In praying, do not babble like the pagans,
who think that they will be heard because of their many words.
It is sometimes tempting to imagine that our prayers ought to work like cause and effect, and that they should function like clockwork. Thus, if we don't receive what we ask immediately it might seem to us that we did something wrongly, either by using the wrong formula, or else by lack of sufficient quantity of words. In such ways we sometimes imagine prayer to as strategy for manipulating the deity to get what we want. But in fact it is more a strategy for aligning our hearts with the will of God so that we learn to want what he wants to give us. We may assume that once we sufficiently communicate our need or make our case God will eventually be convinced and acquiesce to our requests. After all, if he already knows what we need, why bother telling him? And yet, "Your Father knows what you need before you ask him", but we are still commanded to pray.
Our Father who art in heaven
The first and most important step of prayer is to remember with whom we are speaking. We are not the uninvited guest in the court of a potentially hostile king trying to plead our cause like Esther. Rather, we are in the house of our Father who loves us and who desires to give good things to his children (see Matthew 7:11). Thus we have good reason to persevere even when we may initially have nothing to show for our petitions. This is a relationship of trust in which Father really does know best. If we don't get exactly what we want when we want it it can only be because he has something better saved for later.
hallowed be thy name
We are sometimes tempted to think of God as flawed or limited in the way of all other creatures. This leads us to second guessing and mistrusting his will for us, both in what he actively sends, and what he permits. This suspicion, characteristic of humanity since the fall in Eden, prevents us from really believing that all things work together for the good of those who love God. Rather, it seems that they only occasionally work together for people that love him, and probably never in our case. This is exactly the sort of suspicion we are meant to undermine by affirming his unassailable holiness. Thus it is of chief importance to us that his name be hallowed in our hearts. When that is the case we will have the wherewithal to also desire that the rest of the world recognize his holiness as well.
thy Kingdom come
In the Gospels we discovered that the life and ministry of Jesus was not about establishing a military kingdom in the way that David had done. But neither was it a mostly imaginary invisible reality. It took concrete form in the gathering of the twelve apostles. They became the twelve pillars of a new transnational Israel into which all nations are now meant to be gathered. Their successors, the bishops continue the work entrusted to them by Jesus. The parables about the kingdom told by Jesus are thus often about the growth and progress of the Church in the world through the ages. All of them remind us that the Kingdom can never be rightly understood as a merely human project. What is needed for Kingdom growth is not so much techniques or strategies but more of the Spirit. Since we ourselves receive anointing is priest, prophet, and king in our baptism we are not meant to merely watch passively as others build the kingdom. It is our royal duty as well.
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Even now in heaven God's will is always accomplished perfectly and entirely. But earth is obviously another story. Yet we recognize a day is coming when all things will be subject to him, when there will be no more crying or tears, but only the unhindered giving and receiving of love. Still, we sometimes feel a need to be in control, to reserve the right to do something other than God's perfect will for us, even if it proves destructive in the end, or to settle for less than all he has planned for us. When the human will of Jesus might have preferred to avoid the cross even he prayed, "not my will, but yours, be done" (see Luke 22:42). So we too must practice submitting our self-will to the will of God. The end results will be worth it.
Only after completing these God focused petitions do we go on to pray for ourselves. Once we've remembered who he is and affirmed that he has the first place in our lives it becomes safe to ask for what we want, since we are now more likely to ask for what we ought to want, rather than what our ego would ask, which is "to spend it on your passions" (see James 4:3).
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Chris Tomlin - Good Good Father
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