The Viral Prayer

How The Lord’s Prayer Reorders Our Lives

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Lord, how should we pray? Jesus’ closest friends asked him this and as his followers today, we can as well.

When you think about most of the stories we consume—books, movies, binge-worthy shows—for the most part, they build toward a climactic moment at the very end. The whole narrative pulls you forward until everything finally resolves in the last chapter or final scene. But ancient writers told stories differently. In Scripture, the high point often sits not at the end but at the centre. This literary pattern, called chiastic structure, draws everything toward a midpoint and sends everything else flowing back outward.

So it’s no accident that the very heart of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount—the centre of the most influential sermon in history—is the Lord’s Prayer.

Scholars like Nijay Gupta remind us the Lord’s Prayer is the most studied, recited, memorized, and vocalized piece of literature in all of history in all the world regardless of language or religion. This prayer has shaped civilizations, churches, families, and individual lives for two thousand years.

And yet, as late pastor and theologian Tim Keller once wrote,

“We know God is there, but we tend to see him as a means through which we get things to make us happy. For most of us, he has not become our happiness. We therefore pray to get things, not to know him better.”

The Lord’s Prayer invites us to something different. It asks us not to use prayer to manage our lives but to allow prayer to reorder our lives. Not to get more from God, but to want more of God.

So let’s walk slowly, thoughtfully, and prayerfully through the prayer at the centre.

Our Father in Heaven

Jesus begins with a word many of us skip past: Our.

In one breath, he dismantles the entire idea of private, individualized faith. Prayer is not a solo exercise; it is a family practice. We weren’t just saved from something, we were saved into a people, a community, a body.

To pray “Our Father” is to remember that I never come to God alone. I carry my church family, my community, my enemies, my neighbours, and even the people I’d rather avoid—right into God’s presence with me.

Then comes the word Father. Whether that word brings warmth or discomfort, joy or grief, Jesus redefines it. God the Father is everything our earthly fathers got right—and everything they didn’t. He is intimate, personal, attentive, patient, and present. He’s not a boss to impress, a coach to perform for, or a teacher to please. He’s the Father who comes close.

“In heaven” doesn’t mean far away. The phrase can also be translated “in the heavens”—the skies, the realm above us—meaning he sees what we cannot see. His perspective is clearer, wiser, higher. There’s relief in knowing the world doesn’t depend on my limited vision. I’m not stumbling blindly through life; I’m held by the One who sees the full story.

These opening words hold both intimacy and transcendence. Immanence and majesty.

God with us, and God above us. As John 1:14 tells us, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” And Psalm 115:3 anchors us: “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.”

We can trust a Father like this.

Hallowed Be Your Name

To “hallow” God’s name means to honor him as holy—set apart, utterly distinct, unlike anyone or anything else. Holiness is not just moral purity; it is God’s complete otherness.

Speaker and writer Jackie Hill Perry has said that if God is holy, then he cannot sin. And if he cannot sin, then he cannot sin against you. This truth gently exposes something in us: sometimes we blame God for wounds caused by others. And sometimes we blame God for the consequences we've brought upon ourselves.

But God’s holiness means he is never the author of evil. Instead, he is the One who heals, restores, and redeems.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). To fear him is to revere him—to honour him as King. When God is rightly placed at the centre, everything else begins to take its proper place around him.

Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done

These words may be the most revolutionary and the most resisted. And if I’m honest, the part of the prayer I struggle with the most.

To pray “Your will be done” is to surrender my preferences, my timing, my ideas, my control. It dethrones me and enthrones God. The oldest temptation in the Bible—“you will be like God”—still whispers to us today. Something Adam and Eve fell for in the garden and what we still fall for today. Control feels safer. But control is an illusion.

There’s an old story about the Knights Templar during the Medieval period and their baptism prior to heading off on their crusade from Europe to Israel. As legend has it, the knights would hold their swords out of the water as they were baptized to symbolize that they were surrendering everything to God except their swords - the implication being that they believed that some actions done with their swords would not be pleasing to God.

The symbolism of baptism for a Christian is that of death, burial, and resurrection. It’s a beautiful picture and a physical reminder that before Christ we are dead in our sins and separated from God. Plunging into the water represents death - death to sin and death to one’s old self. But we know that the Gospel doesn’t end in death…and neither does baptism. In rising from the water we are “born again” and participate in Christ’s resurrection and victory over sin and the grave. We rise to a new life - a life in Christ!

