Lord, Teach Us To Pray

Lord, Teach Us to Pray

Luke 11:1-13

The Christian life is to be one of prayer. And as much as we know this, we seem to have so much trouble praying. The question presented to Jesus is one we all ask. We stumble around and try to pray. We go through a list of names of people to pray for and conclude “in Jesus name, Amen.” We read prayers from others. We know we ought to pray, yet we are unsatisfied. We see when a great tragedy happens on the news and say: “Our thoughts and prayers go with you.” Yet these words seem so hollow. Our critics say we ought to stop praying and start doing. How do we deal with this? Let us take a look at Jesus’ response to this request.

The passage starts with Jesus finishing his prayer in a certain place. Why would Luke include “in a certain place?” What does it add to the text? Is there a certain place to pray? In Matthew, Jesus tells us not to make a public spectacle of praying but instead pray in the closet. But Jesus is in public praying here. It does not record what Jesus prayed. I suppose we would like to know that also. Perhaps Luke’s “some place” is generic in the sense that “any place” is the proper place to pray. It does not need to be in church or temple or at a particular time or such.

The prayer Jesus prays here is shorter, but otherwise similar to the one He taught in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. Some try to say that it was the same recorded prayer of Jesus which Matthew places in one context and Luke another. Some say that Matthew composed the Sermon on the Mount as a summary of Jesus’ teachings. The contents of the sermon pop up in various places in the Gospel of Matthew. In Luke we see segments of the Sermon on the Mount also. Part of it is in chapter 6, some here and some elsewhere. However, anyone who has preached any length of time recycles ideas from previous sermons. The fact that the two accounts of the Lord’s prayer are not identical indicates that they are similar but not identical prayers spoken at different occasions. These are the words of Jesus which are faithfully recorded here. They are two separate prayers with two separate applications.

The prayer here starts with the simple “Father” rather than “Our Father, which art in heaven.” Jesus does not add the adjectives “our” and “heavenly.” In either case, “Father” is the central term. Calling God “Father” places the believer in the context of being part of God’s family. But one has to be in relationship with God to call Him “Father.” Not everyone, by any means, is a child of God in this sense. This prayer does not promote the universal fatherhood of God. Not everyone is comfortable of calling God by the familiar term, “Father,” for different reasons. Judaism had a hard enough time calling Yahweh by the generic term “God”, substituting the term “under heaven” as a work around. And if Jesus used the Aramaic “Abba” here which means “Pop” or “daddy”, this would have been shocking for the Jews view of the absolute transcendent sovereignty of God. Yahweh was “up there”, “way up there.”

The use of “Father” is actually the perfect blend of the ideas of transcendence and immanence. God is both above us and with us at the same time. His name is to be hallowed as He is a holy God. He is a member of the family. But He is the head of His family as well. His is Lord and we who are in covenant relationship with Him by faith in Jesus are privileged to be part of this family. So prayer begins with a reminder of who God is to and for us. We are petitioning a personal and sovereign God.

The adoration of God is followed by the first petition which here is “Your kingdom come.” This adds further information to who God is. He is a king and He has a kingdom. This should make us pause to think exactly what “kingdom” means. We don’t have many kings on earth today, and many like Queen Elizabeth are figureheads. This does not mean they can’t have influence but that their reign is mostly moral and ceremonial. Also when we think of kings, we think of someone who rules over a country. Kings and queens rule for a period of time and then die. They are replaced by another monarch. But when we think of God, He rules over all forever. His power is limitless. But there is also a privileged part of the kingdom as well. We are His subjects who believe on Jesus which means that He cares and protects us. This is the obligation of the monarch. When we pray to God, this is He whom we pray to. Our God is both willing and able to hear our prayers. Prayer would be mere wishing if God is willing and not able. It would be just as bad if God is able and not willing. God hears our prayers as a Father and answers them as a king. We must remember that He has an eternal plan for us. This means that He answers our prayers according to His will and plan for us and the universe. We must believe that He answers them for our best long-term interest, even when we do not know what that is.