Promised Prayer

As Australians, I think we don’t like asking for help, especially with things we think we can do ourselves. It’s because we don’t want to be a bother to others, or perhaps we might not want to appear entitled or greedy or helpless.

And it can be rewarding to do things on your own. The DYI market is huge with many home handy mans paying their fornightly tithe to Bunnings as they build their own castles. We are a people who strive to be independent so that we can make our own way in this life. This is what we teach our kids. And so I wonder, does this self-made, independent attitude follow through to how we relate to God?

God has got the universe to run. We might think, “I don’t want to bother Him with my issues. After all, she’ll be right. I can take care of things myself.”

But, this attituide overlooks the fact that good social things only happen if you ask for them. That is how the world works. When you were a kid, you would ask your parents if you can go over a friends place. To get a job you have to ask for it. If you don’t apply, then there is zero chance you will get it. It’s the same with dating and marriage. You have to ask that person out, you might even ask their parents if you can marry their daughter. If you don’t ask, it won’t happen at all.

In all these, you really can’t do it on your own. Good things all involve others; workplaces, friends, spoues, you have to ask. And God is no different. God is not an impersonal force, He is three persons, Father, Son and Spirit. He is relational, and He wants us to talk to Him. To ask Him for help. And this is what we call “prayer”. It is talking to God. It is asking God for help, asking for Him to act in some way.

In this intergated series we are going to be looking at the topic of prayer. Prayer is one of our core values at church. We say on our website:

God provides: We Ask Him. We value prayer, as an expression of dependence on God. 

We have been given a language, and we can use that to talk to God in prayer, to show our reliance on Him, and God listens to us.

We talk to God and He listens and acts. Prayer is as simple as that, and it can feel as complicated as that. Why would the God of the universe want to hear form us? Surly He is too powerful and big to even worry about our worries. And really would our requests even matter in 50 or 500 years to the eternal God? What are we to God, that He should listen to us.

We can overthink and over complicate things, but for today, from Jesus’ teaching on prayer, we are seeing that God wants us to pray to Him. He wants us to ask, because He enjoys giving gifts to His children.

A Framework of Prayer (Luke 11:1-4)

I find it strange, that while the disciples were around Jesus, the only topic recorded in the gospels which they wanted Him to teach them on was prayer. It wasn’t how to preach, or how to heal, but it was how to talk to God. They knew Jesus went off to pray and they wanted to know how they could do it.

In both Matthew and Luke we get Jesus’ teaching to the disciples in how they can pray. In answering their question Jesus doesnt start with talking about our attitude or

Luke (Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible) The Lord’s Prayer (11:1–4)

sincerity, perseverance, discipline, openness, faith, and so on

Those things may come later, but the first thing Jesus gives them is an example of what to say. He gives a basic prayer, to help them and us, to do it. So, if you feel like you can’t pray, you don’t know what to say, or where to start, then you can simply start here. And the basic fact is,

Expository Outlines from Luke 18. The Christian and Prayer (Luke 11:1–13)

you learn how to pray by praying.

Pretty much you have to try it.

You can start with this prayer that Jesus gives, as there is nothing wrong with praying set prays. The songs we sing are planned, the sermons we listen to are planned, it is fine for our prayers to be set too.

In this short prayer Jesus gives is simple framework. This one is shorter than the Matthew version which we will look at at the end of this series.

This example prayer is only three verses long

Luke 11:2–4 NIV

He said to them, “When you pray, say: “ ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’ ”

This prayer starts heavenward and heads down to us. It praise God and asks for our physical and spirtual needs.

God is addressed as “Father”. This alone is huge. We have been adopted into His family, so we can come to Him and talk to Him within a strong family relationship. We don’t relate to God as some powerful CEO or politication, or as a stranger on a street, but as a Father, someone who knows us, someone who cares and provides for us, someone who we have familia ties with.

We ask for for His name to be hallowed. This is giving God honor and praise for who He is. His name is more than a lable, it represents the essences of His character, and we are offering praise for who He is.

