Prayer 101
Luke 11:1-13
The bookstores are filled now with books written to help the common individual understand topics that can be complicated. In one of my recent visits to a local bookstore I noticed something I had not seen before. On almost every topic you can imagine there was a book, the cover looked like this and there was one written for dozens and dozens of topics. They are called it the Dummies guide. There is also the Idiot’s guide. Each of the books are written by people who meet at least two criteria: they are experts in their chosen field and they are excellent teachers. They know how to take a subject that may be quite complicated and make it very simple. According to their websites there are hundreds of these kinds of books covering almost every topic you can imagine.
The disciples were learners. Jesus was the expert. Anything they needed to learn they could ask him. If you could ask Jesus to teach you about any topic what would it be? I might say Jesus teach me that walking on the water thing, I’m not a great swimmer or teach me how to raise someone from the dead. There are some people I miss. Or teach me how to feed a lot of people with very little food maybe we could take care of the hunger problem in the world.
The disciples came to Jesus and simply said, “Lord teach us to pray.” With all of the information that was available to them why would they do that? Simple. Because prayer can absolutely change everything.
The disciples seem to have waited a long time to ask Jesus to teach them to pray. We believe this was two years into his public ministry when they ask this. They have watched him praying in every circumstance of life. They had seen him taking time to be alone to pray. They now understood that everything Jesus did was completely guided by prayer. And perhaps as they watched him pray it made them realize how little they knew about prayer.
This prayer is given to us as something like a blueprint. Here is what I mean. The Lord’s prayer was given to show the disciples how to pray, how to go about praying but understand this: there is a difference between saying the Lord’s prayer and praying the Lord’s prayer. This prayer was given to show us how to pray not just the words we should use. So we have to stop and answer the question, did Jesus intend for us to repeat this prayer verbatim; Word for Word? I believe the answer to that question is no and there are several reasons why...
First of all this prayer is recorded twice in Scripture and the wording is different in each one. If Jesus was giving us a prayer to memorize and then recite it then the words would not be different. Also, notice that the disciples said teach us to pray, not teach us a prayer. Then Jesus warned us against repetitive prayers. In fact in Matthew he says, “and when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathens do.” Then finally, this prayer is repeated nowhere else in the New Testament. We have no record of believers using this prayer in any other passage in the Bible.
Now if you choose to recite the Lord’s prayer, that’s a good thing because you will be reciting Scripture but I don’t believe that was the intention of Jesus- I believe it goes much deeper. There were some things that were brand-new to them about praying this way.
1. They were learning to pray on the basis of a new relationship. Now there was a partnership. He says our father in heaven. Jesus is telling us that it is very important that we always begin our prayer with the awareness that God is actually our father. What Jesus is teaching here is actually radical. This had never been taught before.
The word that Jesus used for father…there was nothing formal about it. It was the common Aramaic word a child would use-it was Abba…it was like using the word daddy. Everyone used this word but no one used it in connection with God. In every prayer Jesus prayed, we have a record of Him using this term. He used it more than 60 times. No one in the entire history of Israel had ever prayed like Jesus prayed. I have said before that some of you may have a problem with this because your idea of the word father is negative. Your father may have been angry, even abusive. One way to move beyond this is to think of God as being everything you ever wished for in a father. Make a list if necessary.
2. There was a new kind of respect introduced. We call it praise. He says pray hallowed be thy name.” To hallow something is to declare that it is holy and worthy of praise. When we pray hallowed be thy name, we are placing God on the throne of our heart. We are making his presence more real in our hearts.
3. There was a new priority in prayer. Now we are praying on the basis of God’s will. He says pray thy kingdom come. The first thing to consider here is this-what did Jesus mean when he taught us to pray for the kingdom to come? When we pray these words we are recognizing that God’s kingdom is not presently ruling on the earth. But when we say thy kingdom come we are also acknowledging that it will come sometime in the future. It is a specific event that will only happen once. In effect, you are asking for the second coming of Jesus to take place. When we pray this we are acknowledging the fact that God has the right to rule over all of mankind, including us.
4. Here He is speaking of God’s potential in our lives. This is a new form of submission. He says pray your will be done here as it is in heaven. I am convinced that millions of people have prayed these words one time or another without having any idea of God will; without any intention of seeing to it that God’s will is actually being carried out…. you must be willing to act on it, right now. See you’re not asking God to change his will, you’re asking him to help you know his will and then give you the ability to do it. The truth is that many of the problems in our lives can be traced to the fact that we think our will is God’s will. We let our will take over.
5. A New provision. He says give us this day our daily bread. Most of us have missed the importance of this because of the simple fact that when you woke up this morning…. for most of us it is not a matter of whether we will eat; it is a matter of what we will eat. This phrase reminds us that we are completely dependent on God for. If we were self-sufficient we would never need to turn anything over to Him.
6. This is on the basis of God’s ability to pardon. He says forgive us our sins. I believe this covers two areas: a prayer for God to forgive us and also it is a prayer that we will have a forgiving spirit. Jesus said if you do not forgive others, your father will not forgive your sins. All of us have sinned. Don’t ever think otherwise. The Bible says “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
Some of us may say, “well this individual hurt me so badly there is no way that I can ever forgive them.” There is a difference between not being able to forgive one and choosing not to do so. I know from personal experience what it means to be truly hurt by someone else’s actions and I suspect that every one of you do as well. If I were to ask you what the worst thing ever that was said to you or the worst words that have ever been spoken to you you would immediately know what that is. And you would immediately know whether or not you have forgiven them. And if you don’t forgive others, God will not forgive. Is it possible that right here we are touching upon one of the primary causes of unanswered prayer. When we do not forgive we place a roadblock in prayer life.
7. Now we are praying on the basis of God’s protection. He says and lead us not into temptation. Forgive us of our sins and help us not to do any new ones. We pray for God to “not lead us into temptation. We should know that it is not God who is leading us into temptation. God does not tempt us. James 1:13 says this “deliver us from the evil one.” When we use that phrase we are admitting that life can be a struggle and here is why:
• We have an enemy who opposes us every single day
• We do not know what dangers we will face daily
• Satan is the Prince of the air; the ruler of this present world
• He has evil spirits at his every command but know this….. Satan has no claim whatsoever over God’s children. In fact, according to Scripture he cannot tempt you without asking God first. He cannot hurt you without getting permission first.
We should be like the 3-year-old boy (that Paul Harvey told about) who went to the grocery store with his mother. Before they entered the grocery store she said to him, "Now you’re not going to get any chocolate chip cookies, so don’t even ask." She put him up in the cart & he sat in the little child’s seat while she wheeled down the aisles. He was doing just fine until they came to the cookie section. He saw the chocolate chip cookies & he stood up in the seat & said, “Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?” She said, “I told you not even to ask. You’re not going to get any at all.” So he sat back down.
They continued down the aisles, but in their search for certain items they somehow ended up back in the cookie aisle. The little boy said hey “Mom, can I please have some chocolate chip cookies?” She said, “I told you that you can’t have any. Now sit down & be quiet.” Finally, they were approaching the checkout lane. The little boy sensed that this may be his last chance. So just before they got to the line, he stood up on the seat of the cart & shouted in his loudest voice, “In the name of Jesus, may I please have some chocolate chip cookies?”
And everybody round about just laughed. Some even applauded. And, due to the generosity of the other shoppers, the little boy & his mother left with 23 boxes of chocolate chip cookies.
We ought always to pray and not give up…
