Along with the Lord’s Prayer, which we have been looking at in depth this month, many other Bible texts give us helpful insights for prayer in our everyday lives.

In his first letter to Timothy, for example, the apostle Paul urges prayer for “all people,” accenting the need to pray for “those in authority” over us. Behind this direction lies Paul’s conviction that God has placed our leaders in authority over us (Romans 13:1). Remarkably, Paul wrote these words during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, one of the most anti-Christian rulers of all time.

But the advice to pray for ­rulers, both good and bad, wasn’t new. More than 600 years earlier, the prophet Jeremiah urged the exiles of Jerusalem and Judah to pray for the “peace and prosperity” of Babylon, where they were taken as captives (Jeremiah 29:7).

When we pray for people in authority, we recognize God’s sovereign hand in our lives and our societies. We implore God to aid our rulers in governing with justice and equity so that everyone may live in the peace our Creator intended. By these prayers, we ask God to use us as his agents. Prayers for our rulers and leaders spring from our commitment to sharing Jesus’ love and mercy with our neighbors.

My brother often ends his text messages with “10-4.” Years ago, airline pilots in movies would signal the end of their two-way radio messages by saying “Over and out.”

When we end our prayers with “Amen,” are we merely signing off? No, the ancient Hebrew word amen has been translated into so many different languages that it has become a universally used word. This little Hebrew word packs a punch—it means “firm,” “true,” or “sure.” It’s like saying, “It is true!” “Right on!” “Make it so!” or “May it be so!”

Christians use “Amen” to affirm something. At the end of our prayers we assert that God absolutely hears and answers our prayers.

Jesus’ use of “Amen” signals another significant use of this word. In his teaching, Jesus often begins with the words “Amen, amen I say to you . . .” or, “Truly, truly I say to you . . .” In this way Jesus affirms that what he is saying is the truth.

So when we say “Amen” at the end of the Lord’s Prayer—or any other prayer—we confess that God will certainly hear and answer our prayers.

Rather than being a signoff, “Amen” is a sendoff of trust and assurance that God hears and answers us.

From the earliest days of the church, Christians have ended the Lord’s Prayer with the words “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” But those words are not in the earliest manuscripts of Matthew or Luke, so we don’t find them with the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples.

However, we do find something very similar in a prayer of King David from the Old Testament. Our passage today from 1 Chronicles 29 includes the lines “Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory. . . . Yours, Lord, is the kingdom. . . .” And we can easily see that these words make a fitting closing to the prayer Jesus taught.

What’s more, it was a standard practice to end prayers with a doxology—a declaration of highest praise. So, like other Christians throughout the cen­turies, we can declare this ­doxology with confidence and joy when we come to the end of the Lord’s Prayer.

These words remind us of the majesty, power, and glory of God, our Savior. They resonate in our hearts and assure us that God loves us, provides for us, and sustains the world he has made. They also point forward to the day when God’s kingdom will be fully known and all of creation will rejoice and praise his holy name forever.

With the request “Deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13, KJV), we implore God to keep us safe from the powers of evil. Some of our English translations describe this also as protection from “the evil one”—that is, Satan, or the devil.

Certainly “evil” and “the evil one” both threaten to undo us. As the book of Ephesians points out, the dark forces on earth and the evil powers in the spiritual realms are lined up against us.

In another passage, the Bible also warns that our “enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). We live in a world filled with terrifying enemies.

We should be just as horrified, though, by the evil that lurks in our own hearts, twisting us with greed, lust, envy, pride, deceit, and more.

In the face of our adversaries and of the sinfulness deep in our hearts, we can’t help crying out to God, “Deliver us from evil!”

And we can trust in God to help. By his Holy Spirit, we can be strong “in his mighty power” and be equipped with the spiritual battle gear we need to stand firm and to serve God with confidence.

The petition “Lead us not into temptation” (Matthew 6:13) has often confused people. It can be misread to imply that God leads us into temptation. But would God actually do that? No.

As we reflect on this petition, let’s be perfectly clear: God does not tempt us. Period.

But, as the book of James helps us understand, God does allow testing and trials. God tested Abraham, Moses, Job, and ­others. Jesus himself faced temptations in the wilderness, testing at the hands of religious leaders, and an unimaginable trial as he gave up his own life to pay the debt of our sins.

God allows testing and trials as opportunities for refining our faith. It’s not so that he can say “Gotcha!” or pounce on our failings or make accusations. Out of fatherly love, God can use trials and testing to nudge us along in our growth in faith as followers of Jesus.

When we pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” we’re humbly admitting our own weakness and tendency to stumble. We’re reaching out in sheer dependence on God. We’re asking him to guide and help us through every trial and temptation of life. We’re trusting and believing with all of our hearts that he will never leave us or forsake us but always love and protect us.

