Why do we have the Lords prayer?

Answer 1

The Lords Prayer as it is known as is not actually a prayer. It was said by Christ as a lesson on how to pray. Man has taken it upon himself to use it as an actual prayer. In Matthew 6:9 we read "After this manner therefore pray ye:" Manner means "How something is done". In other words in this fashion will you pray. Nowhere does Christ say this is what you must say.

That said, the original question is "why do we have it," and the answer to that is: Because Jesus told the disciples they should pray, and they said something along the lines of "Oh, prayer, right, yeah, very good. Um, how do we do that?" and so he provided them with a model prayer. As noted above, he didn't necessarily intend for them to recite it word for word as if it were a magic incantation, though perhaps unsurprisingly it IS an awfully good prayer if you stop and think about what it's saying instead of just rattling it off by rote.