When Luke records what we call the Lord's Prayer, he tells us that Jesus taught it in response to a request.

Lord, teach us to pray. In other words, it's a kind of model prayer. Pray like this, it says our Lord Jesus.

I mentioned yesterday that the prayer has an additional function. Because it teaches us the shape

of our praying, it also teaches us the shape of our living as disciples of the Lord.

I don't think I really need to remind you what that shape is.

Our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

And we enjoy Him only when we live for Him, when we glorify Him.

The masters of the spiritual life, I think, have all recognized that our lives by nature

are disordered. Our minds, our wills, our affections are all disordered, and they need to be regenerated

and refashioned. That's what Romans 12 verses 1 and 2 is all about, isn't it? The transformation

of our life, its reconstruction, it's reshaping, it's reordering, that takes place by the renewal

of our minds. And that's actually one of the blessings of praying the Lord's prayer. It begins to renew our mind.

It begins to shape how we think about life. It reorders our priorities. It re-centers us on the Father.

It sets our affections on the right things and in the right order.

And that's why we pray for God's name to be holy, to be reverenced, to be treated with awe,

to use Martin Luther's words to let God be God.

And it follows that the heart that is centered on God's glory in this way will want

to see that glory manifested in the world. And so Jesus now teaches us to pray, Your kingdom come,

your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The kingdom of God is His reign. In fact, it's what Adam and Eve were commissioned

to bring about in the world when they were given dominion. They were to extend the garden God had given

them to the ends of the earth. You remember that not all the earth was garden, and so they were to extend it,

and then the earth would be full of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. But they failed.

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