“Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.”

Jesus often went off by Himself to deserted places or mountaintops to spend spend hours in prayer. The Gospels mention eight specific instances when He prayed. Something about the way He prayed prompted His disciples to ask, "Lord, teach us to pray. . ."

In response, Jesus taught them to say the Our Father. The Gospels of Luke and Matthew recount slightly different versions of the Our Father with Matthew's version being longer. What these differences might suggest is that Jesus did not use a formulaic, rote approach to prayer but, rather, He prayed from the heart.

The structure of both versions of the Our Father is simple and direct. It puts God first and our needs second. At the outset, God is referred to as Father, or Abba, a term of endearment used in Jewish prayer to indicate an intimate, loving, nurturing relationship between us and God. Then it praises God, acknowledges His sovereignty over all creation, and looks forward to the Messianic era.

Having glorified God, the prayer petitions His help in three ways. First it asks for our daily bread; next it asks for forgiveness; and then it asks to be spared further temptations.

Both versions bear some similarity to the Jewish prayer, Kaddish, which was recited by preachers as they dismissed the worshipers with an allusion to the Messianic era. At funerals, the kaddish was recited to redeem the dead from the torments of Gehenna. The Kaddish was so routinely prayed that Jesus' disciples would have noticed the similarity to the Our Father. So it wasn't so much what Jesus prayed but how He prayed that impressed Luke and Matthew. Jesus prayed from the depths of His heart that His will and the Father's might be one.

In expanding on His teaching about prayer, Jesus said,"ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." Thus, our most important prayer of petition is to know and follow the will of God just as Jesus did.