Jesus gave this prayer in answer to a request for instruction. It is short enough to memorise in an afternoon and deep enough that people have written books on single lines. Here is what each part asks.

Our Father in heaven

Two things at once. Father: the relationship is familial, not bureaucratic, and you may come as a child rather than as a petitioner. In heaven: he is not your equal or your possession. Take away either half and prayer goes wrong — sentimental without the second, cold without the first.

Note also the first word. Our. Even prayed alone, this prayer places you among other people.

Hallowed be your name

A request that God be honoured as he deserves — in the world, and in the person praying. It is deliberately first. Prayer that begins with our needs tends to stay there.

Your kingdom come, your will be done

Not a wish for the world to end but for God to reign here, on earth as in heaven. It is a request that things become as they should be, and it commits the person praying to want that even where it cuts across their own plans.

Give us today our daily bread

Only now do needs appear, and they appear as bread: ordinary, physical, sufficient for today. Not wealth, not next year. It sanctifies asking for practical things and quietly limits how much we are taught to ask for at once.

Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors

The most uncomfortable line, because it links the two. It does not say we earn forgiveness by forgiving; it says a heart unwilling to release others has not yet grasped what it is asking to receive.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

An admission of weakness. Not make me strong enough for anything, but keep me out of what I could not survive. There is more realism in that request than in most of our resolutions.

How to use it

Two ways. Pray it as it stands, slowly, which is what most Christians in history have done. Or use it as a frame: pause at each line and fill it with your own situation — your own concerns under daily bread, your own grudges under forgiveness.

Used that way it solves the beginner problem of not knowing what to say, because it tells you what to say next. A daily passage alongside it helps; ours is at daily readings.