uses prayer just like he uses other means. He uses rain to grow the crops, sun to warm the earth, and food to strengthen the body. In the same way, God uses prayer to do his sovereign work. In prayer, we are not instructing God as much as we are instructing ourselves.”
I think we do tend to be so outward focused when we pray that we forget that prayer is for ourselves. To remind ourselves of who God is and how powerful and loving he is that we have the ability to approach him and the hope and evidence that he answers our prayers!
Each time we pray is an act of faith, trusting and depending on God, not ourselves. It’s acknowledging his sovereignty and maintaining communication with our heavenly Father.
I Rote It Off (Get it?)
I grew up in an Evangelical Free Church. We didn’t do many liturgical things. We said this prayer every so often but we didn’t regularly recite Scripture, creeds, etc together as a congregation. I remember thinking how rote it felt to all say the Lord’s Prayer together. It didn’t feel genuine to me, even as a kid.
I took pride in the fact that when my family sat down to pray before meals we didn’t just say the little sing-songy rhyming prayers. We spoke genuine words to God from our hearts. About our feelings and the day. We didn’t need to memorize a few lines to say as if that was ‘good enough.’
I say pride there because I mean pride. My younger self still had a lot to learn about prayer.
I’m an adult and I’m still learning!
Keller’s book helped me meditate on the oh-so-common Lord’s Prayer and so did DeYoung’s.
After all, these are the verses where Jesus specifically TEACHES us how to pray. That must mean they are important!
Really any prayer can become rote if our hearts and our minds aren’t engaged in what we’re doing.
This book has brought new light to the Lord’s Prayer for me so that when I say it I can think about each phrase and how important it is, the attitude and mindset behind the words, the posture before God as we pray.
Prayer Structure
Each chapter focuses on one phrase of the prayer. I like this because even if we don’t want to pray these exact words because they may not feel genuine, we are learning what they mean which can inform how we DO pray.
Why is ‘Our Father’ so significant? What does ‘Hallowed’ mean? What exactly is the kingdom of God? Should we say debts or trespasses? Can God lead us into temptation?
Dissecting these phrases helps us craft our own prayers that still reflect the ideas that Jesus infuses in his exemplary prayer.
DeYoung observes that the prayer is made up of six petitions that can be divided in threes:
“The first set of three requests focuses on God’s glory—his name, his kingdom, and his will. The second set of three requests focuses on our good—our provision, our forgiveness, and our protection.”
God’s glory and our good. I had never thought of the prayer this way.
DeYoung also pointed out that the last three petitions reflect the Trinity:
“You can almost see a Trinitarian structure in the prayer. God the Father is the Creator and provider who gives us our daily bread. God the Son is the atonement for our sins. And God the Spirit leads us and fills us with power to live a holy life.”
I love seeing how God’s nature is reflected in his Word.
God provides for our needs (daily bread)
Jesus paid the price for our sins (forgive us our debts)
The Holy Spirit empowers us to resist temptation and to reflect God’s character (deliverance)
Things I Liked
I liked how he briefly talks about how we call God Father and not Mother. I’m really kind of baffled by so many people all of a sudden deciding that God should have feminine pronouns. It’s a bit ironic that we, as a culture, are so invested in letting everyone choose their own pronouns but we won’t let God. Of all the beings, I think God is capable of revealing himself as he chooses and that should be respected. By I digress.
I liked how he pointed out that people so often try to make heaven on earth. They are trying to ‘build’ God’s kingdom here on earth. But that’s not right. Sure we can work towards helping people and making better policies, but if we make our mission more about turning earth into heaven than putting heaven in people’s hearts, we have misunderstood what Jesus means by the kingdom of God.
“The kingdom does not advance when trees are planted, or unemployment lowered, or beautiful art is created, or elections go one way or another. Those may all be important things. They may reflect certain values of the kingdom. But the kingdom comes when and where the King is known. When Jesus is loved and worshiped and believed upon, there the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
[He talks more about this in his book What is the Mission of the Church.]
I admit, this next quote really caught me off guard. I think I’ve used the terminology ‘building God’s kingdom’ or ‘growing’ his kingdom so it was really interesting to ponder how he says we use wrong verbiage for it all the time. I think I understand what he’s saying but it will be hard to change the way I talk about it.
