Part 15 of 35 Teach us to pray
Jesus taught that prayer is not for showing off. "When you pray, go into your inner room, shut your door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen" (Matthew 6:6). One day, after Jesus had finished praying, one of his disciples asked: "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1). So he gave them the prayer now called the Lord's Prayer:
"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one" (Matthew 6:9–13).
Christians all over the world still pray it, in hundreds of languages.
Imagined The school
No one is ever too old or too young for this school, and every student is also a teacher of something.
Real world Schools on Sundays
In 1780, in Gloucester, England, Robert Raikes began opening schools on Sundays for poor children who worked in factories the rest of the week. The children learned to read, using the Bible. Sunday schools spread quickly, and by the 1830s more than a million children in Britain went to one.
Art In this artwork
The illustration shows a two-story hall with columns, a small gold dome and a bell.
Look closer
- Find the bell.
- Where would students come in?
Think about it
- What do you think "on earth as it is in heaven" means?
- Which part of the Lord's Prayer would you most like to remember?
- When could you find a quiet moment to pray?
Key words
- Hallowed
- Treated as holy and honored.
- Debt
- Something owed; in the Lord's Prayer, the wrong we have done.
- Temptation
- Something that pulls you toward doing wrong.
Sources
Bible quotations are from the Berean Standard Bible, which is in the public domain. The other facts on this page come from these sources:
- The Bible, Gospel of Matthew
- The Bible, Gospel of Luke
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Lord's Prayer"
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Sunday school"
