Christ Church, Warwick
13th July 2025
USING THE LORD’S PRAYER
There are many ways in which the Lord’s Prayer can be used to enhance and develop our individual and corporate life of prayer. Two of these, which I have found personally helpful, are described in the following paragraphs, taken from Tom Wright’s small but valuable book, The Lord and His Prayer (SPCK, 1996). Along with Wright, I heartily recommend Rowan William’s brief but rich and equally accessible book, Being a Christian. Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer (SPCK, 2014). In my view, a better short introduction to the essentials of Christian faith and life would be hard to find. A.M.
I. ‘First, there is the time-honoured method of making the Lord’s Prayer the framework for regular daily praying. Take each clause at a time, and, while holding each in turn at the back of your mind, call into the front of your mind the particular things you want to pray for, as it were, under that heading. Under the clause, “Thy Kingdom Come”, for example, it would be surprising if you didn’t want to include the peace of the world, with some particular instances. The important thing is to let the medicine and music of the prayer encircle the people for whom you are praying, the situations about which you are concerned, so that you see them transformed, bathed in the healing light of the Lord’s love as expressed in the prayer.’
II. ‘You might like, for a while, to take the clauses of the prayer one by one and make each in turn your “prayer for the day”.
Sunday: Our Father.
Monday: Hallowed Be Thy Name.
Tuesday: Thy Kingdom Come.
Wednesday: Give Us This Day.
Thursday: Forgive Us Our Trespasses.
Friday: Deliver Us From Evil.
Saturday: The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory.
Use the clause of the day as your private retreat, into which you can step at any moment, through which you can pray for the people you meet, the things you’re doing, all that’s going on around you. The “prayer of the day” then becomes the lens through which you see the world.’