The Our Father Prayer

Previous Page:Traditional Prayer

I said The Our Father Prayer as a daily prayer when living with illness .

Where does the Our Father Prayer appear in the Bible?

The Our Father Prayer appears in the Gospels of Matthew 6:9 and Luke 11:2. in the Bible.
Mark 11:25 does not give the complete prayer, but it does include a similar section on the importance of forgiveness:

“And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any:
that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

The Our Father is the prayer that Jesus gives when asked by the Disciples:
“Lord, teach us to pray.”

Also known as the Lord’s Prayer

But I grew up calling it the Our Father and I love this name.

The name emphasises for me the Father aspect of God.

My interpretation of the Our Father prayer is that it speaks of protection, availability and strength.

The prayer encourages me to be vulnerable and needy with God in a way that is natural in the relationship of a child with its parent.

It encourages me to cultivate a relationship of dependency on a God who is far more reliable than any earthly father. This, in turn, allows me to become less and less dependent on those in this changing world.

The emphasis of the prayer is on our relationship with God as Father – a relationship we share with Jesus.

The importance of forgiveness

Another message in the Our Father is the importance of the practice of forgiveness. The prayer says that God’s forgiveness of us is dependent upon our forgiveness of others.

My interpretation of this is that forgiveness by God is already given, but we only receive that forgiveness when we forgive the other.

See the page on Prayer For Forgiveness for more on this topic of God and forgiveness.

The Our Father recognises both physical and spiritual reality, both time and timelessness

I love the recognition of both physical and spiritual reality in the Our Father.

We can take the line:
“Give us this day our daily bread” to affirm our belief that God or belief in God allows us to be provided for in a very physical and practical way.

In Matthew’s gospel, the Our Father prayer is preceded by the statement that God knows what you need before you ask, underlining the idea that we can trust God to provide for all our needs.

When we pray “Thy will be done” we are expressing a willingness for God to work in our mind and in the physical world to allow us to experience physical changes.
We are calling for a reality where God is in charge and the earth is transformed into heaven.
We speak as though this will happen at some future time.
This speaks of a physical reality.

Then we go on to pray:
“Thine is the kingdom.”

“Thine is the kingdom.”
This is very powerful to me.

Not was the kingdom.
Not will be the kingdom.
“Thine is the kingdom.”

The meaning here is that God’s kingdom is an ever present reality.
Right NOW in the present moment, God's kingdom is present.

To put it in the language of A Course In Miracles, this world is an illusion . It is only the junk in our own minds that stop us from touching the reality and perfection of God’s Kingdom.

The Our Father prayer invites God to work in my mind to allow me to drop through the junk into an experience of the reality of His love.

The meaning of the Our Father is that, as we say it we claim our daily food – both physical and spiritual.

We are willing for God to decide for us

It was such an important turning point when I recognised:
I do not know what is best for me.

I need guidance.
I need my decisions to be made by the energy that unites all things because only then will I make a decision that is to the benefit of all.

In the Our Father we express the willingness to let God decide for us.
We surrender our own expectations about how the situation should be or should turn out:
Thy will be done, we say.

A Poem About God Thy Will Be Done Thy will be done you say, and it feels like a sacrifice – giving your life to one who doesn’t really know what is best for you, Until slowly you become convinced that He does, And more than this that all along your will has been His. Thy kingdom come, you say. Thy will be done. It’s OK to need someone else to tell you what you want. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10, KJV) © Katherine T Owen, 2009. Other spiritual poems on this site. For an explanation of the release – It’s OK to... For a discussion on the use of a spiritual quote.

A symbol of Christian unity

The Our Father prayer is said by all Christian denominations. It is a powerful symbol of the Christian unity so many Christians aspire to.

Return to a list of daily prayers.

Move from The Our Father prayer to the next page –
The Hail Mary Prayer.

Return to the Contents List for What Is Prayer?

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