The Way Our Prayers Should Sound

My daughter has learned the Lord’s Prayer well enough that sometimes I allow her to lead when we say our prayers before bed. Usually when we pray, I say a line of prayer and have her repeat what I say, but when she leads the Lord’s Prayer, our roles are reversed. The other night, when she stumbled over the words “…and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…” I repeated the words as they should have sounded, but did not call attention to her mistake. I suddenly realized that what I had done for her was exactly what Jesus does for us when we pray.

How often do we sit down to pray and don’t know where to begin? How often do we become distracted as intrusive thoughts interrupt our prayers? How often do we wonder if we’re communicating ourselves well enough for God to understand? But we needn’t worry over these things. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus… (1 Timothy 2:5) Through Christ, all that we are that is not in accordance to God’s will is made perfect and holy. That includes our prayers. When our praises lack polish and elegance, when we forget to be thankful for His faithful providence, when we ask more for ourselves than for those who are truly in need, when our words are jumbled or mumbled, we can rest knowing that through Christ everything we put into our prayers, no matter how imperfect, is glorified.