We come to the final part of the Lord’s Prayer: ‘For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and for ever. Amen.’  These words don’t appear in the Gospels as they were added later.  They are, however, words that can be found elsewhere in the Bible.

These final words do three main things …

If the last couple of weeks, looking back over the last two blog entries, perhaps you’ve been thinking that forgiveness is difficult to pray about wholeheartedly and honestly.  If so, then this week’s blog entry on the Lord’s Prayer may well seem more alarming than difficult!  

The next part of the Lord’s Prayer is, ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’. (Note that some versions of the Lord’s Prayer have ‘deliver us from the Evil One’.)

Are you alarmed by this? Does it make you feel uneasy? Hopefully, once you get to the end of this, you’ll see there is no need to worry – quite the opposite!

This time we are continuing with what for many is the hardest part of the Lord’s Prayer – not in understanding what it’s about, but in putting it into practice: ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.’

Last time, we thought about our need of forgiveness from God; knowing that because of his loving and merciful nature he is more than willing to do that.  Jesus went to the cross so we might be forgiven everything, and come back into relationship with God.

There’s a second half to the request, however; something that is crucially important, namely that we should forgive others just as we have been forgiven.  Is this difficult?  Yes!  At times it can be extremely difficult.  Believe it or not, Jesus made it even harder!

What kind of prayer do you find the hardest?  For many people, it’s confession; that is, owning up to God to the sins they’ve committed.  If that’s you, then that means the hardest part of the Lord’s Prayer will be what comes next.

The next sentence in the Lord’s Prayer comes in two parts: ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us’.  There’s so much here to think about that we’ll look at it over two blog entries; the first part this week, and the second part next week.

It’s pretty obvious that we live in a broken world, and not one God intends or desires.  News programmes are full of stories of conflict, violence and racism; for example, and as well as those kinds of problems, there are some we know about personally, especially in our relationships.  If we’re really honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we sin.  We do things God does not want us to do and we don’t do things He does want us to do.  The truth is everyone needs forgiveness because sin separates us from God; it breaks our relationship with him.

Jesus came to do what we can’t do ourselves, that is, to save us from our sin.  For all those who believe and trust in him, Jesus’ death on the cross brings forgiveness and restores our relationship with God.  Forgiveness is always available because God is full of love and mercy for us.

God knows all about us, including when we sin.  So why do we need to ask for forgiveness?

Where have we got to thinking about the Lord’s Prayer?  

In the first two parts, we’ve been making sure that we understand our prayers are heard by a holy God, and that we want Him to answer them in such a way that His will is done.

Having done that, the Lord’s Prayer now makes a series of requests; the first of which is, ‘Give us today our daily bread’.  But what does Jesus mean by that?  We know that He must mean more than just a loaf of bread to hand.