For What We Should Pray

Part 8

That most perfect of prayers, the Our Father, contains all the things for which we should pray, and also indicates the order of importance according to which our requests should be made.  Therefore, in the first of the seven petitions which constitute this the best of prayers we say, "Hallowed be  Thy Name," thus asking that God be acknowledged and glorified and praised throughout the earth.  In the second petition we say, "Thy kingdom come," that is, may we one day possess the kingdom of heaven, which God has prepared for us.  And since this great kingdom can only be entered and enjoyed by those who do God's will here on earth, we say in the third petition,  "Thy will be done," begging that we may be enabled at all times to keep His commandments.  In the fourth petition we ask for our daily bread, that is, we beg of God those temporal and spiritual necessities without which we can sustain neither the life of our bodies nor that of our souls.

Thus far in the Lord's Prayer we have been seeking good things.  Next we ask to be preserved from evils of soul and body, imploring deliverance from our trespasses and sins which would exclude us from the kingdom of God.  We then pray for victory over temptations which would hinder us from doing God's will.  In concluding this beautiful prayer, we ask to be delivered from all those evils which might imperil our spiritual or temporal life, such as sudden death famine, war, pestilence and the like.