And Jesus 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, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.'”
– Luke 11:2–4
So Luke 11:2–4 is Luke’s recounting of Jesus teaching on the Lord’s Prayer and I just want to give you really quickly, a way to remember what Jesus taught us to pray for in this prayer. They all start with G. So four G’s that Jesus just told us to pray for.
Jesus has given us a paradigm for prayer. Let’s be faithful to cry out to our Father in heaven according to His Word.
Glory, Gifts, Grace, And Guidance
When you pray, say, “Father hallowed, be your name. Your kingdom come.” So the first thing we ask God for in prayer is his glory. That’s the first G. Hallowed be your name. It’s not just an ascription of praise to God. That’s not just saying I worship you, God. That’s praying for God to be glorified throughout the world, for his kingdom to come. For his glory to spread over the earth, like the waters cover the sea. We ask God for his glory.
Second, we ask God for his gifts. “Give us each day our daily bread.” We end prayer, ask God for his provision for our needs, for our daily needs. This is part of what we do in prayer is just lift up our hearts to God asking him for his gifts. That’s the second, glory, gifts.
Then ask God for his grace. “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” What we do in prayer is we ask God for his grace, his mercy, his forgiveness. We spend time in confession of our sin.
And then the final G. So ask God for his glory, his gifts, his grace, and then fourth, ask God for his guidance. “And lead us not into temptation.” So we ask God to lead us in ways that glorify him. To lead us in ways that are good for us. That avoid sin and evil and live in the good, abundant life of joy and peace and hope and patience and love that Jesus has called us to live.
Glorifying God’s Name
Ask God for his glory, his gifts, his grace, and his guidance. So God, we do that now.
We pray, glorify your name in all the earth. Hallowed be your name. Cause your glory to made known through each of our lives, through our families, through our churches and our cities and our nations. Glorify your name. We pray that you would glorify your name among the Jat in Pakistan. No known believers there. No one glorifying the name of Jesus among the Jat in Pakistan; almost a million of them. God change that, we pray. May your glory be made known among the Jat in Pakistan.
Luke 11:2–4 Asks God For His Glory And Gifts
We ask you for the spread of your glory. We ask you for your gifts. Lord, for our daily bread. We don’t have bread today. Don’t have water today. We don’t have breath today. We don’t have anything good today, apart from you. So we ask God, for your gifts and so many different ways we can obviously spend hours here and especially thinking about all the different things going on in our lives. God, we ask you for your provision in every way we need.
We ask you for your gifts. We ask you for your grace. God, we confess that we fall short in so many ways of your glory, in our thoughts and our desires and our words and our actions. So we pray, Oh God, for your grace. We pray for your grace to cover over our sins. Forgive us of our sins and help us to reflect that forgiveness in others’ lives.
Luke 11:2–4 Asks God For His Grace And Guidance
We ask you for your grace and Oh God, we ask you for your guidance. Lead us, guide us, all day. Today, tomorrow, Lord lead us as our shepherd. Guide us as the Lord over every detail of our lives. God, please keep us from sin. Please keep us from evil.
Even as I’ve been preaching through Philippians 4, guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. Lord, we trust you as the leader of our lives. So lead us, not into temptation. Deliver us from evil. Help us to glorify you with the gifts you given us by your grace, according to your guidance. We pray just like Jesus taught us to pray, in his name, according to his words. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
