Having told them how not to pray, Jesus tells us how to pray, in the form of what we know as the Lord's prayer. This is often prayed verbatim in churches, but is also valuable as a pattern of prayer.
In follows the pattern of the ten commandments, with the first half being God directed, and the second half being man directed.
"Our Father ..." We are not praying to a distant and remote God, but to God our Father. One of the features of Jesus' teaching was His constant reference to God being our Father. Also He is our Father, not just my Father, not just your Father. Sometimes you can see how God can help you, or has helped you through a situation in the past. Yet when it comes to praying for someone else we can sometimes despair at how God can possibly help them. We need to remember that He is their Father as well. Anything He can do for us, He can do for them too. Even when we prayer on our own, we are praying as part of God's family.
"In heaven" does not mean that God is distant. Heaven is the place where God reigns, and Jesus preached that the kingdom of Heaven is near.
"Hallowed by your name". We should pray for God's name to be honoured, to be recognised as holy. It used to be that in this country God was largely respected. No doubt there was a lot of hypocrisy and nominalism, but there was still a respect of sorts for the name of God. Now, God is held in dishonour by most. We need to pray for this situation to change.
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