LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY
Lord, teach us to pray! How did you learn to pray? Often, we learn by the examples of people around us. Some of us can think back to our earliest childhood memories and think of the simple prayers our parents used at the table and at the bedside. Others have learned from examples they heard at church or at school (if they happened to go to a Christian school)—or even radio or television. Others were taught to pray their first prayer by the person who brought them to faith, who may have lead them in a simple prayer in which they confessed their sins and their lost condition, expressed their trust in God for forgiveness and salvation for sake of Jesus who died and rose for them, thanked God for the gift of the Holy Spirit who brought them to faith, and asked God to continue to guide and bless them in their Christian journey until life’s end. Still others may have learned by trial and error as they read God’s Word and applied it to their daily lives. In addition, there are many good books on the subject that can teach a person the basics of prayer. There are also many devotional materials that contain fine examples of prayer, helpful for learning to pray. I suspect that for many who pray, many if not all of these things have influenced their prayer lives.
Why does a person want to learn to pray? One of the things that motivated the disciples to ask Jesus was that they saw Him pray often. He prayed on everyday occasions. As He was ministering to the crowds by teaching, preaching and healing, He would often go off by Himself afterward and spend hours talking with His Father. He also prayed on special occasions: when He was baptized, before he chose the twelve, before Peter’s confession of faith, when He was transfigured on the mountain, when the 72 returned from their mission, when He fed the 5,000, when He instituted the Lord’s Supper—and those agonizing hours afterwards when he awaited his betrayer. He prayed on cross itself, and He prayed when he ate with the Emmaus disciples after his resurrection. The disciples wanted to pray because they saw how important it was to Jesus—how much a part of his life it was.
The disciples also expressed a desire to receive the same kind of treatment John’s disciples did. It was common for religious teachers to teach their disciples a specific prayer that identified them as that person’s disciples. The twelve wanted a prayer that would identify them as Jesus’ disciples. Even to this day, the Lord’s Prayer is something that is almost universally shared by Christians wherever you go, despite the other differences that may separate us!
There was a deeper longing, however, than simply to imitate or identify with Jesus. We all have a part of us that longs to know God intimately and fully, even as He knows us. We want to be able to “walk with Him and talk with Him.” It is a sad longing that has been shared by humanity ever since we lost the ability to commune with him as our first parents did in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve could just talk to God whenever they wanted to, and He could also speak to them directly. They didn’t have to be taught to pray back then—it just came naturally. There was nothing in the way that hindered communication. What a tragedy that the last words ever spoken to God that way were words of blame that attempted to hide our own personal guilt for disobeying and rebelling against Him! Yet, somehow, Jesus demonstrated a closeness to God that the disciples had never seen before, and they wanted this for their lives.
Over the years we’ve learned to hide the longing to return to that kind of relationship with God. We either pretend it isn’t there, or mistake it as a longing for something else. But it’s a longing that can’t be satisfied any other way, and it’s a longing that most people—unless their heart has been completely hardened—still have. Our cry goes out, still today: Lord, teach us to pray!
The good news is that Jesus was glad to answer their—and our—request! He did three things for them: He gave them a pattern for prayer, a promise for prayer, and a partner in prayer.
1. THE PATTERN: The pattern Jesus gave them is known today as the Lord’s prayer. In the Gospel of Luke, we have a somewhat briefer version than in Matthew, but that’s not a big issue. What He gave them was not so much a word-for-word prayer for to recite, but an outline to shape their prayer lives around. The amazing thing is that in a few short phrases, Jesus managed to capture the essence of a truly vital life of prayer. Another amazing thing is that He was already actively engaged in doing the very things that he taught the disciples to pray about!
-“Father, hallowed be Your name.” Even when he was a boy, this was a major concern for Jesus. He asked his worried earthly parents, “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” “Abba” in his native tongue, or “Daddy” to us, expressed His own intimate relationship with His Father—a relationship of complete and total trust, as a young child has for his or her loving parent. As part of His work on earth in which He humbled Himself for us, Jesus made Himself completely obedient to His heavenly Father. Even more amazingly, by His work He reconciled us to God so that we could become God’s own adopted children, now able to call Him “Father” ourselves. Jesus described this reconciliation in the beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-31).
-“Your kingdom come.” Jesus said, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.” (Luke 4:43). He sent out his twelve disciples (Luke 9:1-6) and later the seventy-two (Luke 10:1-24). He said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (v. 2) Then he sent them!
-“Give us this day our daily bread.” The Gospel according to Luke demonstrates a special concern for the poor. Jesus said, “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.” He cared about people’s physical needs as well as their spiritual. With five loaves and two fish, he fed a crowd of over 5,000 people with twelve basketfuls left over!
-“Forgive us our sins.” Jesus was always forgiving people—much to the dismay of his enemies. He forgave a paralyzed man who was lowered to Him through a roof (Luke 5:17-26). He forgave a sinful woman who expressed special and costly devotion to Him (Luke 7:44-50). But the ultimate act of forgiveness took place on the cross when He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
-“Lead us not into temptation.” Jesus withstood an incredible amount of temptation during His earthly life, as we see in His forty-day temptation in the wilderness by the devil. He never gave in. He also prayed for Peter, that He might recover from Satan’s attacks (Lk 22:32).
From all of this it becomes clear that, for Jesus, the Lord’s Prayer is more than just words. It is the very pattern of his life! In giving us this prayer, He was giving us Himself!
2. THE PROMISE: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” God wants us to make all of our wants and needs known to Him in prayer. He promises that prayer makes a difference. Now, God knows what we need. Many times, He already has our prayer answered before we even say it! But that doesn’t matter. He wants us to pray about it anyway—with absolute confidence.
Hopefully, your wife already knows how you feels about her. So does your husband, or wife, or children, or parents, or friends. But that doesn’t mean you don’t tell them anyway! God wants to hear from us—if for no other reason than that He cares about us. By a daily life of prayer, we can—with God’s help—stretch our faith more and more and learn just how much He really does care about us.
Prayer is where what we learn in the Bible interacts with the events of our daily lives—prayer and faith are indispensable to each other. But only Jesus can give us the confidence we need to truly seek our heavenly Father in prayer. “…since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, the body, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith…” (Hebrews 10:19-22a)
3. THE PARTNER: Can you imagine how well you would learn something if you had a teacher who was willing to go with you everywhere you went, and be on the job 24-7? Of all the things we could pray for, there was one thing in Luke that Jesus singled out as a sure thing, a good thing that we can absolutely depend on for our Father to give us when we ask Him—the Holy Spirit! This is why Jesus could teach us a very simple prayer. He didn’t need to go into every detail, or explain how to pray in every possible situation, because he knew that he Holy Spirit would continue to teach us!
CONCLUSION: As we read and study and grow in God’s Word, may the Holy Spirit enable each one of us to grow in our prayer life. As we learn from the pattern, the promise, and the partner God gave us, may we find more and more the power of His grace at work in our lives as well! Amen.
