[OBW]

But the prayer we were taught by Jesus was simply "Our Father in heaven . . ." It never once mentioned Jesus or the Spirit. Yet it stands as the scriptural pattern for prayer.

Don't presume that Jesus "couldn't" anything. That is a presumption that fits with someone's insistence that we really should rewrite it into "Lord Jesus now living within us." That he is in us is a certainty. A truth. But it is not to "within us" that we pray. It is to the God of the universe. We like the hominess of it. But when Jesus laid out that prayer, it was not simply homey. It was solid. It spoke of God's kingdom and his existence outside this sphere. It begged for help. It plead for forgiveness. It admonished us to likewise forgive (a link to "love your neighbor"?). It reminded us that we are frail and easily are tempted. And then closed by ascribing all that was worth anything to God.

Are we not sure that any insistence on how we pray (differently from what is recorded for us) is little more than some kind of human preference?

Yes Jesus said to "ask it in my name." But he did not insist upon a prayer to the Spirit, or to himself. Only to God. And when named, only to the Father.

I do not insist that we do not pray in those ways. But I find no basis in the heart of the NT revelation to insist on it either. Or to suggest that there is a lack in prayers that don't.

As to the "heart of the NT revelation," it is not Paul's writings, but the gospels. I return once again to the Hebrew saying "God spoke (referring to the Pentateuch and some of the prophets); all else is commentary, and apply it to the NT. The Gospels are God's speaking. Jesus spoke and acted. The rest is commentary. Important, but of different substance. It is to show the application of God's speaking. (That is God's speaking through the Son.) Surely God spoke what was to be recorded in the epistles. But it is verbose discussion of what was already laid out directly through Jesus words, coupled with the words of God's promise to Abraham and to others along the way. I find none of them instilling a new way to pray.