Prayer, An Act of Faith

Main Point

The main point of this passage is that prayer is an act of faith; it is trust in our Father who loves us.

Context

Luke is called the Gospel of Prayer. Luke contains more prayers than the other gospels uses the word prayer 30x in his gospel and 16x in Acts. Prayer if first mentioned in 1:10. Jesus prays 12x, in Luke 3:21; 5:16; 6:12; 9:18, 28; 10:21; 11:1; 22:41, 44; 23:34; 23:46; 24:30.

According to the Rev. Dr. Niveen Sarras, the context of Luke is different than Matthew, in that Matthew wrote to Jews, people who knew how to pray. Luke is writing to gentiles, who have a very different way of praying. They prayed in a transactional way, to curry the favor of capricious gods. They didn’t pray to a father, though

In the Greco-Roman world, fathers were seldom at home, but when they were, they were feared. When a child was born, the father chose whether to raise it, sell it or kill it.

Like the 10 Commandments, the Our Father begins with the vertical axis, our relationship with God, and then moves to the horizontal axis. Also in common, they are both found twice in the Bible; Exodus and Deuteronomy for the Decalog, and Matthew and Luke for the Pater Noster.