Jesus said, “This is how you should pray: Father, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon.  Give us each day the food we need, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. And don’t let us yield to temptation.” Luke 11:1-4

 

Why do we kneel to pray? Maybe when you were a kid you thought it was just to stop you from wiggling.

Kneeling in prayer suggests a reverence for the person you’re addressing and indicates your position relative to them. More than that, when we kneel in prayer, we’re admitting a disparity in power, a surrender and need. We’re saying, “I can’t, God, but You can.” One author defines prayer as “Abandoning my reliance on me and running toward the rest that can be found only when I rely on the power of God.”^[1]

The simple way that Jesus taught us to pray comes from our state of neediness before God, and shows us that God lovingly wants to meet all our needs.” In the Bible book of Luke, Jesus said, ‘This is how you should pray: Father, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon,'” because only His Name is holy. He taught us to pray, “‘Give us each day the food we need,'” because He knew we’d be hungry and “‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us,'” because He knew we’d fail regularly. He also prayed, “‘Don’t let us yield to temptation,'” because He had experienced the struggle when He was on earth (Luke 11:1-4).

“Prayer always forsakes the kingdom of self for the kingdom of God, and for that we all need forgiving, rescuing and transforming grace. This is just the kind of grace for which prayer leads us to cry out” (Tripp).^[2]

[1] Tripp, Paul David. “March 3.” New Morning Mercies, Crossway, Wheaton, IL, 2014.

[2] Ibid.