What to Pray For: Matthew 6:9-13 Tells You How
Short answer: When his disciples asked to be taught, Jesus gave them a pattern now called the Lord's Prayer. Matthew 6:9-13 begins with God: his name, his kingdom, his will. Only then does it turn to us: daily bread, forgiveness, and deliverance from temptation. So the answer to what to pray for is not a random list of wants. It is a reordered heart. God first, then dependence for today's needs, then a clear-eyed plea for mercy and guidance. That order is the point. If you want to know what to pray for, pray the categories Jesus himself supplied, slowly and honestly, and let them shape the requests you bring.
Jesus Gives a Pattern, Not a Script
Matthew 6:9-13 begins with a simple instruction: Pray like this. The Greek wording behind that phrase carries the sense of praying along these lines, in this manner. Jesus is not handing out a magic formula that earns a hearing by repetition. He is giving a shape, a set of priorities, a skeleton that the rest of Scripture fleshes out. When you pray the words themselves, you are praying Scripture, which is good. When you use the categories to organise your own honest words, you are doing what the pattern was given for.
Notice the setting. In Matthew 6 Jesus has just warned against praying to be seen by others. He says not to heap up empty phrases, because your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Then he says, Pray like this. The pattern is the opposite of performance. It is short, plain, and God-centred. Everything in it can be prayed by a child, a prisoner, a sick person, or someone with nothing left. That accessibility is deliberate. Jesus did not design prayer for the eloquent.
Many Christians find that the pattern loosens prayer rather than restricting it. You start with the address, Our Father in heaven, and that alone raises questions: do I actually relate to God as Father? Do I grasp that he is in heaven, above and beyond my circumstances? From there the pattern walks outward. The Lord's Prayer Explained: Matthew 6:9–13 Meaning works through the same verses line by line, and it is worth reading alongside this study if you want to slow down on each petition.
What the pattern protects us from is prayer that is entirely about us. Left alone, our prayers drift toward complaints, shopping lists, and crisis management. None of that is wrong, but it is incomplete. Jesus front-loads the prayer with God's concerns, which is not because God is needy but because we are forgetful. We need the reminder that our small lives sit inside a much larger story. Praying in this order is a discipline that reshapes desire over time.
Praying for God's Name to Be Kept Holy
The first petition is about God's reputation. Matthew 6:9 says, “Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.” This is not a wish that God would become holy; he already is. It is a prayer that his name would be treated as holy, by us and by the world. It is a prayer about reverence. Before we ask for anything for ourselves, we ask that God would be honoured, that his character would be recognised for what it is, and that our own lives would not drag his name through the mud.
This petition has a painfully practical edge. When a person who claims to follow Christ behaves dishonestly, cruelly, or hypocritically, the name of God is dishonoured in the eyes of onlookers. So praying this way is a request that God would keep us from that, and that he would correct us when we drift. It also means we should be willing to have our own reputation reduced if it means God's name is lifted up. That is a hard prayer, but it is a freeing one.
Throughout Scripture, God's name stands for his revealed character. To treat it as holy is to take him seriously rather than casually. That is why the pattern begins here rather than with our worries. If God is who he says he is, then our worries belong in a different light. We come to a Father who is in heaven, whose name is above every name, and we ask first that he would be honoured. Everything else in the prayer leans on that foundation.
You can pray this petition in your own words without changing its meaning. Something like: Father, help me to honour you today in what I say and how I treat people. Let the way I live point to you rather than away from you. Guard your name in my mouth, so that I do not use it carelessly or as a weapon. That is the same prayer, and it is a good place to begin every day.
Praying for the Kingdom to Come and the Will to Be Done
The second and third petitions move together. Matthew 6:10 asks for God's kingdom to come and for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Kingdom language is about God's reign, not a place on a map. To pray for the kingdom to come is to long for the day when God's rule is fully and visibly acknowledged, when injustice is ended, sin is judged, and every knee bows. It is also a prayer that his reign would advance now, in hearts and churches and communities.
Praying for God's will to be done is closely related. It is a request that his purposes would be accomplished in the world, and specifically in us. It is a surrender, not a resignation. We are not saying that whatever happens happens; we are asking that God would accomplish what he intends and that we would cooperate rather than resist. Jesus himself prayed something like this in the garden, which shows how costly such a prayer can become. It is easy to say and hard to mean.
