Note: John MacArthur (JM), pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, has some of the best developed thoughts on the Lord’s Prayer that I could find. I would like to devote a number of Prayer 101 postings to excerpts from his sermons.
“Further let me say this, there is no occasion in the entire New Testament, Gospels, Acts or Epistles where this prayer is ever repeated by anybody. It is not a prayer to be made a ritual. It is a model for every prayer you ever pray about whatever you pray about. It is a skeleton on which you are to put meat and bones and flesh. For example, I have in front of me some sermon notes, now that’s not a sermon that's just some notes. And if I came in here and just read you the notes we'd be done in ten minutes and you wouldn't know much. That isn't the point, it's; a skeleton I gotta put flesh and bones on it, I gotta make it live and what Jesus is giving here is a prayer outline, that's all. Here are the basic elements of prayer, it's just like an outline, you have to develop this into its meaningful expression in every different situation. And beloved, this prayer covers everything, it is, it's staggering, it just, the more I studied this the more frustrated I got, I came back here on Saturday because there was so much of this going in my head and I usually try to finish by Friday so that I can have Saturday to mull it over, I was here on Saturday, I went home on Saturday night, I started to get into bed and I went back to this thing and I...it just kept flooding my brain, I got up this morning and again I was at it. I feel like so much is in my head, because there's so many ways to see this prayer, it just got bigger and bigger and more encompassing and more encompassing the more I studied it. It teaches us so much about prayer.”
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