Is it like a Krispy Kreme doughnut hot off the conveyor belt, oozing and dripping with hot, sticky icing, waiting to bulldoze your bloodstream with blasts of liquid sugar?
Is it like school cafeteria or youth camp food, sometimes tasty sometimes bland, but often lacking sufficient seasoning?
Is it like chugging a schooner of freshly squeezed lime juice, all the while feasting on an appetizer of lemon peels?
Or is your prayer life like the most mouth-watering steak, simmering in the juiciest marinade, fork-tender, falling off the knife, and topped with the tastiest, zestiest, most flavor-accentuating sauce?
It’s not that Jesus didn’t teach us how to pray. He did. We just don’t follow His teaching. Like the Pharisees, we often think we will be heard for our many spiritual-sounding words.
The knee-jerk reaction to following Jesus’ teaching is that “Jesus surely doesn’t mean we have to repeat his model prayer word-for-word every time we pray. Wouldn’t that be vain repetition, and didn’t Jesus condemn vain repetition prior to teaching the model prayer?”
Absolutely. But notice His exact words: “In this MANNER, therefore, pray.”
Automobile manufacturers do not create the same car over and over again. They use the basic components of a car to craft a variety of makes and models. The basic components of the car are the blueprint by which all other cars are made. In order for a car to be considered a car, it must have all the basic components of a car. Otherwise it cannot be considered a car.
The same is true of prayer. In order for God to consider a prayer pleasing, or even for God to consider it a prayer, it must be constructed from the blueprint He provides. If it is not constructed from this blueprint, it cannot be considered pleasing to Him.
True prayer follows this format:
You are our Heavenly Father
You are King over all Creation
All glory belongs to You
Expand Your kingdom on earth
Accomplish Your will on earth
Meet all our needs
Forgive us our sins
Protect us from sin
Rescue us from sin
All kingdoms belong to You
All power belongs to You
All glory belongs to You
So where do specific requests for healing fall? “All glory belongs to You, Expand Your kingdom, Accomplish Your will.” And sometimes, if the sickness is largely sin-induced, “Forgive us our sins.” And in the event the burden of sickness is laid heavily upon a family such that weekly provision is severely affected, “Meet our needs.”
What about requests for someone’s salvation? “All glory belongs to You, Expand your kingdom, Accomplish Your will, Rescue them from sin, Forgive them of sin, Protect them from sin.”
What about temptations, tribulations, persecutions? “Meet our needs, Forgive us our sins, Protect us from sin, Rescue us from sin, All glory belongs to You, All power belongs to You.”
Use these words as a springboard from which to launch your own prayer. Just keep your prayer within the proper guidelines of each category and perspective.
The best part of God’s prayer blueprint is that you can use as much or as little of it as needed at any given point in time before going to His throne of grace. And the best part of using God’s blueprint is that the more you use it, the closer you come to tasting that perfectly prepared steak for which you have yearned so long.
