After you have prayed The Lord’s Prayer over and over again, it can get to the place where you lose interest and either skip it sometimes or quickly go through it as a ritual. But the words of Jesus when He said, “This, then, is how you should pray,” let us know that He was giving us this as a prayer to pray. And the words of Jesus in the prayer that say: “Give us TODAY our DAILY bread (Mat 6:11),” let us know we are to pray it every day. The question is, how do we keep this from becoming a ritual or a drudgery?

Why do we need to pray this prayer every day? The answer is, there are some major Bible principles that we have to always keep in mind. They are found in four very important verses:

1. In John 15:5b Jesus said: “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” This means you really need Jesus’ help and input into your day.


2. In James 4:2b the Bible says: “You do not have, because you do not ask God.” This means that if you just try to meet your own needs, you will fail.


3. In Matthew 7:7 Jesus gives us the three keys to all of Christianity: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” This means that if you don’t pray, you won’t just automatically get your needs met.


4. In Romans 8:26b the Bible tells us: “We do not know what we ought to pray for.” This means that if you just pray in a general, unguided, or untrained way, you will typically be asking for the wrong things.

Let’s take a look at these four major Biblical principles one at a time. We need to understand WHY Jesus laid this prayer out as a daily prayer. And, we need to be able to pray it everyday without it becoming boring, ritualistic, and meaningless. We need to see how to use it to grow and mature in our relationship with our heavenly Father.

The “nothing” Jesus is talking about is the spiritual accomplishments that give us eternal life and the power to help ourselves and hurting people. In other words, anything that amounts to anything of value in this world or in eternity is impossible for us to accomplish without Him. If you don’t agree or are having difficulty understanding this, you are finding yourself making decisions that are still hurting you, those around you, and God’s plan. The Lord’s Prayer gets you and Jesus working together through that prayer so you can start doing those things that count for time and eternity.

As we have already said before, Jesus has all knowledge, all foreknowledge of the future, all understanding, and all wisdom; we don’t. When Jesus says: “This, then, is how you should pray,” He is inviting us into asking for God to give us access to all this information, power, and provisions. It starts our day off with miracles, blessings, revelations, and information that are supernatural and God-sized. If we want a relationship with God, then it has to be a DAILY relationship.

Prov 3:5-6 (NIV) Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Without praying these things Jesus told us to pray every day, we will be at the wrong place, doing and saying the wrong things, with the wrong people. If you want God to make your paths straight, then He will help you be at the right place, doing and saying the right things, with the right people.

It is easy to trust God one day and then slip back into looking to yourself the next. If you pray and invite God into every decision you make ONE DAY, and then find yourself trying to MAKE SURE you get your needs and wants taken care of THE NEXT DAY, then THAT DAY you will be going against what would have made you happy and would have brought you blessings and miracles.

If ONE DAY you seem to know God is on your side, and the NEXT DAY you are afraid God might not come through for you, or, you are concerned that He might not do it in a way you could appreciate, then you probably are doing things on your own that are producing solutions that are causing you a lot of problems. The Lord’s Prayer is the process of making sure you ask God for everything you are going to need for each day. It fulfills the ASK GOD requirement and produces wonderful results. AND, it helps you have a DAILY relationship with your heavenly Father.

If ONE DAY you are talking to God, asking Him questions, listening to His words, and basing your decisions on Him, you are enjoying your relationship with Him. If the NEXT DAY you don’t start off your day with The Lord’s Prayer, you will find yourself NOT talking to God, NOT asking Him questions, NOT listening to His words, and NOT basing your decisions on Him. Why? Because Jesus said: “This, then, is how you should pray.” Why? Because Jesus knows how to get you ready for your DAILY relationship with your heavenly Father.

Jesus is promising incredible results from using this three-key procedure. He is giving you the three keys that unlock all the great and powerful provisions of God. In order to take advantage of all your rights and privileges as a child of God and a citizen of His Kingdom, you are going to have to know how to ask, seek, and knock. All your daily personal needs, all the daily needs of those around you, and all the daily provisions of God come through this three-key procedure. The Lord’s Prayer covers the major foundational issues for you to ask for, seek, and knock on for each day.

Sure you prayed The Lord’s Prayer yesterday; but, you need to start THIS DAY with praise, appreciation, and thankfulness for all God did yesterday. You need to give Him an invitation for His Kingdom and will to come into your life TODAY. You have different needs today than you had yesterday. You have new issues of forgiveness today that you didn’t yesterday. You want this day to be one where your issues with temptations are dealt with. You don’t just want yesterday’s temptations to be addressed. You want be delivered from the evil one TODAY. Yesterday was great; but, we need God’s help with the evil one again today.

The Lord’s Prayer presents the outline for a growing and powerful prayer life. At first you will start out just saying those exact words; and, you will only have a small understanding of why you are saying them. Then gradually they will become more and more meaningful to you. This introduces another phase into your prayer life; you start saying the first sentence and you get more words to add to them from your heavenly Father. It will be on the same theme as the sentence in The Lord’s Prayer; but, it will broaden and increase. Each word in The Lord’s Prayer will take on greater meaning and inspire more words to express that meaning. This brings maturity into your prayer life.

Phil 4:13 (NIV) I can do EVERYTHING through Him Who gives me strength. The Lord’s Prayer will help you go from not being able to do anything of eternal, spiritual value to being able to do everything of eternal, spiritual value. You will go from “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul (Mark 8:36)?” to “He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son (Rev 21:7).”