TEXT: Luke 11:1-13

SUBJECT: Luke #44: Teach Us to Pray

How’s your prayer life?

If you’re like most believers I know, it’s not too good. You believe in prayer, but your day is so packed with other things, you cannot find much time for it. When you do find the time, you’re so tired or distracted that your prayers are mostly mumbled and without any real thought or passion for God and His glory. Then, there’s the problem of the Lord not answering your prayer. You’ve prayed about something important, you’ve prayed with feeling and consistency, and you believe He’s going to give you what you want, but He doesn’t.

Many Christians are very discouraged about their prayer lives and they want help. Do you feel this way? If you do, then you ought to listen to today’s story. It begins with someone just like you. He’s a disciple of Jesus Christ who doesn’t know how to pray! He admires the Lord’s prayer life, and he wants to know how He does it.

How does the busiest Man in the world find time to pray? And how does the Man—who prays all the time—keep his devotions fresh and lively? And most of all, why does God answer Him so consistently?

The man wants to know and the Lord is happy to tell him. He does not give a complete theology of prayer--because the man doesn’t need one! What he needs is a place to start. And unless your prayer life is far better than mine, it’s what you need too.

What the disciple said long ago, we need to say—and keep on saying: "Lord, teach us to pray".

The Lord gives a model prayer. I use the word, "model" because your prayers ought to be modeled on it, though you don’t have to recite it word-for-word. Is it wrong to recite the Lord’s Prayer? Of course not! I find it very helpful in my devotions; many others have as well. But don’t let your prayers become nothing more than that. In short pray your prayers and don’t recite them.

The Lord’s Prayer starts with God!

This seems to be a no-brainer, and yet when I listen to my own prayers—and hear yours—the Lord is often missing—after the first word or two. We call the Sacred Name of God and then get right down to business: what we want Him to do for us. The requests are often quite spiritual: we want the forgiveness of sin or opportunities to witness or the power to be a better parent, for example. Yet the priority is wrong. We’re starting with ourselves, our needs, our wants.

Jesus Christ told us to make God your first priority in prayer! After calling His Name, we’re to pray for three things:

The term, "Your Name" is a polite way of saying, God. Remember, the Jews were very careful about abusing the Lord’s Name and often referred to Him indirectly. That’s what I think our Lord is doing here. To "hallow" His Name means to set God above all other things—to fear Him, to adore Him, and to love Him with all your heart, soul, and mind.

The one who prays this way wants God to be his everything! And not just his everything. He wants everyone to worship and praise the Lord.

Do you start your prayers that way? The exact words don’t matter much, but the desire behind them does. Is the glorifying of God your first priority in prayer? Or, is it something less than that? It may be good, but not quite this good.

After uplifting God’s Name, it naturally follows that we pray for the coming of His kingdom. Some have taken this to be the Second Coming of Christ. This is not wrong, but it’s also not complete. As used in the Gospels, "the kingdom of God (or heaven)" means something more than heaven. It stands for God’s rule in the world. Not the Lordship He exercises over all things at all times, but rather, His rule in the hearts of His people. The planets obey God (and, in a way, even Satan does), but only believers obey Him from the heart. This is the Kingdom we’re praying for.

Thus, we’re praying for the conversion of the lost. Why do lost people need to be saved? How would you answer that? Most people would say they need to be saved because—if they’re not—they’ll go to hell when they die. This is true and one reason they need to be saved.

But it’s not the Number One reason! The main reason that sinners need to be saved is because they ought to glorify God, but they won’t unless they are saved.

Do you pray for the lost? Do you pray for the lost people in your family? You’d think this was easy to do, but in fact, it is not so easy. In some ways, it’s much easier to pray for the lost in Vietnam than it is for the unsaved members of your family.

Why? For one thing, praying for their salvation includes knowing they’re not saved and feeling the danger they’re in. That is far from pleasant. To think a dear husband or a beloved daughter is under the wrath of God is hard to do. And so, we often don’t do it. We don’t pray long and earnestly for the salvation of loved ones.

