Hidden Treasures in the Titles of the Psalms: Part 5

God's will shall be done, but the question is: are we doing God’s will?

THE LORD’S PRAYER, (continued)

Thy Will Be Done In Earth, As It Is In Heaven.

God’s will shall be done, but the question is: are we doing God’s will? How can we pray this if we are only willing to do our own and not God’s will? We would be hypocrites. How do we do God’s will? Grudgingly, if I have to! Or I have no other choice. Or do we do God’s will from the heart? Jesus is our example, and he did not come to do his own will:

It teaches us to accept God’s will, whatever difficulty comes our way. God is our Father, as we said at the beginning of this prayer, and He knows all our affairs. It is our task to do God’s will in whatever circumstance we find ourselves, knowing that God is in control. We may not always like it, but God may test our faith.

In Psalm 119, we pray therefore:

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread.

In Hebrew, our daily bread is lehem chukeynu—the bread we need daily, not what we want. We should not ask for an opulent dinner, but only for what we actually need. Some suggest it means the Breaking of Bread, for Jesus is the “bread of life,” but I believe it simply refers to our daily nutritional needs. God feeds every living thing:

It takes away the worry of how we shall eat tomorrow. It does not mean that after having prayed this communal prayer, we can sit down and do nothing, and the food miraculously appears on our table. God is not spoon-feeding anybody. He also does not stock the shelves in the supermarket. We need to work for our food, just as the Apostle did:

This prayer also makes us share our food: Give us our daily bread. God is a merciful God:

I often conclude my prayer for food with: “Who giveth food to all flesh: for his mercy endureth for ever (to the Age).” (Psalm 136:25).

And Forgive Us Our Debts, As We Forgive Our Debtors

The previous request was to give us our daily bread. This one asks Him to forgive our sins. The word “debt” can mean a financial or moral debt. It has also been translated as “trespasses” or “sins.”

Sin, in its wider interpretation, is “missing the mark,” a failure to realize the true aim of life, a failure to do what we should, and a failure to obey God’s commands. We need to remember that what is not of faith is sin. Jesus did not tell the disciples that only sinners should say this prayer; he said, “After this manner therefore pray ye.” That is to say, it is a prayer that everybody should pray, for all have sinned. In fact, when we ask for forgiveness, we acknowledge our guilt, as we have seen earlier in Psalm 32.5:

Using the Psalms makes us realize that when we sin, we first of all sin against God. David realized this in his sin with Bathsheba, for he prayed to God:

The Lord’s Prayer also teaches us to forgive others. God’s forgiveness depends on our forgiving of other people. If we don’t forgive others, neither will God forgive us. David said as much in the same Psalm 51:

Both the Lord’s Prayer and the Psalms teach us to love our neighbor as ourselves, for God’s attitude toward man is determined by man’s attitude toward his fellowman. Forgiving others brings us closer to God.

And Lead Us Not Into Temptation

What does that mean? How can we ask this of God when we know very well that the world is full of temptations? Never to be tempted would appeal to our human weakness and fear of danger. But we know that human existence without temptation is impossible.

The word for “temptation” in Greek means to test or to try, and not to tempt somebody to sin. God certainly doesn’t tempt any man to sin, James says as much:

The testing of our faith, however, is necessary. Job said:

Psalm 17 is a most helpful prayer to stay away from the temptations of the world:

In praying “lead us not into temptation,” or other expressions found in the Psalms, we pray that God will give us the strength to overcome temptation and not be overcome by it.

But Deliver Us From Evil

Whether you call evil the Devil, or just plain badness, it does not matter. We know that evil stands between God and man. It destroys that beautiful relationship we can have with God through Jesus Christ.

“Deliver us from evil” acknowledges our danger and inadequacy to deal with evil alone. We ask God’s help not to be overcome by evil, realizing that we cannot overcome evil by ourselves. Our life in the Truth depends on God’s protective power to save us.

Especially, Psalm 119 is full of expressions to help us:

The best way to be delivered from evil is to prayerfully meditate on His Word, as the same Psalm proclaims: “O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.” (Psalm 119:97). The Lord’s Prayer then ends with acknowledging God’s power and glory:

For Thine is The Kingdom, and The Power, and The Glory, For Ever. Amen.

This is not a new ending to a prayer. David already said this when he had prepared many materials for the new Temple:

Thine is the Kingdom: We all look forward to that great time of peace on earth when Christ and the saints shall rule the world in righteousness. We need to pray this prayer constantly in preparation for our task of bringing people back to God in the Kingdom to come.

And the power: The Greek word is dunamis, and from whence we have dynamic and dynamo. Using this phrase, we acknowledge that God is both willing to listen and act on our behalf.

And the glory for ever: We remind ourselves that with this prayer, we present ourselves in the presence of the divine glory. It means that we must live a life in reverence for the Almighty God, and if we do this right, we can trust in His power to answer our prayers and give us an inheritance with all those who love His name.

Amen. This is a Hebrew word that means “It is faithful,” “It is true.” We don’t have to say “Amen” to our prayer, only to the prayers of others. This beautiful prayer then binds us together as brethren and sisters in Christ who are trying to overcome sin with God’s help and look forward to a new life in the Kingdom and a new body that will last forever.

Usually, we say, “In the name of Jesus, Amen,” or something like it.

I was taught to end my prayers with that phrase in the Dutch Reformed Church. In fact, most Christians end their prayer with that formula, which appears to sanctify what they have just prayed about. Jesus, of course, said: “If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.” (John 14:14).

In the next chapter (John 15:16), however, Jesus clarifies this: “Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.” In the Greek, it says, “Whatsoever you may ask.” We may not ask for anything we like, but only what we are allowed to ask. How do we go about that? What does it mean to pray in the name of Jesus? I believe it is not a sanctifying formula to end our prayers, but a concept. We can learn the concept of saying something in somebody else’s name from David.

When David’s young men came, they spoke to Nabal according to all those words in David’s name and ceased. The word “ceased” here means “rested” or “stopped.” In other words, they said the precise words of David and added nothing to them. This is the Biblical concept of saying something in somebody else’s name. If we use the words of Jesus in the Psalms, we do not have to tack on the formula “In the name of Jesus, Amen,” for we have just done it! Jesus tells us to end our prayers with, “Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever, Amen.”

Jesus commanded us to pray in his name. Let us therefore do it, knowing that even:

To conclude, here are two examples of how the Lord’s Prayer could be used as a pattern for our prayers, using the Psalms.

We all feel a bit inadequate (I certainly do) at composing prayers to God. But this method has worked for us, and I offer it as a suggestion. When we do this, we follow in the footsteps of David, Solomon, Hannah, and Mary, who used parts of the Psalms to make their prayers. In so doing, we are “instructed in the Songs of the LORD” and can say Psalm 119:54:

Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.

Leen Ritmeyer,
Cardiff Ecclesia, UK