Luke 11:1-13 Every little Lutheran knows that
prayer is “speaking to God in thoughts and words” but during my years as a
pastor, questions about prayer come up more than just about anything else. “Pastor…
What should I pray for in this or that
situation? How can I know I have
received God’s answer? Is it o.k. to
pray for certain things and outcomes?
What can I do to have a more consistent prayer life? How can I learn to truly pray: “Thy will be done”?
Prayer is the most
basic spiritual practice of the child of God, it really is the simplest thing
to do, and yet we continue to have questions and concerns about our life of
prayer.
And so the Lord
speaks to us in his Word today, and invites us to join the circle of disciples
as they listen to him and learn more about our life of prayer. The Bible says:
Jesus was
praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said
to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
Jesus
was a man of prayer. Throughout the
gospel accounts of those first-hand witnesses of his life, Jesus is shown
praying-- again and again.
He attended the
synagogue on the Sabbath-- and he travelled to the temple for the high holy
days—but public worship was not the whole content of his spiritual life—he was
also a man of personal, private prayer.
He was God in
human flesh—his messianic mission was vital—the press of human need was
constant—and yet Jesus always made time for prayer. His prayer life was so deep and so profound
that it made a powerful impression on all those who knew him-- and they wanted
the same kind of prayer life for themselves—and we should too.
Our attendance at public
worship is important and there is no substitute for it—but it is still insufficient—all
by itself-- to give us all of the spiritual benefits and blessings that the
Lord wants to bestow upon us as his children.
Many of those come through private, personal prayer which is why we join
our voice to the disciples and ask Jesus to teach us to pray. Jesus answers, “When you pray, say: “Father…”
That we can address
the living God of the universe as “Father”-- is the most important thing that
we are going to learn about prayer. It
is the foundation for our life of prayer.
God is truly our Father and we are truly his children and that
relationship exists ONLY because of Jesus Christ.
The Bible is
perfectly clear: our access to God—our
confidence to come to his throne and ask him for what we need—comes only in one
way—and that is through Jesus. His death
and resurrection has opened the way for us to be restored to what we were
created to be—and that is God’s children through faith in him.
That is what it
means to pray in Jesus’ name—not as a magical formula—but in firm faith that
God really is my Father and I really am his child on account of Jesus and so we
can go to him and ask him for what we need just as children go to their earthly
fathers. And so what should we ask for? Jesus says:
Father, hallowed be
your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive
us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.”
Out
of all of the things that Jesus teaches us to ask for in prayer—only one of
them pertains to material things—and that petition (for daily bread) is for the
basics of life.
I think it’s fair
to say that most of our prayer requests are about material things and earthly
blessings—our jobs and our finances and our families—and there is nothing wrong
with asking for these things. But God’s
priorities for us are first and foremost-- and ultimately-- spiritual.
Our salvation is
what God is most concerned about and so our prayer life ought to take on those
same priorities: 1. that his name would
be made holy through what we say and how we live our lives and what is taught
in our congregations—2. that we would do our part to bring about his kingdom by
making sure that we remain in the Christian faith and raise our children in the
Christian faith and support the mission of the church—3. that we would abide in
his forgiveness and because he has forgiven us—we would be forgiving of others--and
4. that the Lord would guide our steps each day of life’s journey to preserve
us in faith and keep us from times of temptation and bring us safely to our
heavenly home.
The spiritual priorities of the Lord’s
Prayer are a wonderful corrective to our prayers that are often times filled
with things that only matter for the here and now.
Every earthly,
material, temporal petition has to be prayed:
Thy will be done—but these spiritual petitions of-- hallowing God’s name
and advancing his kingdom and living in forgiveness and avoiding temptation--can
be prayed for with absolute confidence because God himself has promised them to
us. Jesus tells a little parable that
exemplifies the boldness that we ought to have when we pray:
“Which of you who has
a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three
loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to
set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is
now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you
anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because
he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give
him whatever he needs.
In
the ancient world, bread was baked as needed.
For the friend’s needs to be met, the man in the home would have to get
up in the middle of the night, remake the fire, warm the oven, mix the dough
and bake the bread. And not only would he
do that—he would give his friend whatever else he needs. Jesus says that this kind of overwhelming
generosity that can imposed upon at the most inconvenient times really exists
between us and God.
Jesus’ point is
this: We are not bothering God with our
prayers. We are not inconveniencing
him. We are not asking for more than he
can deliver. He is our Father and we are
his children and there is NOTHING that we cannot talk to him about in
prayer—for he has promised to hear and answer our prayer. Jesus says:
Ask, and it will
be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to
you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the
one who knocks it will be opened.
In
Luther’s Small Catechism, the question is asked: Why do we pray? And the answer is: Because God commands us to pray and promises
to hear us. God wants us to be people of prayer—he wants us to talk to him in prayer and he desires that we would
listen to him as he speaks to us in his Word.
And to assure us that we are not just speaking to an empty cosmos or
engaging in an exercise of futility—he promises
to hear our prayers.
You hear people
say “Well, there’s nothing left to do but
pray.” But for the child of God,
prayer is not a last-ditch effort when everything else that we have tried has
failed—it is the first, middle, and last thing we do in an on-going
conversation with our heavenly Father.
Prayer is not an act of futility—but of faith.
We have Jesus’
promise that “asking we will receive and seeking we will find and knocking the
way will be opened unto us”. But does
this mean that if you and I ask the Lord for the winning lottery tickets he is
bound to give them? No. He promises something infinitely more
valuable: the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus says:
What father among
you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a
serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who
are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will
the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
All
of us have enough sense to give our children good things. None of us would intentionally give something
to our child that would harm them. And
that is not just true of Christians but of all people—even unbelievers. And if this wisdom is true of us as parents—how
much more is it true of our heavenly Father!
God is good—good
beyond anything else than we can imagine—good beyond comparison to anything
else that we call “good”. He has
demonstrated his goodness to us once for all in the gift of his Son. The Bible explains it like this:
He who did not spare
his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously
give us all things?”
The God who gave
his Son for us is our Father—that we believe this is because he has also given
us the Holy Spirit—the presence of God in our lives who is the down-payment—the
earnest money—the guarantee-- that all of the riches and wonders of God are
also ours in Christ Jesus.
THAT is why we can
pray “Thy will be done” with perfect
confidence for our lives and for our families and for everything and everyone
that we care about.
We know what God’s
good and loving will is towards us, because by the power of the Holy Spirit, we
know his Son Jesus as our Savior. God
has already done that for us and so, as we pray for our daily needs, we can be
confident that in all things—no matter what they are—God is graciously answering
our prayers FOR OUR GOOD.
The lessons that
Jesus teaches us today concerning prayer are lessons that we will need to learn
again and again over the course of our lives but they are only learned as we
begin to be people of prayer. May God
grant this to us all for Jesus’ sake!
Amen.
