Book: With Christ in the School of Prayer
Chapter 4: “After this manner pray”; or The Model Prayer

Main Passage:

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father, which art in heaven.-MATTHEW 6.9.

Andrew Murray devotes this chapter to the Lord’s Prayer. Here, the master becomes our role model for prayer.

‘Our Father which art in heaven!’ … The knowledge of God’s Father-love is the first and simplest, but also the last and highest lesson in the school of prayer. Prayer begins in a personal relation to the living God, and the personal, conscious fellowship of love with Himself.

In the previous chapter, Murray laid the foundation that our prayers are going to a Father-King. The first line of the Lord’s Prayer reinforces this fact. Our prayers need to embrace a personal and intimate fellowship that comes from the love of our Heavenly Father. To illustrate this truth, it’s like building a house on a sure foundation. Before we can put up the walls and the roof of a house, we first must lay a solid foundation. The solid foundation of prayer is embracing our identity as the children of God.

‘Hallowed be Thy name.’ … In true worship, the Father must be first and must be all. … Jesus would train us to the blessed life of consecration and service, in which our interests are all subordinate to the Name.

Hallowed isn’t a word that I use on a regular basis, so I had to look it up in a Bible dictionary. It means “to separate from profane things” or “dedicate to God” or “to purify”. In Ezekiel 36, there is a brilliant illustration of what this word truly means. In this prophetic passage, Ezekiel is telling the Israelites that they are in exile from the promised land because “they defiled it [the land] by their conduct and their actions.” (v. 17) What actions? “they had defiled it with their idols” (v. 18) HERE IS THE IMPORTANT PART!… God said, “I had concern for my holy [hallowed] name, which the house of Israel profaned among the nations where they had gone.” (v. 21)

God, out of concern for his OWN NAME, decides that HE ALONE is personally going to do something about it. In verse 23 it says, “I WILL show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes.” I other words, God acknowledges that His people screwed up… BUT he doesn’t write them off! Rather, he makes a promise that HE would intervene in history to redeem his people and make his name holy again!

The Ezekiel 36:24-38 climaxes with an explosion of I WILL’s!!! God makes 15 promises to redeem his people which would be a sign to the nations that God’s name is holy.
1. For I WILL take you out of the nations;
2. I WILL gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land.
3. I WILL sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean;
4. I WILL cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.
5. I WILL give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you;
6. I WILL remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
7. I WILL put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
8. I WILL be your God.
9. I WILL save you from all your uncleanness.
10. I WILL call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you.
11. I WILL increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field, so that you will no longer suffer disgrace among the nations because of famine.
12. On the day I cleanse you from all your sins, I WILL resettle your towns, and the ruins will be rebuilt.
13. I the LORD have spoken, and I WILL do it!
14. Once again I WILL yield to the plea of the house of Israel and do this for them
15. I WILL make their people as numerous as sheep.

You see, the burden of hallowing God’s name rests COMPLETELY upon God. Our part in this process is making sure that God is our first and only desire!

‘Thy kingdom come.’ The Father is a King and has a kingdom. … The children of the Father are here in the enemy’s territory, where the kingdom, which is in heaven, is not yet fully manifested. What more natural than that, when they learn to hallow the Father-name, they should long and cry with deep enthusiasm: ‘Thy kingdom come.’ The coming of the kingdom is the one great event on which the revelation of the Father’s glory, the blessedness of His children, the salvation of the world depends. On our prayers too the coming of the kingdom waits.

One of the primary functions of prayer is to intercede between heaven and earth. Everytime we pray, God’s kingdom (reign and rule) begins to manifest on earth as it does in heaven. Our prayers are lethal weapons against the enemy (Satan).

‘Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.’ This petition is too frequently applied alone to the suffering of the will of God. … the will of God is the glory of heaven the doing of it is the blessedness of heaven. As the will is done,- the kingdom of heaven comes into the heart.

So true! How many times have we experienced a disappointment, or have been afflicted with some kind of sickness, or experience the death of a loved one; we quickly say, “Well, it must be God’s will.” All too often, we associate God’s Will with bad news that runs contrary to our will. I personally believe that God’s Will is synonymous with God’s Kingdom (reign and rule). When we see glorious signs of God’s future Kingdom breaking into the present, we are seeing his will too!

‘Give us this day our daily bread’ … Consecration to God and His will gives wonderful liberty in prayer for temporal things.

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. … Let us in faith accept the forgiveness as promised: as a spiritual reality, an actual transaction between God and us, it is the entrance into all the Father’s love and all the privileges of children.

‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ … The prayer for bread and pardon must be accompanied by the surrender to live in all things in holy obedience to the Father’s will, and the believing prayer in everything to be kept by the power of the indwelling Spirit from the power of the evil one.