“The kingdom can come, it can arrive, it can appear. But we do not establish the kingdom, expand the kingdom, or grow the kingdom. The kingdom of God is not a society to be built but a gift to be received. It is again like the sun breaking in. You don’t build the sun. You don’t make the sun. You can pray that the clouds would part. You can declare to people the rays and the warmth of the sun, but it’s not something you can build or bring. The kingdom is God’s kingdom, and we can receive it, seek it, enter it, or inherit it, but we do not create it, bring it, or even give it to others.”
I like how he differentiates between God’s will of decree and his will of desire.
I like how he talked about the necessity for daily bread. God doesn’t want us to ask us for all the bread we could ever need, a one and done kind of prayer. He wants us to come each day, trusting that he will give us what we need for today.
“Today’s grace is for today’s trials, and when tomorrow’s trials come, God will have new grace waiting for you there. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Don’t expect next year’s bread today. Anxiety is living out the future before it gets here… Don’t start living out the troubles of next Tuesday because you haven’t gotten to the grace that will be there waiting for you next Tuesday.”
I’ve preached this message to myself before. As a mom I worry a lot about my kids and what the next years may bring. I see other people’s struggles and pains and wonder- how could I ever survive that if it were to happen to me? But I’ve had to remind myself- God gives each person the grace they need for that day. I don’t need the grace today for what’s not happening today.
That’s kinda a freeing thought! Doesn’t it relieve the burden for us? We don’t have to be weighed down by all the things. God just wants us to depend on him and he will provide exactly what we need for each day.
I like how he says: “Forgiven people forgive.”
“Forgiveness is not saying that sin doesn’t matter. You’re not saying it’s no big deal. You’re saying God is bigger, the cross is bigger, and hell is bigger. Do not focus on what they owe. Focus on what God has already forgiven you.”
This is a hard truth to put into practice but I think I’ll find myself repeating that phrase to myself in the future when I want to hold onto that debt.
He makes a lot of clarifications about what forgiveness is and isn’t, but I thought it was interesting how he observes that forgiveness these days tends to be therapeutic. We forgive so that we no longer feel bitter. But that attitude loses the relational transaction of forgiveness. We also often wrongly say that we need to forgive God. But God has never done anything that requires forgiveness.
I like how he breaks down the temptation of Jesus by Satan and how Satan tempts him with pleasure, pride, and power.
“We can ask the question… in which room is the devil most likely to whisper into your ear? Is it the bedroom with its pleasures, the boardroom with its power, or the bathroom mirror with its pride? Know your enemy. Know yourself. And know from whence your help comes.”
Recommendation
This book is short— 160 pages— but I think it would be a great read for all people. I would venture that the Lord’s Prayer has lost some of its punch for most people and I think this book will reinspire the awe and wonder of our Lord and remind us that if prayer is dull, it’s because we’ve lost sight of who we’re praying to.
DeYoung mentioned at the beginning that a lot of books on prayer leave us feeling more guilty. He wanted to counter that here. This book definitely didn’t make me feel more guilty, but I haven’t decided if it made me feel less guilty.
There is no measure or standard of how many prayers constitute doing ‘a good job.’ And DeYoung tells us that the Bible doesn’t give any instruction on how often, what times, or how long to pray. There is freedom to prayer in those ways.
But I know I still have to be pretty intentional about praying throughout my day, it doesn’t come as naturally as talking to a friend. I’m not sure what the fix for that is except practice. And even just praying that God would help me make prayer a bigger part of my day.
I think Keller’s book has some helpful ideas of ways to pray that give a little more practical guidance. He also talks more about the ‘why’ so I think you should read both books.
I like that DeYoung affirmed we should never be ashamed to bring even the little things to our Father, God cares about those too, but tried to emphasize the importance of Jesus’ teaching us how to pray.
This book won’t take you long to read and it’s definitely worth your time!
[Sidenote: He says the first church he ever served at was in Orange City, Iowa! I went to NWC there! It makes total sense considering his last name is DeYoung, but I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to realize this connection since I love Kevin DeYoung’s books so much. Too bad he wasn’t teaching when I was at college.]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
This book released May, 2022. You may purchase a copy using my affiliate link below.
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