With Christ in the School of Prayer (4) ... The Model Prayer

by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net

Finding your mission, Empowering your life through prayer,
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace

An all-time Christian Classic on prayer which is a foundational study on prayer that anyone interested in Prayer should read. So, I decided to summarize it chapter by chapter. With Christ in the School of Prayer is a classroom on the Power of Prayer in your Life.
With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray,
Chapter 4, The Model Prayer.

"Every teacher knows the power of example.  He not only tells the child what to do and how to do it, but shows him how it really can be done.  We have in them a form of prayer in which there breathe the freshness and fulness of the Eternal Life.  So simple that the child can lisp it, so divinely rich that it comprehends all that God can give.  
A form of prayer that becomes the model and inspiration for all other prayer.

‘Our Father which art in heaven!’  None of the saints had in Scripture ever ventured to address God as their Father.  The invocation places us at once in the centre of the wonderful revelation the Son came to make of His Father as our Father too. It is in the personal relation to the living God, and the personal conscious fellowship of love with Himself, that prayer begins.  It is in the knowledge of God’s Fatherliness.  In the infinite tenderness and pity and patience of the infinite Father, in His loving readiness to hear and to help, the life of prayer has its joy.

‘Hallowed be Thy name.’  There is something here that strikes us at once. First, Thy name, Thy kingdom, Thy will; then, give us, forgive us, lead us, deliver us. In true worship the Father must be first, must be all.  The sooner I learn to forget myself in the desire that HE may be glorified, the richer will the blessing be that prayer will bring to myself.  This must influence all our prayer. 

There are two sorts of prayer:  personal and intercessory.  The latter ordinarily occupies the lesser part of our time and energy.  This may not be.  Christ has opened the school of prayer specially to train intercessors for the great work of bringing down, by their faith and prayer, the blessings of His work and love on the world around.

The little child may ask of the father only what it needs for itself; and yet it soon learns to say, Give some for sister too. And Jesus would train us to the blessed life of consecration and service, in which our interests are all subordinate to the Name, and the Kingdom, and the Will of the Father.  O let us live for this.

‘Hallowed be Thy name.’  What name?  This new name of Father.
It is only when we yield ourselves to be led of Him, that the name will be hallowed in our prayers and our lives.

‘Thy kingdom come.’  The Father is a King and has a kingdom. 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. Our prayers cause God's Kingdom to form around us.

‘Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.’  The Master teaches the child to ask that the will may be done on earth just as in heaven:  in the spirit of adoring submission and ready obedience. As the will is done, the kingdom of heaven comes into the heart.  The surrender to, and the prayer for a life of heaven-like obedience, is the spirit of childlike prayer.

‘Give us this day our daily bread.’  A master cares for the food of his servant, a general of his soldiers, a father of his child.  And will not the Father in heaven care for the child who has in prayer given himself up to His interests?  Consecration to God and His will gives wonderful liberty in prayer for temporal things:  the whole earthly life is given to the Father’s loving care.

‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.’  We are children but sinners too; our right of access to the Father’s presence we owe to the precious blood and the forgiveness it has won for us.  Let us beware of the prayer for forgiveness becoming a formality:  only what is sincerely confessed is really forgiven.  Such forgiveness, as a living experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to others:  as forgiven expresses the heavenward, so forgiving the earthward, relation of God’s child.

‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’  Our daily bread, the pardon of our sins, and then our being kept from all sin and the power of the evil one, in these three petitions all our personal need is comprehended.  The believing prayer in everything to be kept by the power of the indwelling Spirit from the power of the evil one.

Children of God! it is thus Jesus would have us to pray to the Father in heaven.  O let His Name, and Kingdom, and Will, have the first place in our love; His providing, and pardoning, and keeping love will be our sure portion.  We shall understand how Father and child, the Thine and the Our, are all one.

‘FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, AND THE POWER, AND THE GLORY, FOR EVER, AMEN.’  Son of the Father, teach us to pray, ‘OUR FATHER.’

More on the Model of Prayer
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.IV.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.