Lord, Teach us to Pray
Luke chapter 11:1-4,
Luke's Gospel has been called the Gospel of Prayer, and Jesus teaches us about prayer. Here in Luke 11, you have a shorter version of the Lord's Prayer.
When we think of living the Christian life, I think we could argue there are three essentials in terms of habits of grace, or the disciplines, or the means of grace. Three essentials, three great disciplines that we need to run the race and to finish it well. What are they? Well, we need the ear of God, prayer; we need the voice of God, the Bible; and then we need the body of God, the church. So we need the ear of God, the voice of God, and the body of God. We need prayer, we need the Bible, and we need the church. And because this is our corporate prayer meeting, we're going to focus on that first habit or discipline of prayer, the ear of God, and who better to help us than Jesus?
Nobody prayed like He prayed, just like He preached perfect sermons He prayed perfect prayers, and that explains why His disciple friends come to Him and ask, “Teach us to pray.” Now, we don't know for sure why they were asking that question. We can surmise, what did they see, what did they hear that provoked that request, “Teach us to pray.” I think they probably heard His fervency. They probably saw something of His endurance at almost every turn, they observed His love and His intimacy, and His closeness to His Father, Abba Father. They also heard His big prayers, not selfish or self-centered prayers, but His prayers were shaped by God's glory, God's will, and God's kingdom.
And Jesus wants us to engage in this worship activity of prayer, privately as well as corporately. In the Sermon on the Mount, if you think of Matthew chapter 6, where we're most familiar with the Lord's Prayer, He assumes that we are praying. Right? Three times: Matthew 6:5, “When you pray,” He's assuming you are praying. Matthew 6:6, “And when you pray.” And then again, Matthew 6:9, “This is how you should pray.” Now, in Luke's Gospel, as I said, it's the gospel sometimes called the gospel of Prayer, we get a fuller picture on prayer. And Jesus impresses upon us, think of that section where He says we are to ask and receive, seek and find, that is also found in Matthew's gospel. But in Luke 18, He devotes a whole parable to prayer, the prayer of that persevering widow essentially saying, “Don't give up, don't give up.”
And there's more if you run through Luke's prayer. This is distinctive from the other synoptic Gospels, including John, but you find Jesus praying at least eleven distinct times. Eleven distinct times. What does that tell us? He practiced what He preached. He practiced what He preached. And He gives us, we could say, a perfect instruction and a perfect example. And if we are determined to learn how to pray, just like His disciples, we have to keep our eyes on Jesus. Some of you play golf and the simple rule that everybody seems to reiterate when it comes to playing golf, is you keep your eye on the ball. When it comes to living the Christian life, you keep your eye on Christ, the eye of faith on Christ.
And the Apostle Paul, obviously, was someone who kept his eyes on Christ when it came to prayer. I think that is one of the reasons why he said, “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ.” I think he had that in mind when he said that, he followed in the footsteps of Christ when it came to prayer. Some 40 to 50 times in his epistles he picks up the subject of prayer. Almost every time he starts off a letter or finishes a letter, it begins or ends on prayer. And there are 12 to 14 full-length prayers that have substantive amount of ink to them in those epistles. And here's what he says over and over again when it comes to his praying, and for us, “Continue, be consistent, persevere.” He never stopped praying. He never stopped praying, no matter how hard life got. Romans 1:9, “Without ceasing, I make mention of you always in my prayers.” Ephesians 1:16, “I do not cease to give thanks to you.” Philippians 1:4, “Always in every prayer of mine for you all,” and there's several other texts that he underscores, “I am always, always praying, praying.”
And think about this, both Jesus and the Apostle Paul were some of the busiest men on planet Earth. I'm sure at times they were overwhelmed with their busy, busy schedules, but they always prioritized time with God. And they were not just praying for themselves, we know that they were intercessors, they prayed for others, even the Lord's Prayer assumes that we will pray for others. It's found in plural pronouns, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” And so we see the importance of prayer just by the life example of Jesus and the Apostle Paul. Spurgeon said this about prayer,
“Now 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.’ And He said to them, ‘When you pray, say, ‘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.’”
Luke's Gospel has been called the Gospel of Prayer, and Jesus teaches us about prayer. Here in Luke 11, you have a shorter version of the Lord's Prayer.
