The Lord’s Prayer (A Hymn)

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your Name/We bow in reverence for Your ways are not our ways/May Your kingdom come and Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven/And teach us today, our Lord, to pray, as our Savior prayed

Our Father in heaven, give us our daily bread/Your Word is our manna here in this wilderness/May our hungry souls learn to feed upon the Source of Life everlasting/As we trust Your will is to fulfill our deepest longings within

Our Father in heaven, forgive us our debts/As we forgive our debtors their trespasses/ May the depths of our Savior’s love for us incline our hearts towards repentance/And forgiven much may our response be to love like Him

Our Father in heaven, lead us in the right way/Lest our temptations entice us to stray/May the evil never overcome our Savior’s deliverance/ For Yours is the kingdom, the power and glory, forever Amen

I finished this song about a year ago and realized I needed to get it on the blog. It is the only hymn type song I’ve ever written and I can actually now say of one of my songs: it belongs in a worship setting.

I wrote this after attending a retreat where we focused on the Lord’s Prayer all weekend. The prayer, to be honest, was always very rote memorization for me. I learned it when I was young, and, depending on what church you attend, you may say it weekly! Because of that, it had gotten to the point that I didn’t think about the words I was saying – at least not very much.

After that retreat, I realized I wanted to write a song, and I had the opening line to the first verse, but even before the first verse ended, I realized I wanted it to be a hymn where every verse began with “Our Father, in heaven…” because that would remind me that each part of it is the Lord’s Prayer, and I can think of each piece of this hymn as I recite the Lord’s prayer: that He is in control of all things and we are to continually as for His will to be done. We are to be in a constant state of recognizing our need and dependence for His providence. We need to confess our sin, and be willing to recognize that confess and acceptance of His forgiveness should spark in us the response of forgiveness towards others. And, finally, in our struggle against evil, we should remember He is victor and rely on His power alone.

So much thought and Holy Spirit inspiration through His Word and His people went into this hymn and I’m privileged to sing it, and share it with you!