When You Pray…

Luke 11:1-13

So some years ago, I was actually preaching on this text. I did a Google search on how to pray. Any guesses on how many links I got back? 793 million. Yeah, wow. I didn’t check them all out. But they had titles such as “How to Pray More Effectively.” If you’re not getting answers to prayer, pray this way, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, things like that. And I guess it makes sense. Prayer is something that is on people’s minds. People wanna know how to do it. It’s certainly not wrong to look for advice in regards to prayer. That’s fine. The disciples did that in our text, right? They came to Jesus and asked him to teach them how to pray. He didn’t chastise him, whatever. But it is interesting to note what Jesus did, as well as what he didn’t do. Jesus didn’t talk to his disciples about, here are some big principles of prayer. He didn’t do that. Nor did Jesus delve into what the proper posture for prayer might be. Should I bow my head and fold my hands? Should I lift my hands up to heaven? As a reminder that I’m receiving blessings from God. Should I kneel? Jesus doesn’t touch on any of that, does he? Not a word. What does Jesus do? He says, “When you pray, say this.” And he gives them the Lord’s prayer. Some people think that somehow it’s a bad thing to use memorized prayers. Jesus would heartily disagree, because what did he give his disciples? A memorized prayer. When you pray, say this. Now, maybe you noticed, as we read it here from the book of Luke, that it wasn’t exactly the way we pray, was it? It’s also recorded in Matthew chapter six, and in Matthew chapter six, it’s just a little bit different. And the version that you and I use is a conglomeration of those two gospel texts with an addition from, of course, Second Chronicles. For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, that’s from Chronicles of all places. How the church connected that up, I’m not sure, but it did over the course of history, and it’s sort of stuck, and so we’ve kept it. But the bulk of the prayer is from Matthew six, and here in Luke, and it’s put together, and that’s what we have. Why does the Scripture record it a couple different ways? Maybe it’s because Jesus wants you to know it’s not a magic formula. It’s not like you need to say the words exactly right, or in exactly the right order, for the prayer to be valuable and useful. No. Rather, what he seems to be doing is teaching us big principles about prayer. Well, what does he teach us to pray for? Look at the petitions. “Hallelujah be your name. Your kingdom come. Forgive us our sins. Lead us not to temptation.” Four of the five that are recorded here in Luke are about what? Spiritual things. Why? Because spiritual things are far more important than anything material. On the day that I die, it is not going to make one bit of difference what kind of car I drove, how big or small my house was, if I was a good athlete, if I was a good drummer, if I had lots of shoes, whatever. None of it’s going to matter. What will matter is the spiritual stuff. So would it not make sense that in our prayers, that we would focus our attention primarily on the spiritual matters? I think that makes all the sense in the world, doesn’t it? But is that what happens? Do you and I tend to pray more intensely that God would protect us from or heal us from some earthly disease? Or that He would guard our church body against the spiritual diseases of false doctrine? Do we tend to pray more fervently and more often that God would bless us primarily with spiritual riches? Or do we focus our attention on the material, financial riches that we have or don’t have? Oh, how easy it is to get caught up in the temporal. Oh, how hard it is to keep our focus on the eternal and the spiritual. Amen? So what does Jesus do? He gives us the Lord’s Prayer. And what does He in a sense force us to do? Focus on the spiritual, the eternal. “Hallelujah, your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Forgive us our sins, protect us from temptation, deliver us from evil.” Spiritual, spiritual, spiritual, spiritual, over and over and over again. Oh, does that mean that He’s not interested in our temporal stuff? Does that mean He’s not interested in our physical lives? No, it doesn’t mean that at all. Because there is the one petition in there about physical things. Give us this day our daily bread. Hmm. Not give us this day our steak and lobster. Not give us this day our Rolls Royces. Give us this day our daily bread. Why bread? In almost every culture back then and still trying to fit almost every culture today, there is some sort of a staple, some sort of a bread-like thing, that serves as sort of the basis for eating. It’s not as much that way here in America these days, just because we’ve been blessed so richly with so much stuff. But still in most cultures today, there is something that serves as some sort of a bread. It’s simple, it’s basic, but you can live on it. And what is God promising? God is promising that He’s going to take care of us with what we need. Not necessarily everything we’d want, not necessarily everything we desire, but what we need? Yes. Give us this day our daily bread. Not give me enough bread for the rest of my life. Not even give me enough bread for this month. Give us this day our daily bread. Why? Because God is wanting to train us to trust Him day by day. When you went to bed last night, you could go to sleep easily knowing that today God would be there. And when tomorrow comes, God will be there. And the day after that, God will be there. And the day after that, the day after that. Give us this day our daily bread. Lord, lead me to look to you and simply trust you day by day to give me what I need. Well, how can we know God is going to do all of that? Maybe you noticed we skipped over what I consider to be the most important word in the entire prayer. Father. God could have told us to pray to the all-powerful God. That had been fine, right? He is. God could have told us to pray to the triune God, the majestic deity, the all-wise one. He could have chosen to teach us to pray any of that stuff, right? And saying prayers to God in those fashions is totally fine. But Jesus teaches us to pray, Father. Why? Because he wants to remind you and me of the relationship that we have with him. He wants to remind us that in incredible love, he sent Jesus, our brother, to come to this earth to live, to die, and to rise for us. He wants to remind us that because of Jesus, the Father has adopted us into his family, so that now you and I are the children of God. And that we will remain the children of God for all of eternity. Would a good father, a good earthly father, want to hear from his kids? Of course. Would a good earthly father make his kids only and always address him with certain words? No. A good earthly father would allow their children to come with whatever was on their minds, right? And so you can go to God in whatever ways you choose. Certainly, we’re going to want to use the Lord’s Prayer a lot because Jesus gave us that prayer. But you can come to God and you can ask, you can seek, you can knock. And Jesus’ promise is that you will be heard and you will be answered. And no, it won’t just be because you are audacious at night, like that neighbor going next door and trying to get bread from the neighbor. No, you will be heard because God loves you dearly. And would a good father ever dream of giving his kid something poisonous or harmful when they’re hungry? Would a good father ever dream of giving a stone or a scorpion to their child when they ask for a piece of bread? No, no good father would ever dream of doing something like that, would they? Well, how much more the perfect Father in heaven, who knows you better than anybody in the world knows you and who knows what’s best for you? Even when we don’t know what’s best for ourselves, he knows because he’s the all-wise, loving Father. And so my dear fellow children of God, go to your father. Go to your father often. Go to him over and over and over again. And go to him with absolute confidence. And why? Because he is your father. And that’s why, my dear brothers and sisters, we pray. And we pray. And we pray. Amen?