When we think of living the Christian life, I think we could argue there are three essentials in terms of habits of grace, or the disciplines, or the means of grace. Three essentials, three great disciplines that we need to run the race and to finish it well. What are they? Well, we need the ear of God, prayer; we need the voice of God, the Bible; and then we need the body of God, the church. So we need the ear of God, the voice of God, and the body of God. We need prayer, we need the Bible, and we need the church. And because this is our corporate prayer meeting, we're going to focus on that first habit or discipline of prayer, the ear of God, and who better to help us than Jesus?
Nobody prayed like He prayed, just like He preached perfect sermons He prayed perfect prayers, and that explains why His disciple friends come to Him and ask, “Teach us to pray.” Now, we don't know for sure why they were asking that question. We can surmise, what did they see, what did they hear that provoked that request, “Teach us to pray.” I think they probably heard His fervency. They probably saw something of His endurance at almost every turn, they observed His love and His intimacy, and His closeness to His Father, Abba Father. They also heard His big prayers, not selfish or self-centered prayers, but His prayers were shaped by God's glory, God's will, and God's kingdom.
And Jesus wants us to engage in this worship activity of prayer, privately as well as corporately. In the Sermon on the Mount, if you think of Matthew chapter 6, where we're most familiar with the Lord's Prayer, He assumes that we are praying. Right? Three times: Matthew 6:5, “When you pray,” He's assuming you are praying. Matthew 6:6, “And when you pray.” And then again, Matthew 6:9, “This is how you should pray.” Now, in Luke's Gospel, as I said, it's the gospel sometimes called the gospel of Prayer, we get a fuller picture on prayer. And Jesus impresses upon us, think of that section where He says we are to ask and receive, seek and find, that is also found in Matthew's gospel. But in Luke 18, He devotes a whole parable to prayer, the prayer of that persevering widow essentially saying, “Don't give up, don't give up.”
And there's more if you run through Luke's prayer. This is distinctive from the other synoptic Gospels, including John, but you find Jesus praying at least eleven distinct times. Eleven distinct times. What does that tell us? He practiced what He preached. He practiced what He preached. And He gives us, we could say, a perfect instruction and a perfect example. And if we are determined to learn how to pray, just like His disciples, we have to keep our eyes on Jesus. Some of you play golf and the simple rule that everybody seems to reiterate when it comes to playing golf, is you keep your eye on the ball. When it comes to living the Christian life, you keep your eye on Christ, the eye of faith on Christ.
And the Apostle Paul, obviously, was someone who kept his eyes on Christ when it came to prayer. I think that is one of the reasons why he said, “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ.” I think he had that in mind when he said that, he followed in the footsteps of Christ when it came to prayer. Some 40 to 50 times in his epistles he picks up the subject of prayer. Almost every time he starts off a letter or finishes a letter, it begins or ends on prayer. And there are 12 to 14 full-length prayers that have substantive amount of ink to them in those epistles. And here's what he says over and over again when it comes to his praying, and for us, “Continue, be consistent, persevere.” He never stopped praying. He never stopped praying, no matter how hard life got. Romans 1:9, “Without ceasing, I make mention of you always in my prayers.” Ephesians 1:16, “I do not cease to give thanks to you.” Philippians 1:4, “Always in every prayer of mine for you all,” and there's several other texts that he underscores, “I am always, always praying, praying.”
And think about this, both Jesus and the Apostle Paul were some of the busiest men on planet Earth. I'm sure at times they were overwhelmed with their busy, busy schedules, but they always prioritized time with God. And they were not just praying for themselves, we know that they were intercessors, they prayed for others, even the Lord's Prayer assumes that we will pray for others. It's found in plural pronouns, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” And so we see the importance of prayer just by the life example of Jesus and the Apostle Paul. Spurgeon said this about prayer,
"Prayer is the most important service of the week because it's there that the church truly touches heaven."
You have a lot of churches now that don't have prayer meetings. They've lost that distinctive. And so we have to maintain that should always be a priority, do we have a prayer meeting? And are we consistently praying privately? I say all that to encourage you as far as your faithfulness. We get a good representation on Wednesday night, so we just have to keep on keeping on. Don't pull back. As boring as it might seem, as irrelevant, sometimes it might seem, don't pull back on your private prayer life and our corporate prayer life.
Posted in Pastor Devotional