Lord, Teach Us to Pray

We are in the middle of a study titled, “Where Are We Going?” where we are taking time to look at where God has called our church to go with him to fulfill the purposes he has set out for us.

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We are tackling this by looking at six different purposes God gives the church and taking two weeks to address each one.

We just finished looking at worship, and this week, we move to another foundational purpose for the church, which is for us to encounter God through prayer.

When we asked the congregation to assess how we were doing along these six purposes, we found this as our second highest strength.

We still have plenty of room to grow, though, so we want to spend the next two weeks talking about how we encounter God in prayer.

To do that this morning, we are going to turn to Luke 11, so go ahead and open your Bibles there. If you don’t have a Bible with you, you can use the one in the back of the pew in front of you. We will be toward the back of the Bible on page 922.

This morning, I want to address some of the advice we often give to someone who is just getting started in their walk with Christ.

How many of you have been told something like this: “Prayer is simple—it’s talking to God like I’m talking to you.”

To be clear, that isn’t bad advice at all. There is an aspect of prayer that is just talking to God like I am talking to you.

We don’t have to ring a bell or a gong or burn incense to get God’s attention; you can just start thinking or saying your prayer, and God hears you.

You don’t have to use big, churchy words to impress God or repeat the same thing over and over again.

So, in one sense, prayer really is that simple.

However, as we are growing in our relationship with Christ, there are some additional instructions that the Bible gives us about the kinds of requests we make and the attitudes we should have as we pray.

I remember when I was confronted with this reality as a teenager. We were having a dinner at church, and I had the privilege of opening the time in prayer.

I prayed something like this:“Lord Jesus, we just thank you, Lord, for all you have done, Lord, and, Lord, we just ask you to bless our time together, Lord...”

One of my mentors, the associate pastor at the church, pulled me aside after I got done praying. He said, “Sean, let me ask you a question, Sean, about, Sean, the way you prayed, Sean. How, Sean, does it feel, Sean, when I use your name this much, Sean?” He went on to tell me that I had said God’s name something like 11 times in 19 seconds.

Now, did God hear my prayer? Absolutely. However, my mentor confronted me with the fact that I was using God’s name as a vocal pause—like the word ‘umm’. He knew I was headed into ministry and that the way I prayed from the pulpit and with other people would shape the prayer lives of those I have the privilege of leading, so he wanted to challenge me to think about what I was saying and pray in a way that demonstrated that I was really communicating with a person.

That’s when I started to realize there was more to prayer than just talking to God like I’m talking to you.

The disciples had the same realization, which is where we find them in Luke 11.

The ask Jesus to teach them to pray, and we could spend weeks discussing Jesus’s response.

However, this morning, we are going to try to focus on three main aspects of prayer that Jesus teaches us.

Read verses 1-4 with me to set the stage...

The first aspect of prayer Jesus addresses is...

1) The content of prayer.

We have said before, and we mean it, that you can pray about anything at any time.

Last week, we said that there should be times when you pray for a longer period of time, and then there will be quick prayers that are woven throughout the fabric of your day.

You may not always address every piece of what Jesus says here in every prayer you pray, but I would say that if you put all your prayers together across a given day, they should have all of these pieces.

Also, while it is not wrong at all to pray these exact phrases, that isn’t the point Jesus is making here. He is setting out a model for us about the kinds of things we pray for, not demanding that we always say these exact words. You see that clearer in Matthew’s account of a similar time Jesus taught this, where he says “pray like this” (Matt 6:9).

Let’s walk through these phrases together.

Do those first two lines look familiar to anyone, and not only because of the parallel passage in Matthew?

I hope so, because they sound an awful lot like what the angels were saying in Isaiah 6 that we looked at a couple weeks ago.

We see, then, that our prayers should contain worship—reflecting on who God is and praising him for what we see.

We need to acknowledge that he is our Father, the one who created the world, who saved us, and who is in charge.

We need to recognize regard him as holy—he is set apart from everything else, he is morally perfect, he is God and we are not.

So, as we pray, we need to worship. We are not coming to a cosmic vending machine, sticking in our coins of prayer, and expecting a result.

We are coming to the God of the universe, our heavenly Father, who is holy and unlike anything else.

The next part of our prayer is similar.

Jesus teaches us to pray “your kingdom come.”

The kingdom of God is God’s rule expressed over all of creation.

Although he is in charge of everything, not everything or everyone submits to his rule and follows the commands he gives.

By praying, “Your kingdom come,” we are asking for God to bring us and others into alignment with his plans, his desires, and his purposes.

Prayer isn’t about me going to God to get what I want.

Instead, it is me bringing my requests to God, humbly acknowledging that I don’t always know what is best, I don’t always have the right motives, so he has the right to answer my prayers with “No” or “Wait.”

Our prayers should include a desire to make sure we line up with his kingdom purposes and plan.

From there, Jesus tells us to pray for our physical needs.

It is right and fitting to pray for what we and others need. There is nothing wrong with that, and it isn’t less than godly to pray for it.

However, notice the humility in the request: Give me what I need, not necessarily want, for today, not forever.

