Dear Gramps,

How come the Lord’s Prayer as recorded in the New Testament and the Book of Mormon contains no expression of thanks or gratitude? We are taught this is to be a model for our prayers. Frankly, it has me somewhat confused.

Robert

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Robert,

The Lord’s prayer is a fascinating piece of scripture. The first thing that needs to be remembered is that Christ never intended it to be an actual prayer we are expected to utter, though we certainly can if we desire. In both the New Testament and the Book of Mormon he faced the same situation in having to introduce people to who the Father was. Up until that point, all prayers had been offered to Christ in heaven as Jehovah. But now, prayers were to be offered to Jehovah’s father…imagine the shock of this idea for a moment.

Placing myself in the shoes of those who heard these truths for the first time, I’d be amazed that the very God I prayed to was now telling me to pray to someone else in his name. I certainly would want to know how to properly go about such a task. Thus Christ gave the example of how to pray to Heavenly Father, instead of himself, in the dawn of the first Christian dispensation.

In other words, The Lord’s Prayer is less an example of all possible components of a sincere prayer as it is an essential tool Christ used to usher in the dawn of the first dispensation after the great Atonement had been completed. In the Old Testament he established it beforehand, and in the Book of Mormon he did so afterward, but the purposes in both cases are the same, to assure as solid a connection as possible between Heavenly Father and his deeply loved children here on earth.

Gramps