The prayer then moves on to asking our Father for His kingdom to come. In this, we are asking for God to come into our world, to defeat all injustice and take charge as King. It is a hopeful looking forward to when Jesus will return and finish the work that He started. And it also asking for us in the present, for Him to act, maybe even through us, to live out this kingdom now. In this we are asking for His rule to come, knowing that one day it will come completly.

And then, moving from God and the future, the prayer focuses on our needs today. First for our physical needs. We ask for help us in our daily provisions. Nothing lavish, but something we need to sustaine us.

Then for our spirtual needs. For our fogiveness of sins, and to forgive others who sin against us. We are to mimick our Father, as His child, with the same family trait of forgiveness. As we live a forgiven life (aorist imperative - definitive forgiveness), we will have to continually practice forgiving others (present-tense - ongoing process).

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 3 Exegetical Perspective

citation

And lastly we ask for protection, so that we can live a holy and pleasing life to God. We ask for help in what path we will take, so that it doesn’t lead us to a compromising situation.

Looking at this short prayer as a whole, it is interesting to see how direct, and

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 3 Theological Perspective

how almost rude it seems! “Give us.… Forgive us.… Lead us.… Deliver us.”

There is no please, or poliet cavating of the requests. It could be even seen as pushy or demanding towards God as we come to Him with all our basic and immediate needs.

But God is not put off by us requesting things from Him. Asking Him and relying on Him is actually what He wants. It helps us realise that we can’t make it on our own. We are not so independ or self-made than what we think we are. Jesus wants us to lean into asking our Father for our day-to-day help.

A Friend at Midnight (Luke 11:5-8)

So after Jesus gives this simple prayer, He then tells two stories about a friend and a father, to help make a point about asking and recieving in prayer.

We get a story about a man who has some surpries guest come over only to discover that his cupboard is bear. So at midnight he bangs on his neighbours door, asking them to give him some bread for his guests. Troublingly the friend says “Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, me and my family are already in bed. Leave me alone”

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 3 Homiletical Perspective

In a world where hospitality was highly prized, the continuous and shameless knocking would broadcast to the world the rude behavior of a friend who stays in bed rather than answer hospitality’s urgent need.

And so, we are told, because of the shameless audacity of the person asking at the door, the neighbour will get up and give them all that they need. They were willing to be quite bold, to break conventions, to lean on an existing relationship and to ask and ask away.

This is a story to show that we can pray [the Lords Prayer] with confidence that God will respond to us,

Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 35B: Luke 9:21–18:34 Explanation

as we lay our needs before him

We can ask God, shamelessly, ignoring social conventions. There is no hour of the day or night that we can’t come to Him. He will always open the door to us. You just have to ask. You just have to seek, you just have to knock.

Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 35B: Luke 9:21–18:34 Explanation

“If in human friendship with all its flaws we confidently expect our friends to come through for us in our hour of need, how much more can we confidently ask God for his help.”

One time I broke my big toe by chainsawing a tree trunk on it. The toe-nail had been crushed down so bad they had to operate on me the next morning. After a few hours the pain had sort of subsided to a constant throb. Now, since most of the time, I have bad circulation in my feet, my plan overnight at hospital was to leave the end of my foot out of the bed sheet, so that my foot and toes would get cold, so then I wouldn’t feel them at all.

That night, at some point when the nurses changed shift, the new nurse came in to say hi, and she asked if I was in pain. I told her my ingenious cold foot idea, and she replied, “we are a hospital, we can give you strong pain killers if you want. You just have to ask.” I felt a bit silly. I didn’t have the audacity to ask for help. I didn’t want to be a bother to the busy nurses. [I still didn’t take pain killers and the nurse ended up giving me a sock with the big toe cut out, so my other toes would be warm.]

God wants us to ask Him, to not be timid, but to approach Him, to recognise that we need His help. He desire is for us to pray and ask of Him, shamelessly. Not in the sense of coming to Him for all the wants and desires we have. But in a bold way, that we can make use of the access we have in Him being our Father, that we are able to seek His face and call on Him.

Luke Contemporary Significance

Our requests can be set before his table. His response, of course, is up to Him, but the Lord desires we share our heart with Him and come with an intense desire to knock at heaven’s door.

A Father’s response (Luke 11:9-13)

After driving home to idea that we should ask, seek and knock, Jesus uses an argument from a lesser point to make a bigger one.