Here is where the pattern becomes searching. If I pray for God's will to be done, I am implicitly asking him to expose and uproot the areas where I prefer my own will. That includes my habits, my money, my plans, my grudges. The prayer is dangerous in the best sense. It invites God to work in us before it invites him to work around us. Faithful Christians differ on how to read the timing of the kingdom, but the practical thrust is agreed: we ask God to rule, and we offer ourselves.
Someone struggling to know what to pray for often finds relief right here. Instead of guessing at God's precise plan for a decision, you can begin with this petition: Father, your will, not mine. Then make the request you actually have, honestly, and leave the outcome with him. This is exactly the confidence that 1 John 5:14-15 describes: “This is the boldness which we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he listens to us.”
Praying for Daily Bread, Not Next Year's Bread
After three petitions about God, the prayer turns to us with a single request for bread. Matthew 6:11 asks for our daily bread, the food needed for today. The request is modest and unembarrassed. It assumes that our physical needs are legitimate subjects for prayer. It also assumes dependence. Bread does not fall from the sky for most of us; we work for it. Yet even our ability to work is a gift, so petition is not laziness. Asking for daily bread is a confession that everything we have is received.
The word daily is significant. It matches the manna pattern in the wilderness, where Israel gathered only what they needed for the day and trusted God for tomorrow. Jesus later tells his followers not to be anxious about tomorrow. This petition trains that trust. In Philippians 4:6-7 we are told, “In nothing be anxious, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” The daily prayer and the command against anxiety belong together.
Bread, of course, can stand for more than food. We bring our real needs: rent, health, work, a strained marriage, a child who is wandering, a body that is failing. Jesus invites us to ask for what we need to get through today. Not a guarantee of luxury, not a promise that every desire will be granted, but a Father's care for the next step. The reason this is such a practical answer to what to pray for is that it keeps prayer honest about the present moment.
If you are unsure where to start, try naming your needs plainly and then adding the phrase for today. Father, I need enough work today. I need patience with this person today. I need strength for this one task. This is not a small faith; it is exactly the faith the prayer teaches. The requests are concrete, timely, and dependent, which is the posture Jesus is shaping in his disciples.
Praying for Forgiveness and for a Forgiving Heart
The fifth petition is the one that makes many people uncomfortable: forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. Jesus ties our experience of forgiveness to our practice of forgiving. That does not mean we earn forgiveness by forgiving others. It means a forgiven person is meant to become a forgiving person, and a person who refuses mercy has not understood the mercy they claim to have received. The order is grace first, then a changed heart that extends grace.
This is why the prayer is a daily prayer. We sin daily. Our need for cleansing does not end at conversion. Confessing specific sin by name is healthy, and pretending we have no sin is not. But the petition also makes us look outward. Who are we holding something against? Whose debt have we decided not to cancel? Praying this line sincerely often surfaces names we would rather avoid. That is not a reason to skip it; it is a reason to pray it slowly.
There is a difference between forgiving someone and pretending the harm was nothing. Biblical forgiveness releases the debt to God and refuses revenge. It does not always mean restored trust or restored relationship, especially where safety is at stake. Wise pastors make that distinction. But a heart that keeps score and nurses bitterness is not the heart Jesus describes in this prayer. So this petition is both a plea for cleansing and a request for a softened heart toward other people.
If you do not know what to ask, ask this: Father, show me the sin I am hiding, and show me the person I am refusing to forgive. Then act on what comes to mind. That is not a comfortable prayer, but it is a fruitful one. The Lord's own pattern puts forgiveness in the middle of ordinary daily prayer, which tells us it is not a rare emergency measure but normal Christian life.
Praying Against Temptation and for Deliverance
The final petition asks God not to lead us into temptation but to deliver us from evil, or from the evil one, depending on how the line is rendered. This is a prayer for protection and for a clear-eyed awareness of our own weakness. Jesus, who was himself tempted, tells his followers to pray that they would not fall. Notice who is speaking: the one who will shortly face the cross tells us to ask for strength, because the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
Some have found the phrasing difficult, since God does not tempt anyone to sin. The sense is closer to a plea not to be brought into a testing that overwhelms us, and to be rescued when we are. It is a prayer of humility, admitting that our willpower is not enough. It also reminds us that evil is real and personal, not merely an abstract force. Praying for deliverance is not superstition; it is asking our Father for help against an enemy we cannot beat alone.
Paul says something similar in Romans 8:26-27: “In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we don’t know how to pray as we ought. But the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which can’t be uttered.” Even our prayers for protection are helped by the Spirit. We do not need to have perfect words. We bring our weakness, and the Spirit carries it to the Father.
