Our Father

Matthew 6:9-13 (ESV)
Pray then like this:
"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. [10] Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. [11] Give us this day our daily bread, [12] and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. [13] And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
It’s a simple prayer. Yet it covers everything a Christian could possibly want to pray for. It is said that every one of the psalms can be put under one or the other petitions of the Lord’s Prayer as it’s heading. In other words this prayer sums up the book of psalms, which also make great prayers and can be a great boon to a person’s prayer life. Praying God’s word back to him, it is brilliantly simple.
Most of us are like little kids when it comes to prayer, which is why it is so fitting to start this prayer with “Our Father.” Jesus instructs us to say our Father, when referring to His father. It marks up a distinction between him and us. Jesus refers to Him as “My” Father. He is the only begotten Son, he has a special relationship to our Father, one that is different than ours. But we are Children of the Heavenly Father. And He most definitely is Our Father, a real Father.
Earthly relationships are so torn by sin. Some have good Father’s, and even these are but a shadow in comparison to the Father that is our Father. Our Father in Heaven is the perfect Father, who loves and cares for his children. He isn’t the Disney land dad though. He isn’t manipulated into doing everything for his children they would want him to do. To be sure he doesn’t neglect or abuse us his children; we do enough of that to ourselves, and to our own children. But neither will he just let us have our way. Prayer is not manipulation. It isn’t what the gentiles do in their worship, and prayers to the gentile gods that ask to be manipulated. One reason Christian prayer, and by extension worship should not reflect the pagan notions of divine manipulation.
But God does ask us to pray. It is sacred conversation with our Creator and Redeemer, with he who is Holy. We speak to Him what he has given us to say, and then his word shapes our will, our person, it kills our Old Adam, and refreshes the new man within us. Rather than conforming God’s will to ours, it conforms our will to his, and this is always better. And He, who is our Father, Wills what is best for our lives, gives us what we need, forgives us even before we forgive, preserves us from temptation and delivers us from Evil. He answers our prayers in ways we cannot imagine, just as the Holy Spirit translates our prayers in groaning we cannot understand.