Jesus says:

Luke 11:13 NIV

If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Jesus points out that human fathers, although evil, look after their children and so give them good things, not bad things. No father gives his son floor cleaner if he wants a skateboard. Fathers instinctinally know that giving poinious animinals to small children isn’t the best course of action. How much more will our Heavenly Father, who is perfect, give His children good things?

And notice what good thing the Father is willing to give. Not wealth, not power, not all our deams, those things probably won’t actually help. And it isn’t actually a thing that God is willing to give, but instead God is willing to give God, Himself to His children. He is willing to give the Holy Spirit to all those who ask. The Holy Spirit is the great comfortorer, the advocate, the helper. God doesn’t want to leave us, He wants us to ask for Him. And He will give Himself to us. What greater thing could God even give? He knows what we need, and it is Him, and He will give Himself to us.

Being willing to give us the

Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 35B: Luke 9:21–18:34 Explanation

Holy Spirit should give us every assurance that He will not withhold from us anything that we need.

In preparing for this sermon, I remembed a few years ago, after Hannah urging me, to call up the bank to ask for a decrese in our interest rates. Being paralised with banking things and having a fear of talking to large companise on the phone and not wanting to cause too many waves, I put this off for a while. But, eventually, when I called, I was suscessful. So I called them again this week, and got 0.11% off our rate, just for asking.

If banks, thought they are evil, know how to reduce interest rates to their customers if they ask, how much more will God give Himself to His children who ask for Him?

Jesus taught that we can aproach God in prayer and ask for Him, and He will give. And He will do this because He is a better Friend, He is a better Father and He is Faithful.

A Faithful Lord (2 Thess 3:3)

In second Thessalonians, Paul asks the church there for prayer. He ask them:

2 Thessalonians 3:2–3 NIV

And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil people, for not everyone has faith. But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.

Paul asks to be safe from unfaithful people, from those who might strongly oppose his mission to tell them about Jesus. Paul also encourages the church that God is faithful and He will help them and protect them from the evil one. A bit like the line in Matthew’s version of the Lords Prayer (Mat 6:13).

Paul gets the Thessalonians to join with him in prayer, to partner with him, by asking God for the same things he is asking for, and for them to be confident that God is strong enought to help them in their requests. Paul think God will do a good work for them, because, as he said, the Lord is faithful.

God is someone that we can relie on. God is someone we can depend on. God keeps His word. He is almighty and He has the power to save and deliever people from evil.

I do wonder if sometimes we don’t pray because we are not sure if God is listening to us. Or we might not think that God isn’t concerned with us, He be a bit distant of aloof. But Jesus tells us He is a friend who comes to our need, He is a Father who is interested in giving to His Children. God doesn’t haven’t to say yes all the time, and we should allow for that, but we should go to Him, and be bold and ask.

The bottom line is that

Pulpit Pages: New Testament Sermons A. A Prayer of Faith

We cannot expect God to answer prayers that are never prayed

We all face troubles and have needs. We are not as independent as we think we are. God wants us to include Him in on our lives. He is faithful and will help.

This week, you may want to try and pray Lukes 3 verse version of Lord Prayer every day. To praise God’s name, to ask God for His kingdom to come, for our daily bread, for His forgivness and protection. You could even make each line a heading and expand on each point if you want. And when you do pray that prayer, know that He will hear us.

Prayer in the Christian life is probably

Pulpit Pages: New Testament Sermons C. A Prayer of Fulfillment

the most effective and efficient tool that we have.

So lets use it.

It is wild to think that we can talk to God, that we can make requests to Him. It is a crazy privledge. We humans can talk to God, and He will listen.

So lets not be so independent from him, or too proud of ourselves to think we don’t need His help. And lets not be so timid or meek to not raise our voices and to ask of Him.

For when we pray, we are talking to a friend, we are talking to our Father, we are talking to our faithful Lord.

Let me pray a set prayer from the prayer book:

Provident Father, with the prayer your Son taught us always on our lips, we ask, we seek, we knock at your door: help us so to seek that we may truly find, so to ask that we may joyfully receive, and so to knock that the door of mercy may be opened for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.