When Jesus reached for the language of  ‘leading’ and ‘tempting’ in the prayer he gifted to his people for posterity, it was borne out of the deep personal experience of his own true humanity. He was not for a moment suggesting that his beloved Heavenly Father was guilty of trying to ensnare him; rather, he was acknowledging that his Father’s Sovereign Providence extends over absolutely all of life – even those circumstances in which we are prone to be tempted.

It is all too easy to be so focused on the individual components of the Lord’s Prayer – the ‘petitions’ of which it is comprised – that we lose sight of its overall topography, or landscape. Even though the details bound up with each request are vitally important, we only appreciate their full weight and significance when we survey them as part of a whole.

When we do this, as we noted in the preceding article on this prayer, we cannot help but be struck by where Christ places its emphasis. In complete contrast to the so-called ‘laundry list’ approach to praying that is so common in many church circles today, the concerns that ought to dominate our praying are weighty in the extreme.

Towering above them all is an overwhelming acknowledgement of and submission to God in all his glory. Flowing from this is the humble, but confident assurance that all we could ever genuinely need, God’s gracious hand will lovingly provide. But then comes the shock. In terms of the weighting of the prayer, not surprisingly the dominant focus is God in all his might and splendour – this provides the bookends to the prayer as a whole. But the next most prominent feature is human sin, our need of pardon and also our need to be delivered from its guilt, power and consequences. How often is this concern reflected in the balance of what we pray for either in private, or in our corporate prayer?

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