God is gracious and often gives us things that we want and more than we need.

Praying for our daily bread, though, is about more than just meeting our physical need; it is about recognizing our ongoing dependence on God.

If he gives me just what I need for today, I will be back tomorrow asking for more, seeking his face, and recognizing how badly I need God’s ongoing provision.

Pray for physical needs in a way that acknowledges our ongoing dependence on him.

While it isn’t wrong to pray for physical needs, we need to pray about more than that.

In verse 4, Jesus teaches us to pray about our spiritual needs as well.

In fact, if you will notice, he spends more time talking about spiritual needs than he does physical.

It may be because we are more prone to pray for the things we can see that we need and often forget the spiritual things that are hidden.

Notice that we are to pray for forgiveness of our sins. Although we confess our sins and ask his forgiveness when we first come into a relationship with Jesus, there is an ongoing need for us to confess and ask forgiveness for the things we do and think that would keep us from being able to enjoy our relationship with God and live it out.

He gives us an interesting reminder to us here by pointing out that if we expect God to forgive us for our sins, we must also be willing to forgive those who have sinned against us.

The final piece of the prayer Jesus outlines for us is to ask God to keep us from even being tempted to sin so we don’t have to keep coming back and asking forgiveness when we do.

Again, there is a lot more we could say about all of this, but hopefully this gives you some things to chew on.

Your prayers should contain worship, reminding yourself who God is and praising him for it.

You should seek to bring your requests into alignment with God’s kingdom purposes and plan.

Humbly ask him for the things you and others need.

Don’t neglect your spiritual needs, including confessing sin and avoiding temptation.

That’s a lot, but that isn’t all Jesus taught his disciples that day.

After he gave them instruction on the content of their prayers, he starts talking about some of the attitudes that undergird our prayer life.

The first is somewhat surprising, as Jesus tells an unusual story to get us make sure we cultivate:

2) Audacity in prayer.

Before we read these verses, let’s remember what life was like for the people Jesus is talking to.

They didn’t have Walmart, Kroger, or Food Lion to run out and get groceries at any time.

Not only that, there was an expectation that if someone came to your house, you were supposed to feed them and give them a safe place to stay. Anything less than that would be shameful on you because you weren’t a good host.

With that in mind, let’s look at what Jesus says in verses 5-8...

Imagine the audacity of this guy. We don’t know whether he expected the friend to come or not, but he wasn’t prepared when the friend got there in the middle of the night.

He goes to his neighbor and asks to borrow some bread. Keep in mind this would have meant he was pounding on the door of their one room house, so he was waking up his friend, his wife, and his kids. The friend would have had to light a lamp and try not to step on anyone as he dug out the loaves—this was a bold move for the guy to put his neighbor out like that.

Jesus says it is the man’s shameless boldness that motivates his friend to act.

Why does Jesus include this parable here? Because we are to approach God with a similar kind of shameless boldness and persistence.

He isn’t saying that we have to aggravate God into doing what we want. Rather, he is telling us to approach God with that same kind of desperation and boldness that this man did.

We can’t come to God and try to hold onto a shred of our own dignity.

We need to pray bold, audacious, desperate prayers, no matter how bad it looks on us.

We see examples of these kinds of prayers throughout the Bible:

Abraham interceding for Sodom (Genesis 18) 50, 45, 20, 10 righteous people?

Moses interceding for the people (Exodus 33) - God tells Moses that he won’t go with the Israelites because he would kill them, and Moses prays boldly for God to spare them and go with them, then he asks to see God’s glory.

Jesus prayed for the Father to forgive the very people who were crucifying him (Luke 23:34)

When was the last time you approached God with boldness and persistence?

Are you actually asking God to move in big, specific ways, or are your prayers so generic you can make anything fit in the answer to them?

Jesus teaches us to be audacious in our prayers. We still need to be humble, recognizing that God is still in charge, but we don’t have to be afraid to ask big things of him.

But can we really trust God enough to do that?

I mean, won’t he get mad?

Jesus answered that by reminding us to have....

3) Confidence in prayer.

Read verses 9-13.

Listen: God answers prayer.

Settle that in your heart right now.

It has been said that he answers prayer in one of four ways:

No - you are asking for something that doesn’t fit what he knows is best, and he won’t give it to you.

Grow - You are asking for something that is good, but you aren’t ready for it. He needs to grow you first.

Wait - You may be ready, but for some reason, the timing isn’t right.

Go - Yes. You are ready, the time is right, and this fits with God’s kingdom purpose.

While some of those answers are hard to hear, they are always for your good.

Look back at verse 11-13 - Even as selfish, as weak, as messed up as all of us are as parents, we still want our kids to have good things.

How much more, then, can we trust that the God who loves us will give us what we need?

We know he will do it because he gave us his Son to die in our place....

So ask, seek, and knock - As you pray, worship, seek his kingdom, and make requests for physical and spiritual needs. Pray big, bold, audacious prayers with no regard for your dignity. Pray with confidence, knowing you are praying to a God who loves you and loves to give you good gifts.