I am constantly amazed by the number of putative Christians who simply and stubbornly decline to pray the prayer given to His people by the eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ. They provide the excuse that a prayer delivered by rote will not be accepted by our heavenly Father. Yet, the fact of the Lord Jesus Christ's admonition "When you pray, say, 'Our Father...'" still stands (Lk 11:2). How do you navigate around it? What word or tradition could be used to remove from our vocabulary the words of the prayer delivered by Jesus for us to assail the throne of our dear Father? How could you supplant the specific precept of our Lord with your own ideas of what is good and right in the matter of prayer? In what way is that approach indicative of a submissive faith and confidence in the express words of Jesus, the eternal Word of God incarnate? Jesus specifically warns us against using our own human traditions to displace the express commands of His divine Word (Mk 7:9). Once we start down that path, we will be starting to invent our own religion wholesale. "Our own religion" is hardly the stuff of faith in Christ.

The myth of heart-felt, spontaneous prayer has a stubborn life. Yet what is it that Jesus says comes from the human heart? He says, "Out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person" (Mk 7:21-23). What comes from the heart may not necessarily be the holy and pious spiritual ruminations that we expect. Are we not better to learn by heart and pray from our hearts the very words that our Lord wants to hear because He has given them to us? We have the privilege of saying together with our Lord the prayer He has given. Putting His words in our mouths is a faithful thing. If we have turned His prayer into a rote repetition, that is to our own shame. That is our own abuse of His gracious gift. It does not nullify His gift. We cannot invalidate His command, "When you pray, say, 'Our Father...'"

"The evangelical precepts are nothing other than divine teachings. They are the foundations on which hope is built, supports to strengthen faith, nourishments for cheering the heart, rudders for guiding our way, and shields unto salvation. They instruct the submissive minds of believers on earth leading them to heavenly kingdoms. God willed many things to be said and heard by means of His servants, the prophets; but how much greater are those which the Son speaks, to which the Word of God, who was in the prophets, testifies with His own voice. He is not now asking us to prepare the way for His coming, but He Himself is coming and opening and showing us the way, so that we who have before been wandering in the darkness of death, without understanding and quite blind, now being enlightened by the light of grace, might keep the way of life, with the Lord for our ruler and guide.

"Among the rest of His salutary admonitions and divine precepts with which He counsels His people for their salvation, He also gave a form of praying. He Himself advised and instructed us what we should pray for. He who made us alive, also taught us to pray, with the same benevolence with which He condescended to give and confer all other things; in order that while we speak to the Father in that prayer and supplication which the Son has taught us, we may be the more easily heard. He had foretold that 'the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth' (Jn 4:23). He fulfilled what He here promised, so that we who by His satisfaction have received the Spirit and truth, may also by His teaching worship truly and spiritually. For what can be a more spiritual prayer than that which was given to us by Christ, by whom also the Holy Spirit was given to us? What praying to the Father can be more truthful than that which was delivered to us from the mouth of His own Son, who is the Truth? So to pray otherwise than He taught is not mere ignorance, but also sin; since He Himself has established, and said, 'You reject the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition' (Mk 7:9).