Who taught you to pray?
Do you remember the kinds of things you prayed for when you were a kid?
I found some great prayers the other day.
Johnny prayed, “Dear God, thank You for the baby brother but what I prayed for was a puppy.”
Susan said this when she bowed her head to pray: “Dear God, it must be super hard to love all the people in the world, especially my brother. I don’t know how You do it.”
And then little Steven had this question for God: “Dear God, I say your prayer every night, ‘lead us not into temptation and deliver us some e-mail’ but I never get an e-mail from you. Do you have my right address?”
Sometimes kids pray the craziest prayers.
But truth be told, we’ve all prayed for one thing like Johnny and ended up with something else. We’ve all asked God how to love someone who is sometimes hard to love, like Susan. And we’ve all had the same question Steven had, we’ve all wanted to hear a word from God, and we would love an email, a text, something!
We all pray. Everybody prays. Everybody prays because everybody struggles.
Even people who say they aren’t spiritual, who say they don’t believe in God, even they pray sometimes. Because there’s something within us that knows when all else fails, when we’re at the end of our rope, when we’re all out of options, even people who say they don’t believe in God and don’t believe in prayer will say… God, if you’re real, I could really use you’re help right now!
When we pray, we often wonder if God is listening.
Here’s the Good News. God is real. And God is really there! And God has invited us to pray. God isn’t bothered by you. He’s not annoyed with your requests. He doesn’t want you to stop bugging Him. You can always knock on His door and He will answer it. You can always ask for whatever you need, and He will provide. You can come to Him, and whenever you come looking, you will find Him.
If you don’t believe me, then I’ve got more good news for you, you don’t have to. You can take it from Jesus. He’s the One who taught us that we should “always pray and not give up.” – Luke 18.1
And in Luke 11, we find one of His most important teachings about prayer.
Jesus Teaches about Prayer
Luke 11.1-13
1 Once Jesus was in a certain place praying.
We’ll get into what happens next in a moment, but don’t miss this.
Jesus prayed.
Not only did Jesus pray, but He also had a certain place where He prayed. And being the observant Jew that He was, there were certain times Jesus prayed.
I don’t know about you, but I think this is a pretty important detail Luke is sharing with us. If Jesus prayed, don’t you think you need to pray? If Jesus, the Son of God, prayed to God… If Jesus, who was fully God and fully human, prayed to God… If Jesus, who had the power to raise the dead, feed the hungry, and heal the sick, prayed… maybe we should pray, too!
I think these have started making a comeback, but I remember when I was a teenager, it seemed like everybody was wearing these bracelets with the letters, WWJD. What Would Jesus Do? It’s a great question to ask but here’s one answer to it… What Would Jesus Do? He would pray!
Luke tells us that Jesus “often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” – Luke 5:16 (NIV):
Not only did Jesus pray, but he also prayed in a certain place.
Jesus prayed in a certain place.
One way to improve your prayer life is to have a certain place to pray. Jesus once suggested that you should pray in your closet! (Matthew 6:6).
Some of you have a certain room you like to pray in. Or a certain chair you sit in when you pray. Or a place outside you like to go and pray. Having a place to pray is not only helpful, it’s what Jesus did. Jesus knew, if He really wanted to pray, he needed to withdraw, be by himself for a bit, and be in a certain place.
Jesus not only prayed, but he also prayed in a certain place, and he probably prayed at certain times.
Jesus prayed at a certain time.
Observant Jews had a regular rhythm of praying. Every morning, afternoon, and evening, there were prayers they prayed. Before every meal, there were prayers they prayed. Every year, at certain times, they would pray certain prayers.
The truth is: You can pray anytime, anywhere.
But this is also true: Creating regular places and times to pray is super helpful. Creating a prayer habit, making prayer a daily rhythm, is an important part of any prayer life. Jesus did this. We can too!
Jesus prayed. Then Luke tells us…
As he finished, one of his disciples came to him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”
Can I ask you a question?
Who taught you to pray?
For some of us, we learned to pray from our parents. At bedtime, before meal times, they taught us to bow our heads and pray. And they taught us what to pray.
For others of us, it might have been a youth minister, a teacher, a coach, or some mentor in our lives.
Others learned to pray by just hearing people pray at church on Sunday.
We all learn how to pray and what to pray from someone. And no doubt, this disciple that came to Jesus knew how to pray. But he noticed something in the prayer life of Jesus, in the prayer language of Jesus, that was different. So he asked Jesus to teach him and the other disciples how to pray. And Jesus said, YES!
We all learn to pray somehow, from someone.
Lord, Teach Us to Pray
What if we, like this disciple, asked Jesus to be our teacher? Lord, teach us to pray! We want to learn from you!
2 Jesus said, “This is how you should pray:
Listen to how this prayer begins…
“Father, may your name be kept holy.
This prayer, as you may know, is called the Lord’s prayer because this is the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples to pray. You can find it here and in Matthew 6. The two prayers are almost the same, but Matthew’s version is a little longer than Luke’s. But in both accounts, this prayer begins with this line….
“Father, may your name be kept holy.”
Which is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, Jesus teaches His disciples to call God, “Father.”
