How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

by Pete Greig

It’s fascinating to note that the first half of the Lord’s Prayer was not entirely original to Jesus. He seems to have adopted and adapted the opening lines from another contemporary prayer known as the Kaddish (one of the three most important prayers in Jewish liturgy)8, which went like this: Magnified and hallowed be his great name, In the world which he created according to his will And may he establish his kingdom during your life. The similarities to the Lord’s Prayer are striking: Magnified and hallowed be his great name. In the world which he created according to his will and may he establish his kingdom during your life. Our Father, in heaven, Hallowed be your name, Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus incorporated traditional liturgy into his teaching, but it’s particularly interesting to note the lines that he adds, because in them we hear – with a sort of shock of recognition – Christ’s distinctive voice ringing out above the formal religion of his time.

To pray in the name of Jesus means asking for things that are consistent with his character and aligned with his purpose.

The doctrine of faith has been terribly abused by certain wings of the Church where greed has been glorified and the poor have been oppressed by a heresy known as ‘the prosperity gospel’. Preachers promising health and wealth reduce prayer to a form of positive thinking and God himself to a sort of celestial algorithm.

Corrie Ten Boom:

Psalm 23 through tears. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’

Dominique Voillaume never tried to impress anybody, never wondered if his life was useful or his witness meaningful. He never felt he had to do something great for God. He did keep a journal. It was found shortly after his death in the drawer of the nightstand by his bed. His last entry is one of the most astonishing things I have ever read:

All that is not the love of God has no meaning for me. I can truthfully say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my word and witness. If he wants it to, my life will bear fruit through my prayers and sacrifices. But the usefulness of my life is his concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that.

Without forgiveness all our prayers – all the things described elsewhere in this book – are dead religion. But when we forgive those who hurt us, the Father’s name is hallowed, his kingdom comes and we ourselves are forgiven.

In the book of Revelation, John sees twenty-four elders ‘holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people’. These bowls once full will be poured out at the end of the Age in a great universal ‘Amen’.

People everywhere will ‘beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks’ (Isa. 2:4).