Mission Blog: The Lord’s Prayer – What Does it Mean?

Jesus often went away to pray, and his disciples also wanted to learn how to pray like Him. One day when Jesus had finished praying, one of His disciples asked Him how they should pray. He said to them: “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we ourselves forgive everyone”.

Christians everywhere have since learnt to pray in this way. There would not be many people who don’t know the words to Our Father.

This short prayer takes a mere 15 – 20 seconds to say yet is filled with incredible meaning.

Our Year 7s have been exploring the meaning of this prayer in their Religious Education lessons.

Below is a line-by-line explanation of what they learned about the Lord’s Prayer.

Our Father, who art in Heaven 

We start this prayer by professing our central religious belief that God is our Heavenly Father, who is all-knowing, and we are His children. 

Hallowed be Thy name

We recognise that God is all-powerful and ask that His name be recognised by everyone throughout the world as being the ultimate Holy One

Thy kingdom come

First, we are asking for a life with only goodness, honesty, and love for one another. Secondly, we are praying for the fulfilment of the Lord’s promise that He will return at the end of time and grant us eternal life.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven

In these words, we ask for God’s grace to move us to do His will throughout our life. That means doing things that will please our God, even the difficult things.

Give us this day our daily bread

Here we recognise that all things we need come from God. We ask God not only to give us the food we need daily but also the food to nourish our souls. 

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

Here God is teaching us that for Him to forgive us our failures, we must first forgive those who have hurt us. If we harbour bitterness and anger in our hearts, there is no room for God’s love to fill our hearts. 

Lead us not into temptation

Temptation and sin go hand in hand. When faced with temptation, it can sometimes be challenging to resist. That’s why we need God to set up the roadblocks that will lead us away from the path of temptation.

Deliver us from evil 

Unfortunately, evil is a reality in our world. The devil constantly tries to tempt us and seeks ways to steer us from the right path. When we pray to God for protection against all that is evil, He will always shield us.  

There are many moving prayers that we can say. Still, when it comes to one prayer that takes the main aspects of our faith and summarises them in several short lines, the Our Father is the perfect prayer.

God Bless.  

Jilly Landers | Director of Mission