<p>6:9&nbsp;<em>In this manner you should pray-</em>&nbsp;The model prayer given by the Lord can of course be used just as it is. But it&rsquo;s worth noting that the Lord&rsquo;s own subsequent prayers, and some of Paul, repeated the essence of some of the phrases in it, but in different words. This may be a useful pattern for us in learning how to formulate prayers. The prayer of Jesus in Jn. 17 is in some ways an expanded restatement of the model prayer. In it, the Lord asks for the Father&rsquo;s Name to be hallowed or glorified (Jn. 17:1,11,12); for His work or will to be done or finished (Jn. 17:4); for deliverance from the evil one (Jn. 17:15). The prayer of Jn. 17 can be divided into three units of about the same length (Jn. 17:1-8; 9-19; 20-26). Each has the theme of glory, of directly addressing the Father, and of the needs of God&rsquo;s people- all clearly taken from the model prayer.</p>
<p><em>Our Father</em>- The model prayer begins with the words &quot;Our Father&quot;. Straight away we are bidden remember that no man is an island; the Lord intended us to be aware of the entire community of believers in our private prayers. &quot;Give us this day&nbsp;<em>our</em>&nbsp;daily bread&quot; may appear hard for comfortably off Christians to pray- until they grasp that they are praying for &quot;our&quot; daily bread, not &quot;my&quot; daily bread. There are so many in the brotherhood for whom having daily bread is indeed a constantly uncertain question. We should be aware of the whole brotherhood; and pray that &quot;we&quot; will be given our bread for today.&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>Who is in Heaven</em>- A feature of Biblical prayers is the way they start with some reference to God, often involving several clauses. We are to firstly visualize Him there. This is to be connected with the idea of lifting the eyes to Heaven at the start of a prayer (Ps. 121:1; 123:1; Ez. 23:27; Dan. 4:34; Lk. 16:23; 18:13; Jn. 11:41; 17:1). &quot;God&nbsp;<em>is in Heaven</em>, and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be few (more often translated &quot;little&quot;)&quot; (Ecc. 5:2). Ezra, Nehemiah and Solomon all start their major prayers with a reference to the fact that God really&nbsp;<em>is</em>&nbsp;there in Heaven. The fact that God is a material, corporeal being is vital here. The very fact God has a spatial location, in Heaven, with Christ at His right hand, indicates of itself that God is a physical rather than purely spiritual being. The fact Christ really is there, seated at God's right hand interceding for us, was a concept which filled Paul's thinking (Rom. 8:34; Eph. 1:20; Col. 3:1; Heb. 1:3,13; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2 cp. 1 Pet. 3:22). This teaching about our having a&nbsp;<em>Heavenly&nbsp;</em>Father may appear quite painless to accept; but it was radical, demanding stuff in the first century. The family then was &ldquo;the centrally located institution maintaining societal existence&hellip; it [was] the primary focus of personal loyalty and it [held] supreme sway over individual life&rdquo;. &ldquo;Our father,&nbsp;<em>who is in Heaven</em>&rdquo; was a prayer hard to pray if one really accepted the full import of the words; every bit as much as it is today. The idea of belonging to another family, of which the invisible Lord Jesus in Heaven was the head, belonging to a new society of world-wide brothers and sisters, where the Lord from Heaven held &ldquo;supreme sway over individual life&rdquo;, was radical indeed. It took huge commitment and a deep faith in this invisible head of the new family to step out from ones existing family. And the call of Christ is no less radical today. The social circle at uni, the guys at work, our unbelieving&nbsp;family members&hellip; now all take a radical second place to our precious family in Christ. And yet we so easily abuse or disregard the importance of our spiritual family; we too easily exclude them, won&rsquo;t meet with them, can&rsquo;t be bothered about them. &nbsp;&nbsp; &lt;&gt;<em>Let Your Name be glorified</em>- &ldquo;Hallowed / sanctified be Your name&quot; uses an aorist tense which implies that it will be accomplished as a one-time act; at the coming of the Lord. Indeed, the aorist tenses in the Lord's model prayer are arresting; each phrase of the prayer asks for something to be done in a one-time sense. This alone suggests an intended 'answer' in terms of the final establishment of the Kingdom. &ldquo;Hallowed be Your Name&rdquo; was actually one of the Eighteen Benedictions used by most Jews at the time. This common phrase was consciously seen as a reference to the YHWH Name (Hal Taussig,&nbsp;<em>Jesus Before God: The Prayer Life of the Historical Jesus</em>&nbsp;(Santa Rosa, CA: The Polebridge Press, 1999) p. 76). But the Lord purposefully juxtaposes&nbsp;<em>Abba</em>, &ldquo;Father&rdquo;, with that phrase. This Aramaic, non-Hebrew, familiar word, an equivalent of &ldquo;Daddy!&rdquo;, is placed by the Lord next to Judaism&rsquo;s most well-known and frequently used blessing of the YHWH Name. By doing so, He was making the Name even more hallowed and glorious- by showing that the essence of that Name speaks of familiar family relationship with us, and is no longer the carefully guarded preserve of Hebrew people, thought, culture and language. &lt;&gt;The Lord prayed this in Gethsemane; and it took Him so long to say these words that the disciples fell asleep.</p>