The Lord's Prayer: A Prayer for Dependency

In his message from TGC Chicago's 2022 Regional Conference, Colin Smith teaches us how to pray the Lord’s prayer through five specific categories, drawing from Luke 11 when Jesus’s disciples actually requested that Jesus teach them topray, not how to pray. 

Smith highlights five things on which to focus while praying:

1. God’s name should be honored in prayer. We ought to pray that God would raise up people who know him in the midst of a world that despises him.
2. As we pray that God’s kingdom comes, we should ask that our lives be more fully submitted to Christ and that Jesus would defeat his enemies on earth.
3. Pray for others whose needs are greater than our own—this stirs up Christlike compassion in our hearts as we fully depend on God at every step of his provision.
4. Pray for forgiveness, not because we haven’t already been forgiven, but to restore fellowship with God. As Christians, we should want to walk as closely as possible with God.
5. Pray to be watchful and prayerful so as to not be overwhelmed by temptation. 

As we more fully know the love of the Father, we will desire to earnestly seek him in prayer.