When we talk about prayer, our discussions usually center around who or what we’re praying for. We listen to prayer requests at church on Sunday. We tell a struggling or hurting friend that we are praying for them. We send “thoughts and prayers” when we hear about a tragedy. We even have a praying hands emoji to reply to a message or comment on a post.
None of these things are wrong. But sometimes we fall into the trap of giving little thought to the true center of all our prayers. We gloss over who we are praying to so we can get more quickly to what we’re praying for. Our prayers lose their proper center and become out-of-orbit prayers.
All our prayers should be God-centered prayers. They should orbit around him. All our adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication are directed to the King of the universe, the Lord of Creation, our Father in heaven. Prayer is drawing near to him through Jesus and calling out our praises, our pleas for forgiveness, our desires for his glory, our yearning for his kingdom, our requests for his provision, and our thankfulness for his goodness.
This is how Jesus taught us to pray. When we consider the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13, we see a radically God-centered prayer. It is a prayer directed to the Father that reveals a desire for his glory, his kingdom, and his will and that declares our dependence on him.
Here are five specific observations about God-centered prayers rooted in Jesus’s model prayer:
First, when we pray, we should pause and remember who we are praying to: our Father in heaven. We do not come to a distant, unknown deity. We do not send up thoughts and prayers hoping they reach some benevolent force of the universe. We draw near to our heavenly Father. We come to God as our transcendent Authority. We come to God as our loving Provider. We come to God as our mighty Protector. We pray as those who know the Father through faith in the Son.
Second, the heart-beat of our prayers should be the glory of God’s name. This model prayer begins with praise and a desire that God’s name would be honored as holy in all things. All our praying should reflect a heart of worship. Our prayers are God-centered when we seek the glory of God as the chief purpose of all things.
We pray for a friend who is suffering, and we pray that God would be praised because of his work in their life. We seek God’s blessing for the ministries of our church for the sake of God’s Name, that more people would come to see him as worthy of all their devotion. God-centered prayers seek the glory of God in all things.
Third, our prayers should reveal a yearning for God’s kingdom to come. We do not pray that God would build our little kingdoms, but his kingdom. God’s kingdom is his rule over his people. It advances and spreads as more and more people trust in Jesus and bow to him as King. One day, the King will return. Do our prayers reveal a longing for that day? God-centered prayers seek God’s kingdom first.
Fourth, Jesus also taught us to pray “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven“. When Jesus mentions God’s will in Matthew 6:10, he is not talking about God’s sovereign will or plan for the world. No one can thwart or stop that will (Psalm 115:3). Jesus is talking about God’s will for how we should live. In heaven, the angels live in perfect obedience to the will of God. We should desire to see the same kind of submission to God’s will on earth, starting in our own lives.
Prayer is not about bending God to our will. It’s about conforming our hearts and lives to his revealed will in Scripture. God-centered prayers reveal a longing for deeper obedience and submission to God. They resound with a desire for righteousness and holiness in our lives and in the world.
Finally, Jesus teaches us to pray for our physical and spiritual needs. We should ask God to provide for the needs of our body. It is good and right to ask God to provide our daily bread. We also ask God to supply the forgiveness we need, protection from temptation, and deliverance from the schemes of the evil one.
God is glorified when we humbly bring our physical and spiritual needs into his presence. This honors God because it shows a recognition of our complete dependence on God. Kevin DeYoung puts it this way in his book on the Lord’s Prayer:
“If there is one thing we can be certain God wants to teach us, surely it is to convince us once again that we are frail, life is fragile, and we depend upon God for everything.”[1]
God-centered prayers are God-dependent prayers. We bring our needs to God, whatever they are, because we understand our utter reliance on our Father.
From time-to-time, all of us need to recenter our prayers. We may find that our prayers are a little out of orbit. They sometimes orbit around our kingdom of sand rather than the King and his Kingdom.
The Lord’s Prayer helps knock our prayers back into orbit. We remember that worship is not just something we do when we sing. It involves our prayers as well. All our praying is an act of worship where we praise our King, seek his forgiveness, plead for his provision, and give thanks for his grace.
All our prayers should be God-centered prayers.
[1]Kevin DeYoung, The Lord’s Prayer: Learning from Jesus on What, Why, and How to Pray, 49.
