A "House" of prayer

Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
 And he said to them, 
“When you pray, say:
“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread,
and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”
(Luke 11:1-4 ESV)

This is the structure Jesus teaches us to pray – these are crucial and essential elements of prayer.

Consider it as a house with many rooms – and you enter into the house and are overwhelmed with the presence of a good and holy and perfect Father who has greeted us with mercy and grace and pleasure – and His love is indescribable and unending and overflowing.

And you walk into the room of His holiness and gaze at His glory and spend some time in that room praying for His name to be hallowed – in your thoughts and actions; in your family; in your church; in your workplace; in our country; in the world.

Then you enter into the Kingdom room and see the beauty of God’s reign and rule.  And as you sit on the couch of God’s Sovereign authority, you plea for God to bring the fullness of His kingdom to earth now!  To establish his absolute rule, to defeat the powers of evil completely and make all wrongs right and forever crush the power of sin entirely… And, until He does that, we seek His rule to be advanced in our own lives, conquering sin and the rebellion of our hearts, producing in us more love and joy and peace and loyalty and obedience.

And from the Kingdom room, we walk into the room of His sufficiency – this is a large room with three closets – one is His sufficiency for our daily needs – and we linger in that closet seeking His provision over our day – for safety and income and health… and the supplying all our other needs. 

From there we walk to the closet of forgiveness… finding yet again, that the cross of Christ is more than sufficient in covering our sins – that as we confess to God our dreadful sins against Him, our hearts are pointed to the cross and there we are overcome with joyous confidence that God is still and will always be for us – never condemning us.  As we leave that closet, we leave the door open, knowing that we will probably return there frequently throughout the day. 

And then we enter into the closet of spiritual protection – we gain confidence in the power of God to overcome our sinful desires and keep us near Him in purity and holiness.  And this is where we long to stay most of the day – in the sufficiency and satisfaction of our Father as we enter into a war zone – our hearts and souls being attacked all the day; with lies and deceit abounding… oh how we need to abide in the presence of our Father and look to Him to keep us from temptation.

This is the house of prayer that Jesus has built for us to abide in… this is how Jesus is teaching us to pray.


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