There’s a second reason: people in Morocco don’t aggravate me nearly as much as people who are living under my roof. It’s hard to pray for someone about whom I’ve got a bad attitude. The sulking husband does not pray for his wife; the bitter mom doesn’t pray for her kids. The "persecuted" teenager doesn’t pray for his parents.

Do you pray for the spreading of God’s Kingdom? I don’t believe in post-millennialism (which is the belief that the world will get better and better until the Lord comes), but I very much admire its spirit. The Puritans and others prayed big prayers. Maybe they were foolishly optimistic, but I’m not sure that is worse than the way we pray—hardly ever getting past the arthritic toe of Aunt Bessie.

Do you pray for big things? As though God were gracious and powerful enough to grant them? The hymn is right,

That’s not our standard problem, is it? Asking too much.

After praying for the widening of God’s Kingdom, we go on to pray for its deepening—

How is the will of God done in heaven? It’s done fully and eagerly. No one in heaven dreads the command of God, no one takes it for a burden, and no one feels interrupted by it. Angels and saints in glory love to do His will.

We’re to pray for that same love. If "God loves a cheerful giver", you have to ask yourself: How cheerfully do I serve Him? We have to admit we don’t serve Him half as eagerly as we ought to. And so, you’re to pray for that desire—and keep at it until He gives it.

The Lord’s Prayer might end here—you’re allowed to pray for God’s glory and nothing else! But it doesn’t end here. After praising Him, we go on to ask for things—three things in particular:

The first is our daily bread.

Three things to note here: first, it is our daily bread—not food for fifty years. You ought to be content with the meeting of daily needs and not worry about the future. Find your security in God and not in a pantry full of food or a bank full of money. Christians are often very unhappy and sick with worry over the future. Mark Twain (who was not a believer) quipped,

We bring this worry into our prayers as we ask the Lord to give us what we need today and tomorrow and for decades to come. Of course we think of the future, but we don’t dwell on it. If manna falls every day and rots with the keeping, let’s pray for our daily needs and let the future take care of itself.

Next, it is our daily bread—not our daily caviar, champagne, and chateau briand! If you pray for luxuries and only get necessities, you feel disappointed in God or even cheated. But, if you pray for necessities—and get some extra things too—you feel thankful! Who am I to receive such a bounty! Saints far holier than I am went about in sheepskins and goatskins, and look at what I’ve got—a closet full of clothes!

The third thing to note here is that God cares for material things and physical needs. Your body was made by God and—if you’re saved—it has been redeemed by Jesus Christ. It matters to God and therefore, it must have an important place in your prayers. Not the first place, but an honored place to be sure.

A woman once asked me if it was all right to pray for material things. At first, I thought she was kidding, but she wasn’t—she was dead in earnest. She wanted to be so spiritual that she didn’t care for the body and the ordinary needs of life on earth. I told her she was trying to be holier than God. And that’s not holy.

Are you praying for your daily bread? Hungry people do, but most Americans are not hungry—and most of us have never even known hunger. But whatever the economists say, you and I are dependent on the goodness of God for everything—even things as basic as a food. You ought to pray every day for your physical and material needs to be met.

The next thing we ask for is forgiveness.

Everyone is a sinner and sins every day. Therefore, everyone needs to pray for forgiveness every day. You ought to confess your big, shameful sins, but not only the big and shameful ones. I suspect that small, respectable sins are—over the long run—more dangerous than the ones we don’t want anyone to know about!

The subtle pride, the creeping avarice, the slow-growing envy, these things are cancers on the soul. And need to be detected and cut out by daily prayers for pardon.

I know you confess your sins, but is there any you won’t confess? Either one you don’t want to give up or maybe one you won’t face? If you want to be forgiven, you need to pray.

But not just pray. The last part of v.4 is the hardest thing in the Bible. It’s not hard to understand, but it’s to do. To quote Mark Twain again,

Jesus Christ ties the forgiveness of your sins to your willingness to forgive others their sins. Preachers are always quick to explain this away; the verse suffers the death of a thousand qualifications. I know God’s grace does not depend on your goodness and the Lord does not have to wait to see what you do in order to forgive and all that. But I will not explain the verse away!