The Knights Templar baptism story is merely a legend, and yet its pointed symbolism is still convicting. I died to my old self through believer’s baptism in October of 2001. However, when I truly examine my heart and conscience, I know there were areas of my life that I unknowingly held above the water.  

What do you hold above the water?

Is it your career?Your phone?Your image?Your relationships or reputation?Your secret habits or private vices?

Whatever we keep above the water will eventually become the area where we resist God most.

Jesus is inviting us into freedom—a life where his kingdom, not ours, defines what flourishing looks like.

On Earth as It Is in Heaven

This line brings the future into the present. Heaven is not endless clouds and harps—it is the fully restored world God intended: meaningful work, joy, belonging, beauty, purpose, unbroken community, and wholeness.

C.S. Lewis famously wrote,

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

Our longings point beyond this life to the world God is restoring and remaking.

To pray this line is to say, “Make my life look like what your vision is for the world redeemed. Make my heart look like the heart of your kingdom.”

Give Us Today Our Daily Bread

This is the shift from surrender to dependence.

In Exodus 16, we read about how God gives Israel food from heaven called manna. It landed on the ground each morning and just enough for the day. Not for tomorrow. Not for a five-year plan. In fact, for any who were tempted to collect more than they needed, they would discover on the following day that those leftovers were rotting and smelling and filled with maggots. They were invited to trust God’s provision, daily.

Jesus echoes this in Matthew 6, reminding us not to worry about tomorrow because today has enough trouble of its own.

But Jon Guerra sings what most of us feel:

Do not lay up for yourselves

Treasures on earth

Where moth and rust destroy

Where thieves break in and steal

Well, I hear you, Lord

But I still want more

I want a nest egg for a rainy day,

Stocks and bonds and real estate,

Security beyond what I heard You say.

So I want to be able to say, God, I trust that what you have for me is enough for today. Because daily bread means daily connection.

It’s less about the amount we need and more about the posture we hold.

In Eden, humanity had everything yet resisted trusting God. In the wilderness, they had nothing except what God gave—and learned trust.

We learn wisdom by trusting God’s Word more than we trust our own cravings. Not living by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Forgive Us Our Debts, as We Forgive Our Debtors

Grace always flows downhill.

We cannot forgive others until we understand how deeply we’ve been forgiven.

C.S. Lewis says,

“A proud person is always looking down… and as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

Timothy Keller captures the heart of the gospel:

“We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe,

yet more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”

Forgiven people become forgiving people.This fills us with humility as we recognize our need for forgiveness. We then overflow with generosity in wanting to forgive others as a result!

Lead Us Not Into Temptation, But Deliver Us From Evil

This final request reveals our honesty and our vulnerability: we cannot resist temptation on our own. And temptation here indicates testing. It says, allow us to be spared circumstances that would tempt us to sin.

Hebrews 4:15 reminds us,

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.”

We know from the Gospels that Jesus faced temptation and endured. Matthew 4 shows him victorious in the wilderness over the temptations of the Devil, and Holy Spirit empowers followers of Jesus to do the same.

1 Corinthians 10:13 promises us a way out:

“And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” We’re not abandoned in temptation. We are guided, strengthened, and delivered from it.

For Yours Is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory Forever

At the end of the prayer—and at the end of our striving—we remember that life works only when God is at the centre.

1 Timothy 1:17 declares,

“Now to the King eternal, the immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Jude 1:24–25 proclaims,

“To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—

to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.”

This final line of the prayer reorders everything:My life isn’t about me. I mean, it can be! But then I won’t find the peace, joy, contentment, confidence, and purpose God offers to us. I want to come to a place where I can declare:

Yours is the kingdom.Yours is the power.Yours is the glory—Even over MY kingdom! Even over the parts of my life I still try to control.

Forever and ever.Amen.

What’s in the Ears

This is the part where I share a song or podcast I’m currently into. This song, appropriately titled The Lord’s Prayer is by Jon Guerra who is one of my favourite artists if you haven’t already noticed. Let me know if you check it out!

If this stirred something in you, share this post with a friend or drop a comment below. I’d love to hear what small step you’re taking towards the flourishing life today! And don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.

Podcast available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favourite streaming platform!