Bible Keys To Victorious Prayer

A little boy prayed for God to give him a new bicycle. He prayed every night. On the first night, he told Jesus “If you get me a new bike, I will never scream or yell again.” On the second night, he told Him “If you get me a new bike, I will be nice to my siblings forever.” On the third night, he told Him “If you get me a new bike, I’ll do anything you want!”

On the fourth night, the little boy was fed up with Jesus not answering his prayers. He took a statue of Mary, wrapped it in a blanket, and stuffed it in a closet and locked it. He told Jesus, “If you ever want to see your mother again, you better get me a new bike!”

OK, that’s a little humor to get us started, but I’m sure we all know that’s not how prayer works, amen? Thankfully, it’s so much more than that. The great British preacher Smith Wigglesworth once said that God is more eager to answer than we are to ask!

To set things up a bit, this teaching comes from Sermon on the Mount, which took place fairly early in Jesus’ ministry. Initially Jesus wanted this to be an intimate teaching with just Him and His disciples. This is why He took them up the mountain to get away from the crowd. Nonetheless, many people followed them there so they could hear the message too, so Jesus shifted gears and made the teaching more evangelistic in nature.

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

So here we have the first recorded teaching by Jesus on the subject of prayer. And what’s the first thing He tells us? Don’t be a hypocrite. Jesus always keeps it real, don’t you love that?

What we are going to do is to take a deep dive into the model prayer Jesus gave to us. We are going to look at what is commonly called “The Lord’s Prayer,” or as some prefer to call it, “The Disciples’ Prayer.” Either is appropriate.

The prayer uses a lot of imagery from the Old Testament, so many of the concepts would have been familiar to a Jewish audience. There are seven petitions in the Lord’s Prayer, three directed toward God and the remaining four dealing with humanity. What I want us to do is to dissect the prayer and see the underlying principles behind each part.

Matthew 6:7-13 NASB

“And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.

Do any of you have THAT relative? Someone asks Uncle Bob to do the Thanksgiving prayer and he goes on for half an hour and the food is cold by the time he’s done? Friends, your prayers are not heard because they are long and wordy.

From a practical standpoint, the quickest way to get into a rut in your prayer life is to just mindlessly repeat the same thing. That is religion, not relationship. What Jesus is teaching here is not necessarily to use this prayer as a word for word repetition every time we pray, although there are times when that would be appropriate, especially in a church setting. Rather, He is giving us a pattern to follow. Its a prayer that honors God, builds relationship and gets results, amen?

So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

But He still wants us to ask!

“Pray, then, in this way:

You know it, let’s say it together

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Matthew 6:9?-?13 KJV

So as I said earlier, the first three sections of the prayer are about honoring God. It starts with the beautiful expression:

“Our Father”

So notice the first step to take in prayer is to acknowledge relationship. First of all, notice the reference TO OUR Father. One of the major criticisms of modern Christianity is that it is too individualistic, and some of that criticism is valid. Certainly we are to have our own personal relationships with God, but we are each a part of a much larger whole. We are the family of God, the Body of Christ and that’s an awesome privilege! One of the characteristics of Jewish prayer was that it focuses much more on groups than on individuals and sadly we Christians have developed a tendency to stray from that. In the New Testament, the phrase “One another” is used over 50 times. “Love one another,” “serve one another, “” pray for one another. “