Teach Us To Pray

Teach Us To Pray

24 July 2022

Richardson TX

“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” That is the first line of the first prayer I can remember being taught. The earliest writing was found in a Protestant Monastery from the 1690’s. It’s a rather simple; only 4 lines. I remember when I was a little boy, my mom knelt down beside my bed teaching me the prayer. And we taught the same prayer to our son when he was just small also.

I’m betting that was a similar first prayer for a lot of us. Teaching to pray is something that is just common amongst parents of Faith.

Like any good parent, our Father teaches us to pray just like our moms and dad did. And, that is exactly what Jesus does in the Sermon on the Mount. For a very simple prayer in his teaching, it is filled with so much complexity. I know this was in our scriptures sent out earlier, but it really deserves a very close look because every sentence can be the basis for a sermon in of itself.

1 Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

This opening is setting the tone for our petition to the Lord. We first acknowledge that God is our Father. He is our creator and without him, we would have never existed. And, when we say his name, we must say it in reverence. “Hallowed be thy name”. He is holy. He is set apart. It is reiterated in Revelations 4 where it tells us that around the Throne in Heaven, angles sing non-stop ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.” And in a subsequent verse it reminds us God made all when tells of the 24 Elders who say:

“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”

So yes, setting the tone is important. We do not approach like the entitled child yelling “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” We approach with reverence.

The next line in the prayer is:

Thy Kingdome come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

When we look at this line, we are asking for God’s will to be done. It is God’s plan we should be asking for. He is the ultimate wisdom, and with His will, we are surely to be on the best path. If we truly understand this line, the we should understand that sometimes the answer to our prayer is “no”. Think of how may times in the past you prayed for something and then when looking back, realized it wasn’t what you ever wanted in the first place.

Did you ever watch the move Bruce Almighty? In the movie Bruce, Jim Carrey, thinks he can do better than God, so God lets him give it a try. When Bruce decides that every prayer should be answered with “yes” the results were disastrous. Everyone won the lottery, and it was split thousands of times so nobody really won anything.

Someone lost 45 pounds on the Krispy Cream diet. And then riots ensued. Ok, maybe the donut diet would be cool…

Sometimes God needs to say “no” or “not yet”. What if answering your prayer is at the expense of another. If you got the promotion, somebody lost out. If you won the lottery, would you ever have learned from the struggle? I don’t know why some prayers, such as healings don’t get the answer we want, but I have faith that God knows what is in our best interest.

Next in the prayer we say “Give us this day our daily bread”.

We ask God to provide our sustenance. In verse 26 of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says

26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

How many of us really have the faith to fully fall back. How many of us have been spending the last few decades saving in our 401’s, building equity in our houses, all while worrying “will this be enough?” Do we truly have the faith to not worry? To know that God will take care of us? To know that with faith he will “give us our daily bread”. And that to those who were given in abundance, we are expected to be the answer to another’s pray by sharing the wealth.

Now we come to what I think is the hardest part:

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.”