Our Lord’s prayer
The following prayer was written by Philip Doddridge and is found in ‘Piercing Heaven‘, links can be found below to purchase the whole volume.
Our Father, you are seated on a throne of glory in the highest heaven, and we bow before your awful presence with humble reverence. Even so we approach you with the confidence that we are your children, and you are our bountiful and compassionate parent.
We join our prayers to you with hearts full of brotherly love, and ask for each other the blessings we seek for ourselves.
Above all, we desire your glory. May your name be set apart and holy. May the whole world of living creatures join us to give you the honor you so deserve and require. May your kingdom come and your will be done among us. Help us to know, understand, and pursue your kingdom.
And may your will, always wise and gracious, be done on earth just as it is in heaven. Teach us mortals to resign ourselves to you in obedience, the same way your angels in heaven obey you.
As for ourselves, Lord, help us not to seek the grand things of life. Help us not to worry about the future, but we humbly ask that you would open your bountiful hand—the one on which we always depend. Give us our daily supply for what we need today, and teach us to let you take care of the rest.
Though in many respects we have been disobedient and ungrateful children, yet we beg you, compassionate Father, to forgive us our offenses. We know we are guilty in your book, with debts we can never repay. But please forgive those debts, even as we forgive others—even those who have offended and injured us. We ask for the same kind of pardon we are willing to extend to others.
And do not bring us into places of pressing temptation, where we would lose our integrity and our soul would be endangered. But if we must be tried, graciously rescue us from the power of the evil one, that he would not triumph.
We know you can do these things for your children, and we humbly trust you will, because yours is the universal kingdom, the fullness of almighty power, and the glory of infinite perfection. To you be the praise of all, forever.
Amen. So may it be. We sincerely and earnestly desire that you may be glorified and our prayers heard and accepted. Amen.
Philip Doddridge, “Our Lord’s Prayer,” in Piercing Heaven: Prayers of the Puritans, ed. Robert Elmer (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019), 14–15.
