It is still amazing to me that when we read and recite the Lord’s Prayer, this is the prayer that Jesus himself taught us to pray.
Found in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, the Lord’s Prayer has been used as a tool to teach and train young disciples since Jesus first spoke it. Commented on by the early church fathers, we also find it used as primary material in the Reformed confessions (the Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster Catechisms).
The Lord’s Prayer is also found in Luke 11. In Luke’s version, Jesus teaches the Lord’s Prayer after his disciples ask him to teach them to pray. In that account, it is virtually the same as the wording found in Matthew.
In both accounts, we see that the Lord’s Prayer gives us both a script and a structure for prayer. It is a prayer we can recite word-for-word, but it also gives us a framework: in prayer we address God and acknowledge him and his place, then present our petitions, asking for and acknowledging his guidance, leadership, and deliverance.
