God's Prayer Agenda (Pt 1) Series

In our recent Discipleship Survey it was exciting to see that a majority of us here at BBC pray at least once per week. Some of you are pretty spiritual - over 40% pray at least 4 days a week!

But looking at this chart it also appears that a bunch of people still struggle with prayer. A quarter don’t pray at all! Many of us probably feel like we should pray more or that our prayers aren’t very effective. Why is it that we struggle so much with prayer?

For some, it’s simply life circumstances. A Pew Research survey found that daily prayer was highly co-related to not having kids! As a busy mum, Andrea really struggled with feeling spiritually dry when our kids were young. If you find yourself in that boat, go easy on yourself.

I’ve shared before how my experience of the Holy Spirit radically transformed my prayer life. It used to be dry and very difficult, but after what I can only describe as being filled with the Spirit, my prayer life, along with my whole relationship with God, came alive.

But I think another reason we struggle with prayer is knowing how to pray or what to pray for. We come with an agenda for our prayers, but have you thought that God has an agenda for how we pray!?

We’ve been discussing the Lord’s Prayer in our discipleship group and I’ve been struck by how rich it is. Jesus said, when we pray we are to “pray like this.” It sets out our Lord’s agenda for prayer, and we’re going to spend this week and next digging into it.

This week we’re focusing on vv.9-10.

[Read vv.9-10]

:OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN:

The first thing Jesus teaches us is how to address God, and it is radical. We can address God as ‘God’ or ‘Lord’. If I pray when I’m conducting a funeral I’ll often start with ‘Almighty God’ or something because most people there don’t know him. But Jesus invites us to address God not with a name or a formal title, but with a relationship — Father!

This is the beginning of God’s agenda for us in prayer, that we come as his children to their heavenly father.

In Romans 8:14–17, the apostle Paul expands on how this can be:

“For all those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!” The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” (CSB)

In John 3, Jesus told Nicodemus, ‘You must be born again.’ Through faith in Jesus we are born again by the Holy Spirit into this adoption as God’s children.

Someone has suggested that ‘Father’ is the Christian name for God. We don’t come to a God who is far away or who doesn’t care. We don’t have to placate Him or bribe Him to hear us. We come as children to their loving father.

If you struggle with prayer, friends, are you living in the reality of the new birth by the Spirit that makes this relationship real?

“Our Father is heaven.” Isn’t this just stating the obvious? Saying God is in heaven isn’t just about where He lives, it’s about His power and glory. We have this intimate relationship with God as Father, but He is also transcendent — far above us. Beginning in prayer not only begins with approaching God as father, but also remembering that our Father runs the universe. He is sovereign, He is powerful, and He is worthy of all glory.

So, in prayer, Jesus wants us to remind ourselves of who God is to us and who we are to him. You can have your prayer time completely sidetracked just by meditating on this address to God, and that’s a good prayer-time!

:YOUR NAME BE HONOURED AS HOLY:

Jesus wants us to linger a little longer on that name with, ‘Your Name be honoured as holy.’ As our Father’s children we should be concerned for his name.

If you’ve grown up with the Lord’s Prayer you may notice a change in language here. The old KJV and some more recent versions say “‘hallowed’ be they name.” I’ve never met someone who knew what hallowed actually means without it being explained.

‘Hallow’ is an old English word that translates the Greek for ‘sanctify’ or ‘make holy’ or ‘set apart as holy’. But God is already holy, we can’t make his name any holier than it is, so the CSB which I’m reading says, ‘Your Name be honoured as holy’, which I think is a pretty good translation. (We still use hallowed when we recite the prayer because everyone learned it that way.)