If you hold a grudge against others, God will hold a grudge against you. And, believe you me, you don’t want that!

Not you and I. So you and I had better forgive others.

The last thing in the Lord’s prayer is a request for help in the future—"Lead us not into temptation".

This implies two things we’re prone to forget: first of all is the sovereignty of God. Nothing happens without His okay. He can keep you out of temptation or keep you in it or get you out of it if He wants to! Pray that He’ll want to!

Because it also implies our weakness. Under the right circumstances the holiest man in the world could fall into the most appalling sins. The most devoted husband can fall into adultery; the most honest bank teller is capable of embezzling; the most patriotic soldier might betray his country. Under the right stimulus, a man who loves life might well commit suicide. We know this because a man who truly loved the Lord Jesus Christ—and with advance warning—denied Him three times.

Borrowing from the Puritans, we often say we’re nothing, miserable worms, and all that. But we don’t really mean it. If we did, we pray more fervently—and just plain more—for the grace to live moment by moment.

That’s the Lord’s Prayer and its answers the question, What do I pray for?

The Lord goes on to tell us how to pray. Two stories make His point.

The first is about an aggravating friend. A man comes to your house at midnight and expects something to eat. You don’t have anything, so you go next door and pound on your neighbor’s door. This makes the neighbor very mad and he tells you to go home! But you don’t. You keep on knocking at his door and yelling at the top of your lungs. Until he finally gives in and brings you the food you’re asking for.

Is God like your neighbor? No, not at all! He is very unlike him. Yet, if even a stingy and selfish and easily annoyed neighbor will give you want you ask for if you keep on asking, then God will too! That’s the promise,

This means the Lord wants us to pray persistently. Not once or twice till we give in to despair, but daily unti He gives us what we need. Speaking of prayer, Isaiah 62:7 says,

Your mom and dad don’t like you to ask and ask and ask and keep on asking. But the Lord does. He never gets tired of hearing our prayers. To His ear, our petitions never get old, stale or moldy.

The second story is about a father—an ordinary dad. If his son asked him for a slice of bread would he give him a stone? If he asked him to pass the salmon, do you think he’d slip him a snake? If he wanted eggs for breakfast, do you think the dad would fry up a pan of scorpions for him?

No he wouldn’t. Even bad fathers don’t do that. If wicked men provide for their kids, then you can be sure God takes care of His family!

Thus, you should pray—not only persistently (as though you have to twist the Lord’s arm to get what you want)—but also with faith in your Father’s great goodness.

Some fathers are stingy and cruel. Others are cold and businesslike. But our Father in Heaven generous and kind and warm and eager to give you what you need—and a lot more than you need.

He proved this at the cross. And so, for believers, there is no reason whatsoever to doubt God’s infinite generosity,

The question is rhetorical: If God gave Christ, why do you think He’s stingy about lesser things? If I would die for you, don’t you think I’d lend you a couple of bucks now and then?

This brings up a question—it’s one every Christian has wrestled with at times, maybe you’re doing it right now. How do we account for prayers not answered?

You can say that the prayers are not answered yet. That may be true. Or, you can say the prayer was for a wrong thing or that the one offering it had some hidden sin, and so on.

But what do you say to the man who prayed every day for the salvation of his mother, but then his mother died in unbelief? Is praying for the lost a wrong thing? Did he pray without feeling or faith or godly desire? May God still answer his prayers and save his mother?

Both the man and his prayer were right, and yet he did not get the answer he wanted so badly. Why not?

Because godly prayers are always submissive to God’s will. Before a man prays for his daily bread, he prays, "Thy will be done". We do not understand His will all the time—if we were God we’d do things differently—but we can accept His will because it’s His will. And He knows best.

That may not satisfy you, but it’s the truth. It’s the only answer God gives at the moment. Maybe some day He’ll explain things more fully to you. But until then, you have to wait in faith, faith in your Father’s wisdom and goodness.

Yes, He will.

Is your prayer life what it ought to be? If not, start modeling your prayers on the Lord’s Prayer. Pray with discipline, pray with hope.

And may God grant your prayers, for Christ’s sake. Amen.