In practical terms, this petition means naming your actual temptations. Not vague ones, but the specific places where you are most likely to fall today: the conversation you are tempted to have, the website you are tempted to open, the anger you are tempted to vent. Father, keep me from that today. Deliver me. That is a faithful use of the final line of the pattern, and it is one of the most honest prayers a person can pray.
Praying for Others in the Manner Jesus Taught
The pattern is not only for us. It can be turned outward when we pray for other people. Colossians 1:9-12 shows Paul doing exactly that: “For this cause, we also, since the day we heard this, don’t cease praying and making requests for you, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” Notice how much of that is about God's will and wisdom, which are the very categories the Lord's Prayer places first. Paul's prayers for the church follow the shape Jesus gave.
So when you pray for a friend, you can pray that God's name would be honoured in their life, that his kingdom would advance in their family, that his will would be done in their decision, that their daily needs would be met, that they would know forgiveness and forgive, and that they would be kept from temptation. That structure is broad enough for almost any person or situation. It keeps our prayers for others from being purely about outcomes we want for them.
This is a useful discipline for spouses, children, pastors, and missionaries. Instead of only asking that things go well, we ask that God would be glorified and that the person would walk in his will, whatever that costs. That is a different kind of intercession. It is not less loving; it is more. It trusts God with the person rather than treating God as a means to our preferred result.
The disciples asked to be taught because they saw something in Jesus' prayer life. We are invited into the same school. When you do not know what to ask, the pattern answers with God's concerns first, then daily needs, then mercy, then protection, then the people around you. That is a full and faithful answer to what to pray for, and it comes from Jesus himself. If you want to go deeper on intercession for others, How should Christians pray when they do not know what to ask? A Biblical Guide is a helpful companion to this study.
Biblical fidelity check
What Matthew 6:9-13 establishes is a pattern of prayer given by Jesus to his disciples, with God's name, kingdom, and will as the first concerns, followed by daily provision, forgiveness, and deliverance. What it does not establish is a formula that guarantees a specific answer, a required number of repetitions, or a technique that compels God. It also does not teach that every request in this life will be granted as we asked. Scripture elsewhere says plainly that we ask according to his will, and that God's answer may be no or wait.
A common misreading treats the prayer as a ritual whose recitation earns favour, or alternatively treats it as a mere outline to be improved upon and never prayed. Both miss Jesus' words. The pattern is given to shape ordinary, honest prayer. Another misreading takes forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors as teaching that our forgiveness earns God's, which contradicts the gospel of grace. The prayer assumes forgiven people who then forgive, and the rest of the New Testament makes that order plain.
Other passages that speak to Matthew 6:9-13
Several biblical passages run alongside this prayer. Luke gives a shorter account and shows the disciples asking to be taught: The Lord’s Prayer Explained: Matthew 6:9–13 Meaning. Anxiety and petition are addressed together in Philippians 4:6–7 Meaning: Prayer, Anxiety, and the Peace of God, which pairs prayer with thanksgiving. When we do not know how to pray, How should Christians pray when they do not know what to ask? A Biblical Guide helps. And since prayer and thought are linked, see Philippians 4:8 Meaning: What Christians Should Think About.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Lord's Prayer a prayer I must repeat word for word?
No. Jesus gives it as a pattern. Praying the words themselves is entirely right, and many churches do so weekly. But the prayer was never meant to be a recitation that earns an answer by repetition. Matthew 6 warns against empty phrases. So you may pray the exact words, or use its structure to organise your own honest requests. Both are faithful. The goal is a heart that begins with God's name, kingdom, and will before bringing its own needs.
Does praying for daily bread mean I should not pray about big things?
Not at all. The petition establishes that ordinary, physical needs belong in prayer, but it does not limit prayer to them. Elsewhere Scripture tells us to make all our requests known, and Paul prays for knowledge of God's will in others. So bring the diagnosis, the prodigal child, the job loss. The point of daily bread is dependence, not smallness. We ask for today's need because today is where trust actually happens.
What if I pray and nothing seems to happen?
Scripture is honest about this. Prayers are sometimes answered with no or with a delay we cannot see. Paul was told no. The pattern itself asks for God's will to be done, which means we are not owed the outcome we prefer. Continue to pray, and continue to bring your requests plainly. Romans 8:26-27 says the Spirit helps our weakness when we do not know how to pray, so even a confused, unanswered prayer is held by God.
