Our Father in Heaven (The Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father in Heaven, holy is Your name.
May Your kingdom come, may Your will be done
On earth as it is in Heaven.

Lord, give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our wrongs as we forgive.
Lord, turn us back from temptation’s door,
And keep us safe from the Evil One!

Our Father in Heaven, holy is Your name.

About This Song:
The Lord’s Prayer is one of the Scriptures Christians are most familiar with.

But I wonder how often we forget the fact that Jesus used it to teach His disciples how to pray. It was a model for them to use, not one for them–or us–to necessarily use verbatim.

While I think it’s possible to actually pray the Lord’s Prayer rather than simply repeat it by rote, I also think it’s extremely hard to focus on each element of Jesus’ words while trying to pray that way.

That’s one reason I chose to set Jesus’ prayer to music and to rephrase it my own way. Not out of disrespect for Jesus’ words, but because I needed to say it the way I could better pray it.

What about you? Do you pray The Lord’s Prayer as if the words are yours? Or do you get caught up in repeating word after familiar word in a way that’s almost meaningless–or at least impersonal?

Maybe you don’t want to pray the way I’ve reworded this prayer for my song, and that’s fine. But you can dig out the meaning of each section of the prayer–I won’t attempt to get into that here–and express it your own way. And show that you’ve learned something from Jesus’ model prayer.

We don’t see many specific examples of Jesus’ prayers in the Bible, although we see a number of references to His praying. But I’ll bet He didn’t use the model prayer as a mold from which to copy His prayers.

Free lead sheets (lyrics, tune, and chords) are available for many of my songs. Click on the Lead Sheets tab at the top of this page to see whether one is available for this song. Videos for many of my songs, some recorded at home and some at our church’s nursing home ministry, can be accessed at my website, RogerBruner.com, under the Listen tab.

Look for me again next Wednesday. Better still, subscribe to receive these weekly posts by email.

Best regards,
Roger

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About Roger E. Bruner

Seventy-seven-year-old Roger E. Bruner is the author and publisher of twenty-two Christian novels and the writer of more than two hundred Christian songs and choruses, a handful of musical dramas, and a number of shorter works. He sings, plays guitar and bass, and records many of his original songs in his home studio. He is active in his church's nursing home ministry He also plays bass guitar on the church praise team. Married for twenty years to Kathleen, he has one grown daughter. Kathleen has two. young sons. Roger enjoys reading, walking, photography and book cover design (he's done all of his own except for Rosa No-Name), playing Snood and Solitaire, and complaining about the state of the nation while continuing to pray for it.

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