This then, is how you should pray.

"This then is how you should pray: 

"'Our Father in Heaven,

hallowed be your name.

Your Kingdom come,

your will be done,

    on earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

    as we also forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

    but deliver us from the evil one.'

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 

But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins"

                                Matthew 6:9-15

        Spend any time in church, and you will have probably heard what is commonly referred to as the Lord's prayer. In the previous section, Jesus tells of what happens when people decide to pray "to be seen by men." A Person who prays only when people are around is not praying to God, but for his own Ego. They want people to know that "I use big words to pray because I am so important. Look how righteous I am." Instead, once you have established your own space to pray alone with God, Jesus does not leave his followers with only the things they shouldn't do, but he models the things they should. 

This prayer from the Sermon on the Mount is not something to just memorize and repeat, but a template for how to structure our prayers to give God the most glory possible. It starts with a heart of reverence toward the Father, the desire to see God's kingdom come down to Earth, and then for His will to be the desire of our hearts. We as created should have no right to talk directly to the creator of the Heavens, but he loves us so much that he wants to have this close relationship with all of his children who desire to surrender their hearts to him. What better way to begin our time of prayer than by acknowledging the greatness and majesty that is our God. 

        The second portion deals with our needs. we begin by seeking health and provision for our own bodies, the one thing that tends to stand in the way of filling our spirit. Jesus was fully God and fully man. He understood the feeling of being hungry or sick and needing a touch of healing, or a piece of food. Before we begin to fill our inner desires, we are called to also take care of the physical body that acts as the vehicle by which we move and operate and do. By asking God to provide just enough for each day to not become greedy, but to also not lack anything we need. After our body is fed, then we begin to work on the mind. Thanks to the blood-shed sacrifice of the perfect lamb on the cross of Cavalry, our sins have been forgiven, a debt we will never be able to repay. Unfortunately, until we stand on the streets of gold in Heaven, we will continue to commit sins in our lives that still need forgiving. By asking God to forgive our debts, this covers the things we do that need to be washed clean by the blood, known or unknown. Following this covers the sins of others done to us. Jesus then says that if we can not forgive someone who wronged us, God our Father will not forgive us. Like the parable of the ungrateful servant- A man in the service of the king had a debt that he could not pay. The king demanded payment, but the servant, in humility, begged for more time to secure the funds. The king relented and forgave the whole debt and sent the man away. Along the way, the servant came upon someone who own him money, an amount much smaller than his own debt to the king. He threatened the man and threw him in prison until he could repay. When word came back to the king of the actions of the servant, the King had him also thrown into prison, until his full debt could be paid. - Let us not forget what God has forgiven us from, and let's not be stingy with forgiving others. 

        Prayer is the way to speak to God to ask him for the things he already knows we need, but the beauty of it all is that God doesn't just want to give us what we will need, but he wants to build relationships with him that draw us closer to heart, so that the desires of his heart become the desires our ours.

Adam Semple- A Young Man on a Journey Through the Sermon on the Mount.