Do you know the phrase quid pro quo? It’s Latin, and it means “this for that”—or, in other words, “Do this for me, and I’ll do that for you.”

At first glance, that may seem to be the meaning of the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12), or “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us” (Luke 11:4).

And we might say, “Wait—aren’t God’s grace and forgiveness unconditional? If we must forgive to receive forgiveness, isn’t that a quid pro quo?” No. The Bible teaches that we are all guilty before God, and we can’t earn our forgiveness. Jesus stood in our place and bore the punishment for our sins on the cross. Through Jesus, we are made right with God, an act of pure grace. This indeed is good news!

We can’t earn our forgiveness, but the way we live shows how much we are open to being changed by the Lord’s grace. As we have been forgiven, Jesus calls us to show forgiveness toward people who sin against us. If we refuse to forgive others, we are stubbornly refusing to see that we ourselves need forgiveness.

When we pray, “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive . . .” it’s not “this for that” but more like “this out of that.” Because we are forgiven, we can show forgiveness to others.

This petition of the Lord’s Prayer has two versions. Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, “Forgive us our debts” (Matthew 6:12), and Luke quotes him as saying, “Forgive us our sins” (Luke 11:4). Either way, “debts” and “sins”—and also “trespasses”—describe how seriously we fall short before God and how much we need his grace.

The good news, thankfully, is that Jesus paid our debt of sin for us, and when we confess our sins in Jesus’ name, God forgives us.

So we might wonder, “If we have been forgiven, why does Jesus teach us to keep asking God for forgiveness?”

Well, the problem is that we still struggle with sin. Ultimately we are forgiven. But, like wayward children, we continue to make offenses each day—against God and against people.

So we must turn daily to our heavenly Father, seeking his compassion and nurturing care so that we can keep growing to become like his Son, Jesus Christ.

When we daily ask God to forgive us our sins, we are seeking to grow in honoring and serving him in the world.

Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us today our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). But is this request only about bread? While it is asking God for the food we need each day, it also covers having all our needs supplied by our loving Father in heaven. So this applies to all our basic needs for good health and well-being, recognizing that we depend on God each day for all good things.

We should note something important, though. While some people claim that behind the petition for daily needs lies a request for “spiritual bread,” that’s not the main point here.

We need food every day in order to live. Without nourishment, we die. As the feeding of the five thousand clearly shows, Jesus knows we need physical sustenance. When the crowds following him were faint with hunger, he satisfied them with an abundance of bread and fish.

Asking God for our daily needs shows that we also trust him to provide for us. With the daily sustenance that God graciously offers, we can delight in his bountiful goodness and be refreshed in our bodies to serve him and others with joy and gladness.

So the next time you’re about to take a bite of food, remember who provided it, give thanks to him, and use the energy gained from it for loving God and serving others.

“Whatever.” Maybe you’ve heard someone say this when they had to deal with something they didn’t like.

When we pray to God, saying, “Your will be done . . .” (Matthew 6:10)—is that like saying “Whatever” and throwing up our hands in resignation?

By no means! This petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” asks God to make our world as he originally intended it to be. It asks that our small, selfish desires be replaced by God’s expansive, good desires for all people everywhere. It asks that our world’s corrupt and grinding systems align with God’s just and blameless ways so that everything in creation can flourish.

When we pray “Your will be done . . . ,” we commit ourselves to participating in God’s good will for our lives and our world.

The best example of praying “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is in Jesus’ prayer on the night before his death. Facing a situation far worse than any of us could imagine, Jesus aligned himself completely with God’s will as he said, “Not as I will, but as you will.”

Jesus’ submission to God’s will has brought us eternal blessings. When we submit to God’s will, we also bring blessings to his world.

Jesus was the greatest preacher who ever lived. Do you know the main topic of his sermons? Jesus’ most important theme was to announce the good news of the kingdom of God. This captured the core of his teaching. He boldly announced that God had broken into human history and that through Jesus himself God’s rightful reign over creation, human history, and every human being had arrived. All of Jesus’ sermons, talks, and healings revolved around this good news of God’s kingdom coming.

When we pray the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10), we long for God’s rule to be more fully realized in our world. We ask God to show everyone who he is through his Word and through his Holy Spirit. We ask that the church, his children throughout the world, may prosper and grow. We ask God to push away and protect against any power that works against his good will.

Jesus announced that the kingdom has come, but we’re still waiting for the kingdom to come fully. How do we know that will happen? We know because Jesus has risen from the dead, has ascended to rule in heaven, and will come again to bring his kingdom fully on the earth (Revelation 21-22).

In all our work and prayer today, the longing for God’s kingdom should be in our hearts and on our lips as we pray, “Your kingdom come.”