The Lord’s Prayer is accepted and used by all Christians and it combines us all as members of one community. The prayer stresses what unites us rather than what divides us.
The Prayer goes:
Our Father, who art in Heaven
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
In this prayer several different types of prayer are included. The first type of prayer is to show a statement of faith. This is shown in the first line of the Prayer ‘Our Father, who art in Heaven’. This means that by accepting that God is up there, in heaven we acknowledge that he is very involved in our lives.
The next type of prayer used is in the next line ‘Hallowed be thy name’. This line shows worship and praise. Through this line we pray that God may be accepted as holy.
The line after this ‘Thy kingdom come thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven’ is a prayer of adoration. This line involves a change of heart in those who do not yet perfectly follow God’s law.
The next line ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ is a prayer of intercession in which we are asking for the Bread of the Eucharist which will help build us up spiritually as normal bread will build us up physically. We are also asking for the needs of all people.
‘And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’ is a prayer of confession or contrition. This is where we are sorry for what we have done wrong. We also promise to share this forgiveness with others.
The final line is this prayer is ‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’. This line is a prayer of petition in which we ask God to remove these temptations from our won lives.
In conclusion the Lord’s Prayer or the Perfect Prayer as it is also called is the most important prayer of all other prayers and it is used and accepted by all Christians throughout the land. It employs several different types of prayer and it is what Jesus taught his disciples when he taught them how to pray.
