“…For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” (Matthew 6:13)
[In the “Our Father” Disciples Prayer] Our Lord teaches us to begin our prayers with a God first mindset and conclude our prayers with that same focus. We begin our prayers looking through the grid: “Your name be reverenced, Your Kingdom come,” and “Your will be done (in earth and) on earth, just as it is willed and done in heaven.” We are to conclude our prayers the same way.
Jesus wants us to conclude our prayers by making this commitment to our Heavenly Father: “Yours is the Kingdom.” By this confession, He means for us to pledge to God that the results of our Heavenly Father’s continuously answering our prayers will always belong to Him.
As we face challenges of life every day, we should be poor in spirit enough to confess that we need the power of God: “Yours is the power.” When I have entered into a challenging day, I have confessed this thousands of times in my journey of faith and ministry by saying, “I can’t, but He can.”
Finally, we are to conclude our prayers by confessing: “Yours is the glory.” When we apply this third providential benediction, we are simply confessing, “Because I didn’t but He did, all the glory goes to Him.” Jesus prescribes that we conclude our prayers every time we pray by making this solemn commitment to God: The glory for everything that happens in my life because You have answered my prayer(s), will always go to You.”
The essence of this benediction is: “Because the power always comes from You, the result will always belong to You, and the glory will always go to You.”
“Amen” simply means, “So be it.”
Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Prayer
Woooooaaah, this is lovely! In all my life that I have been taught to recite the Lord’s Prayer, no one has ever taught on it this way. Thanks Pst Woodward.