For years as a schoolboy, each morning my classmates and I all recited The Lord’s Prayer. In those school assemblies, I’m sure we all knew, or had a pretty good idea about, what the individual words meant, even weird ones like “trespasses”.

But as a seven year old, praying the words straight after a hymn, I seriously doubt I understood the radical brilliance of the prayer.

I knew it was the prayer that Jesus had taught, but what makes it special?

1. We acknowledge God as ‘father’

Jesus tells his disciples to call God “Our Father”. This may not seem odd to us becaused that’s what Christians have always done. But referring to God as a father seemed shocking to Jewish leaders in the first century.

Indeed, they plotted to kill Jesus, according to John 5:18, both because he was allegedly breaking the Sabbath but also because “he was even calling God his own Father”.

After all, it suggests closeness and informality, of being home with someone, rather than how you might refer to a king or ruler. Just imagine if you met King Charles III – you’d probably say: “Your Majesty”. While you might get a moment or two to talk to the monarch, most people meeting him as he tours, let’s say, your workplace or charitable endeavour, would never strike up an ongoing friendship with him.

On the other hand, “Father” signifies that we have been offered a personal relationship with God. It’s something close and enduring – a truly radical way of thinking of how we connect with an infinite creator.

2. It refocuses us on God’s will

High up in The Lord’s Prayer, before we get to any requests for ourselves, we put the focus on God’s will. We say, in the traditional wording:

thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.

“Prayer”, according to the Christian writer Philip Yancey, “is the act of seeing reality from God’s point of view.”

He says: “In prayer I shift my point of view away from my own selfishness. I climb above the timber line and look down at the speck that is myself. I gaze at the stars and recall what roll I or any of us play in a universe beyond comprehension.”

3. It urges us to trust in God’s provision

We might think that “Give us this day our daily bread” is simply an request to have food every day. In a country where huge supermarkets abound stacked with thousands of types of food, it can seem like a line that lacks relevance for most people.

But the words echo a bigger message from Jesus. In Matthew 6:31-33 (NIV), he says:

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Put our eyes on God’s kingdom rather than than even the basics is the message. That reliance on God’s provision can also be seen in the lines about protection from evil:

Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.

4. It rebalances our relationships with others

Now we come to some powerful words on forgiveness:

Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.

In Matthew 7:12, Jesus says: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets”. It echoes old testament teaching, such as Leviticus 19:18, which says: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself.”

People can hold grudges for decades and become obsessed by them, but Jesus is telling us to set them aside and forgive. Just as Jesus’s forgiveness of us is undeserved, so too our forgiveness of others should not be conditional on the other party meriting that forgiveness.

5. It acknowledges God’s sovereignty

The Lord’s Prayer traditionally ends with the words:

For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.

This isn’t in the early manuscripts of the bible, but makes it into the Authorised Version. And, in worship, it’s quite a powerful way of concluding the prayer with a reminder that ultimately all power is God’s and that he is sovereign for all time.