I.　The example of prayer given as a pattern by the Lord increases our seeking of the kingdom of the heavens asthe Father's heart's desire and affords us our need of the divine supply of grace to fulfill all the supreme and strict requirements of the kingdom of the heavens for the Father's good pleasure—Matt. 6:9-13:

A.　We need to pray for the Father's name to be sanctified—v. 9:

1.　To be sanctified means to be separated and distinct from all that is common—cf. Eph. 1:4.

2.　For His name to be sanctified, we should express Him in our living a sanctified life, a daily life that is separated from being common and is saturated with His holy nature—1 Pet. 3:15-16; Eph. 5:26; Heb. 12:10; 2 Pet. 1:4; cf. Ezek. 36:21.

B.　We need to pray for the Father's heavenly kingdom to come—Matt. 6:10a:

1.　Before his fall, Satan as the archangel was appointed by God to be the ruler of the world (Ezek. 28:13-14); hence, he is called the ruler of this world (John 12:31) and holds all the kingdoms of this world and their glory in his hand (Luke 4:6).

2.　In order for God's kingdom to come in its manifestation, we must live in the reality of His kingdom today, allowing Christ as the life-giving Spirit to rule within us so that we may have righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit—Rom. 14:17.

C.　We need to pray for the Father's divine will to be done on earth—Matt. 6:10b:

1.　For the divine will to be done on earth is to bring the heavenly ruling, the kingdom of the heavens, to this earth—cf. 8:9a; Rom. 5:17.

2.　The will of God is to have Christ as the replacement for all the offerings in the Old Testament so that we may enjoy Him as everything in living and practicing the Body life for the building up of the Body of Christ as the organism of the Triune God—Heb. 10:5-10; Rom. 12:2, 5; Eph. 1:5, 9-11.

D.　This prayer, as a pattern, cares first for God's name, God's kingdom, and God's will, and second, for our need—Matt. 6:11:

1.　These three things—the name, the kingdom, and the will—are the attributes of the one Triune God:

a.　The name is of the Father, because the Father is the source; the kingdom is of the Son; and the will is of the Spirit.

b.　To pray in this way is to pray that the Triune God will be prevailing on the earth as He is prevailing in the heavens.

2.　The Lord as our King does not want His people to worry about tomorrow(v. 34); He wants them to pray only for today's needs, for their daily bread,which indicates a living that is by faith.

3.　The kingdom people should not live on what they have stored; rather, they should live by faith on the Father's daily supply.

E.　In this prayer as a pattern we need to take care of our failures before God and of our relationship with others, asking the Father to forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors—v. 12.

F.　This prayer, as a pattern, cares for the kingdom people's deliverance from the evil one and from evil things—v. 13a:

1.　The kingdom people should ask the Father not to bring them into temptation but to deliver them from the evil one, the devil, and from the evil that is out of him.

2.　To ask the Lord not to bring us into temptation indicates our knowledge of our weakness—cf. 26:41; 1 Cor. 10:13.

G.　This prayer, as a pattern, concludes with the kingdom people's recognizing and praising reverently that the kingdom, the power, and the glory belong to the Father forever—Matt. 6:13b:

1.　The kingdom is of the Son, which is the realm in which God exercises His power; the power is of the Spirit, which carries out God's intention so that the Father can express His glory—cf. 12:28.

2.　This indicates that the prayer the Lord teaches us to pray begins with the Triune God, in the sequence of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and ends also with the Triune God, but in the sequence of the Son, the Spirit, and the Father.

3.　Thus, the prayer taught by the Lord in His supreme teaching begins with God the Father and ends also with God the Father; God the Father is both the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega—cf. Eph. 4:6; 1 Cor.15:28.

II.　In the performing of the miracle of feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, the Lord trained His disciples to learn from Him—Matt. 14:19; 11:29:

A.　To see the miracle of feeding five thousand with five loaves and two fish is easy, but to know the deep and great lessons of life that we have to learn from the Performer of this great miracle requires revelation—cf. v. 25.

