Matt Maher showcased “The Lord’s Prayer” in an entirely new light when he recently put a melody behind the words of Jesus to create “The Lord’s Prayer (It’s Yours).” In its original form, “The Lord’s Prayer” is found in two places in the Bible: first in Matthew 6, as part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and again in Luke 11 as Luke recounts how Jesus taught the disciples to pray. During his pivotal three years of ministry on Earth, Jesus gave us the blueprint for prayer, ultimately encouraging us to surrender our greatest needs and deepest desires to God — “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Maher’s latest makeover of the passage, often recited and/or sung in churches around the globe each week, made us remember other musicians before him who dared to put their own spin on what was once simply a liturgical reading for many formal traditions of faith. A deep dive into the canon of Christian music revealed that countless artists from a variety of musical genres have recorded a version of what is now considered one of the greatest “hymns” of all time, written by Jesus Himself. The lyrics hit a nerve so universal that the song crosses lines between secular and sacred and belief and unbelief. Here are 10 artists who have set “The Lord’s Prayer” to music.
“As It Is In Heaven” by Michael W. Smith (1995)
Like much of the preliminary work from Michael W. Smith, 1995’s “As It Is In Heaven” started with a solid bed of piano, drums and guitar before escalating into a full-fledged musical opus, complete with a chorus of tribal voices. Suddenly, what began as a brooding take on “The Lord’s Prayer” exploded into a celebratory invocation open to the world with Smith’s distinct vocal leading the way. His decidedly ’90s version of “The Lord’s Prayer” hails from one of the 45-time GMA Dove Award winner’s seminal albums, “I’ll Lead You Home.”
