The Perfect Prayer

38 // June 2020

by Jennie Hawkins

Jennie Hawkins is a wife, mother, grandmother and Ordained Minister. She is the founder and director of Daughters of Promise TN. She and her husband, James, are co-founders of Hawkins Family Ministries. Contact her at JHawkinsMinistries@gmail.com. About The Author D o you remember writing book reports in school? You probably used an outline from which to write your report. If someone read only your outline, they should be able to understand the subject of your report and glean some basic information from it. They might even be inspired to read your report because of the clarity of your outline.

What if you had an outline for the perfect prayer, a prayer that was certain to get your Heavenly Father’s attention? In Matthew chapter 6, verses 9 through 13, Jesus presents us with our outline for the perfect prayer. Let’s examine this outline verse by verse.

Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed

be your Name. We must address our Father in intimacy. He knows us and wants us to know Him. He must be our Father. It is this sense of intimacy that gains His attention. Then, we must praise Him for who He is to us by hallowing His name. If I wanted to get your attention, I would call you by name, and I would be as personal and intimate in calling your name as possible.

Your kingdom come; your will

be done on earth as it is in Heaven. God’s Kingdom is a supernatural one not normally found on earth. Yet we, as spiritual beings, operate in a supernatural kingdom that should surpass the natural. Here, we are asking God to intervene in our will to the effect that we complement and reinforce His perfect will in our lives, just as His will pervades Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. He provided holy subsistence during the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites, and we are simply asking Him to do the same for us. We, in fact, are not guaranteed any bread beyond our daily bread, which emphasizes our daily reliance on Him.

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those

who trespass against us. In this segment, we are agreeing with God’s conditional forgiveness. We are to forgive others to the extent that we expect to be forgiven by our Heavenly Father.

Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the

evil one. God does not tempt us, but the world, the flesh, and the evil one certainly will. We are invoking God’s omnipotent protection against outside influences and our own selves as well as the devil.

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory

forever. We close by declaring God’s omnipresence, His omnipotence, and His omniscience for all eternity. We are declaring that His ways are superior to ours and that we prefer His ways.

Amen. So be it! If we follow the essence of this outline, our prayers will become more powerful and be so mighty that the devil will dread seeing us get out of bed each morning.

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