B.　Matthew 14:19 says that He took the five loaves and two fish, and when He was going to bless them, He looked up to heaven:

1.　Looking up to heaven indicates that He was looking up to His source, HisFather in heaven:

a.　This indicates that He realized the source of the blessing was not Him; the Father as the sending One, not the sent One, should be the source of blessing—cf. Rom. 11:36.

b.　Regardless of how much we can do or how much we know what to do, we must realize that we need the Sender's blessing upon our doing so that we can be channels of supply by trusting in Him, not in ourselves—cf. Matt. 14:19b; Num. 6:22-27.

2.　His looking up to the Father in heaven indicates that as the Son on earthsent by the Father in heaven, He was one with the Father, trusting in theFather—John 10:30:

a.　What we know and what we can do mean nothing; being one with the Lord and trusting in Him mean everything in our ministry—cf. 1 Cor. 2:3-4.

b.　The blessing comes only by our being one with the Lord and trusting inHim—cf. 2 Cor. 1:8-9.

3.　The Lord did not do anything from Himself—John 5:19; cf. Matt. 16:24:

a.　We should deny ourselves and not have the intention of doing anything from ourselves but have the intention of doing everything from Him.

b.　We need to continually exercise our spirit to reject the self and live by another life, by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ—Phil.1:19-21a.

4.　The Lord did not seek His own will but the will of Him who sent Him—John 5:30b; 6:38; Matt. 26:39, 42:

a.　The Lord rejected His idea, His intention, and His purpose.

b.　All of us should be on the alert for this one thing—when we are sent to do some work, we should not take that chance to seek our own goal; we should go only seeking the idea, purpose, aim, goal, and intention of our sending Lord.

5.　The Lord did not seek His own glory but the glory of the Father who sentHim—John 7:18; 5:41; cf. 12:43:

a.　To be ambitious is to seek our own glory—cf. 3 John 9.

b.　We need to see that our self, our purpose, and our ambition are three big destroying "worms" in our work; we must learn to hate them.

c.　If we are always going to be used for the Lord in His recovery, our self has to be denied, our purpose has to be rejected, and our ambition must be given up—Matt. 16:24.

C.　After performing the miracle, the Lord went up to the mountain privately to pray—14:23; cf. Luke 6:12:

1.　The Lord did not remain in the issue of the miracle with the crowds but went away from them privately to be with the Father on the mountain in prayer:

a.　The word privately is very meaningful; this means that He did not let people know He was going to pray.

b.　The Lord compelled the disciples to leave Him in order that He might have more time to pray privately to the Father—Matt. 14:22-23.

c.　He needed to pray privately to His Father who was in the heavens, that He might be one with the Father and have the Father with Him in whatever He did on earth for the establishing of the kingdom of the heavens.

2.　The Lord told us, "When you pray, enter into your private room, and shut your door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will repay you"—6:6:

a.　When we pray with others, we cannot enjoy the Lord as deeply as when we pray to the Lord privately; the kingdom people must have some experience of prayer in their private room, contacting their heavenly Fatherin secret, experiencing some secret enjoyment of Him, and receiving somesecret answer from Him.

b.　The self enjoys doing things in a public way, in the presence of man; the self loves to be glorified, and the flesh loves to be gazed upon.

c.　If we pray every day without telling others or letting them know about it, this means that we are healthy and that we are growing; if we always tell others how much we pray, we will not only lose our reward but also not grow in life or be healthy—cf. 13:6.

3.　We have to learn to leave the crowds, our family, our friends, and the saints in the church to go to a higher level on a "high mountain," separated from the crowds, to be with the Father privately and secretly to have intimate fellowship with Him.

4.　The Lord's going up to the mountain privately to pray indicates His asking the Father to bless all those who had participated in the enjoyment of the issue of the miracle so that they would not be satisfied with the food which perishes but that they should seek for the food which abides unto eternal life—John 6:27.

5.　His going up to themountain privately to pray also indicates that He wanted to receive of the Father some instruction concerning how to take care of the five thousand people who were fed by His miracle.

6.　These lessons are intrinsic, deeper, and of life; we need to learn these living lessons from the Lord so that we can enter into the God-man living.