Typically, in the days of Jesus, when you prayed to God, you called Him the “Lord of Hosts,” or the “King of the Universe.” Jesus teaches His disciples to call God, “Father.” This is deeply significant.
Calling God Father does not, in any way, change or lessen the greatness of God, the holiness of God – as we’ll see in a moment. God is still the “Lord of Hosts” and the “King of the Universe,” but He is also Father. Which makes us His sons and daughters.
Jesus teaches His disciples that there is an intimacy in prayer, the kind of closeness that’s found between a good and loving father and his children in whom he takes great delight!
Holy
Second, Jesus teaches His disciples to keep His name, the name of God, holy. When God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, the holiness of God’s name was addressed.
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain…” – Exodus 20.7, AMP
If you’re anything like me, you grew up believing that meant you should never use God’s name the wrong way. You should never say, “O my G…” Or anything like that. People even use the name “Jesus” that way. Some even pair the name of God with an expletive.
If you grew up believing you should never do that, you are correct! The name of God is holy and should be treated without reverence. Absolutely. But it means more than just being careful what we say and how we say the name of God.
The word take is the word nasa in Hebrew, and it means “carry.” So when God told Moses, Tell the people… “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain…” it was more than… Don’t say my name in the wrong way, without reverence and without thought.
God was saying, How you carry the name you carry matters. As the people of God, as my sons and daughters, how you carry my name is important.
It’s like I tell my kids, wherever you go, you represent this family. There are not a lot of Trevathans out there! So if you do something, as a Trevathan, it reflects on the whole family! How you carry the name you carry matters!
Jesus teaches His disciples that when they pray, call God Father, and keep His name Holy. How you say His name matters. How you carry His name matters.
Kingdom
So pray this way…
Father, may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
When Jesus talks about the Kingdom, He’s talking about life lived under the rule and reign of God. He’s talking about living in a world where things are the way they are supposed to be.
Jesus teaches us how to live in this Kingdom by living as people who love the way He loves, by forgiving others, by feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, and more. Jesus wants us to live this way, but He also wants us to pray this way!
FATHER… May your Kingdom come soon.
These first two lines of the prayer are centered on God, who He is, and our desire to see His rule and His reign come into this dark, broken, and sin-sick world.
Reliance
Then, Jesus pivots with the last three lines of this prayer. He says that we should pray…
3 Give us each day the food we need,
In other words, we pray every day for what we need. We rely every day on God for what we need. He is our Provider. Our Sustainer. Like Israel in the wilderness when they received manna each day, the bread of heaven each day, we pray for daily bread, for daily provision.
4 and forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
We pray for provision, and we pray for forgiveness. We need daily bread and we need daily forgiveness. But forgiveness comes with a caveat. Jesus teaches us to pray to receive forgiveness as we forgive those who sin against us. In Matthew’s account, Jesus goes so far as to say…
“If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.” – Matthew 6.14-15
That’s how much forgiveness matters to God. That’s how much He wants us to forgive. We could talk more about that, and we certainly will in the future… but don’t miss the heart of God.
He wants to forgive, and He wants us to be like Him, to imitate Him, and be people who forgive.
And then Jesus says,
And don’t let us yield to temptation.
Jesus, having taken on flesh, knows firsthand the powers of temptation. He was tempted in every way as we are (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus says, when it comes to temptation, pray about that. Ask for God’s help.
You are not in this alone. He will give you strength. He will help you. He will deliver you. He will heal you. Pray about that!
So Jesus teaches His disciples this prayer and says, When you pray, pray like this.
“Father, may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
Give us each day the food we need,
and forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation.”
More About Prayer
After teaching His disciples this prayer, Luke writes…
5 Then, teaching them more about prayer, he used this story: “Suppose you went to a friend’s house at midnight, wanting to borrow three loaves of bread. You say to him, 6 ‘A friend of mine has just arrived for a visit, and I have nothing for him to eat.’ 7 And suppose he calls out from his bedroom, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is locked for the night, and my family and I are all in bed. I can’t help you.’ 8 But I tell you this—though he won’t do it for friendship’s sake, if you keep knocking long enough, he will get up and give you whatever you need because of your shameless persistence.
So when you pray, you are never a bother to God. A friend may finally answer your request for help if you are persistent enough, but God, your Father in heaven, hears and responds to your prayers because He is your Father and He loves you!
9 “And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
You can always knock on His door and He will answer it. You can always ask for whatever you need, and He will provide. You can come to Him, and whenever you come looking, you will find Him.
Jesus, trying to drive home this point, adds this…
11 “You fathers—if your children ask for a fish, do you give them a snake instead? 12 Or if they ask for an egg, do you give them a scorpion? Of course not! 13 So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”
Even the best fathers reading this today, and some of you are great dads!, but even the best of us don’t compare to just how good God is! He’s not just a good, good, Father, He is the PERFECT FATHER. And when you ask, He’s not going to just give you what He needs. He’s going to give you His Holy Spirit.
In other words, He’s going to give you His Spirit. Part of Him is going to live inside of you. What else could you ask for? What more could you need? Jesus says, Whatever you need, I AM. And I AM with you!
An Invitation to Pray
Jesus has extended you an invitation to pray.
When you pray, your Father listens.
So ask God for whatever you need. And believe that God will provide.
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