The Lord's Prayer for 9-13 Year Olds

Categories: Power of Prayer, Sermon on the Mount

• The Lord’s Prayer is such a well-loved prayer.
• It starts with Our Father. God belongs to us; we belong to God.
• Jesus spoke in a language called Aramaic, and the Aramaic word for “Father” is Abba, the most intimate, affectionate, informal address possible. It is the way a small child would call for his or her daddy.
• Abba speaks to the bond of tenderness and trust inherent in a father-child relationship. These are qualities of love, intimacy, trust, responsibility, and strength.
• The next phrase is in the heavens. That could also be translated, “In the sky,” which tells of inclusiveness. If the Father is in or over everybody’s sky, He is universally the God and Father of the world.
• This gets us in the right mood, developing the right attitude, to pray.
• Then, we have the first of six petitions. A petition is a request, asking God something. The first three center on God.
• The first petition is Hallowed be thy name.
• Hallowed from the Greek usually means holy, set aside, central.
• God is the one actively doing the hallowing. God has made Himself central.
• As we pray, we witness God as hallowed, holy, at the center of our lives. We know God makes Himself known. God is the doer.
• Thy kingdom come. Most people see this as a future event. Other scholars see this as present reality: Thy kingdom is come; it’s here.
• So, if we pray for something in the future, we want to live the way we want things to be: we want to live like the kingdom of God is here.
• The kingdom is the society where the will of God is done perfectly. Being in the kingdom and doing the will of God is the same thing.
• Thy will be done. God’s will must correspond to Himself; it must be good and only for good. He is infinite Spirit. He cannot be associated with evil.
• His will, His intention, then, must reflect His nature exactly. It has to be infinitely spiritual, wholly good, all-loving, and ever-present.
• To pray that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven, invites activity. God’s will is expressed on earth.
• On earth as it is in heaven: earth and heaven are immense, cosmic. God is infinite. He is bigger than we can possibly imagine. So our prayers can be bigger, wider, more inclusive.
• Our prayers for God’s honor, His reign, will affect everybody, not just us. The heavens are a clear reminder that there is more than just earth.
• The fourth petition moves into human concerns.
• Give us our daily bread is a petition for daily bread, for the simple and ordinary things of life. God isn’t just for the big moments. He is also involved in the ordinary events of living.
• The use of the plural (us and our) shows we aren’t selfish. My wants cannot take away from another’s needs.
• Moreover, it says daily bread; it focuses on the present. Take one day at a time. Take this moment and rest it in the goodness of God.
• To pray this is to express our dependence on God, to place our trust in Him, and to pledge that we will allow Him to make it possible to give to us.
• Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. In this particular prayer, we’re assuming that we have debts or sins. If we have no consciousness of debts/sins, we don’t have to pray this. On the other hand, having no consciousness of what we’ve done wrong might be the biggest sin (we’re not taking responsibility for our own mistakes).
• But since we have probably made mistakes or done something wrong, we probably need forgiveness.
• And since Bible texts are a little different, this phrase can mean forgive us in the same way or forgive us in proportion as we forgive others.
• We don’t want to have an unforgiving heart.
• We want to forgive because we are asking to be treated as we have treated others.
• If we’ve done something wrong, we want to be forgiven; so we also want to forgive.
• Lead us not into temptation comes after forgiveness. And the order makes a good deal of sense. After we’ve been forgiven, we want very much to be better. Sometimes it takes forgiveness, that reconciliation to God, to bring us to the point of wanting to improve.
• The word temptation can have the sense of meaning a temptation or a testing.
• Temptation suggests an enticement to do wrong, to commit an evil. God has no part of that.
• A testing, however, is an event or a situation that tries a person because it is difficult to bear. While temptation oftentimes can have a very negative result, a testing can be very positive in that our reaction shows what kind of a person we really are. For example, we meet and overcome a challenge and become stronger.
• The word for into temptation in Greek can mean going into a new situation. But it can also mean “into the hands of, under the influence of.” So it’s like saying, “When temptation comes, don’t abandon me.”
• The other half of this petition says to deliver us from evil.
• The aim of evil is simply to separate us and God. The word for deliver is a very strong word. It has the connotation of “rescue, snatch away.”
• This petition takes all the problems of the human situation we may face and puts them under God.
• Now there is an epilogue in the King James Version of the Bible which isn’t in any of the ancient manuscripts. It says: for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Many people consider this to be a part of the prayer.
• God is king. He actively reigns in His kingdom; we’re His subjects. God is power. God not only listens, but He also has the power to act. God’s glory penetrates the earth. In a way, this is somewhat like the first statement—Our Father. Just as that one put us in the right mood in order to begin, this one gets us in the right mood at the end.
• This is how we should pray.