ARE YOU WILLING TO SAY, 'LORD, TEACH ME TO PRAY'?
SERIES: JESUS, SAVIOR OF THE LOST
By Ron Ritchie
I was at a college retreat at Mount Hermon a couple of months ago. In the
course of our conversations, one student, with the freedom that college
students have, asked me in front of everyone, "Ron, how's your prayer
life?" Now, people ask me how's my wife and how are my kids and so
forth, but not how's my prayer life! I realized the student had a real desire
to know how my prayer life was, so I was hemming and hawing because no one
had asked me that in 30 years, and I wasn't sure what the answer was. If
you're like me, you might be tempted to tell the truth and answer that question
with a word or phrase like one of these: shallow, empty, quick, boring,
struggling, rare, confusing, I'm going to get around to it soon, or sometimes
I pray and sometimes I don't, but when I do it's always, "God, help!
"
If any of the above words or phrases seem to describe your life of prayer,
I want you remind you that as you grow in a relationship with Jesus Christ,
you hunger more and more to understand what it means to pray. The disciples
of the Lord Jesus had that hunger. They saw the need to pray to God, but
after watching the life of Jesus they became aware that there was something
very seriously missing in their own concept of prayer. Let's turn to Luke
11:1-4:
And it came about that while He was praying in a certain place,
after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach
us to pray just as John also taught his disciples." And He said to
them, "When you pray, say:
'Father, hallowed be Thy name.
'Thy kingdom come.
'Give us each day our daily bread.
'And forgive us our sins,
For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.'"
Our Lord and his disciples had been invited to dinner by Martha and Mary
in the little village of Bethany. As we saw last week, it was during that
meal that our Lord was able to share with Martha that he desired relationship
over activity. In light of the nearness of the cross, her sister Mary had
chosen the good part, which was sitting at his feet and learning about his
life and ministry, which in turn would greatly bless her life. Each time
we study the life of Mary in the gospel we find her at the feet of Jesus.
Now as we look at Luke 11:1-4, we find our story opening up with Jesus sitting
at the feet of his heavenly Father in prayer.
The disciples had grown up under the teaching of the Pharisees. They watched
them pray three times a day after the model of Daniel (6:10) but they were
also reminded by the Lord: "When you pray, you are not to be as the
hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the
street corners, in order to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have
their reward in full." (Matt 6:5.) Some of the disciples had been with
John the Baptist, and he had taught them to pray before he sent them to
follow Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. They
had seen the Pharisees and John the Baptist pray, and now they saw Jesus
praying. That is why one the the disciples on behalf of all of them said
to Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray." It wasn't so much that the
disciples wanted to learn a method of praying as that they wanted to understand
the secret of the Lord's life and why he was always praying. For as they
watched the life of Jesus, they became aware that he spent much time in
prayer, and as a result he gained strength, courage, wisdom and power to
overcome the evil one and to bring new life to many around him.
Ray Stedman, in his wonderful book on prayer entitled Talking to our
Father, said,
"True prayer is an awareness of our own helpless need and
an acknowledgment of divine adequacy. For Jesus, prayer was as necessary
as breathing, the very breath of life itself."
In this passage we will find that the Lord offered his disciples a model
of prayer rather than a model prayer. There's a big difference; one is a
framework in which to approach God, and the other is a prayer we pray over
and over as on a Tibetan prayer wheel. In the latter case you lose heart
in it; you just spin the wheel and pray automatically. In my background
we used the Lord's Prayer like that to get back to God after we had sinned.
But within this model of prayer our Lord gave the disciples five spiritual
insights into the secret of prayer in their daily lives. These insights
will also help us in our daily prayer lives with our heavenly Father.
Are you willing to say, "Lord, teach me to pray?" If so, then...
I. When you pray, address your heavenly Father
Luke 11:2a
"Father, hallowed be Thy name..." When you begin to study the
life of Christ in the gospel you soon become aware of the reality that Jesus
was a man of prayer. You find him over and over again talking with his Father
in heaven. We find him praying (1) at his baptism, (2) on the mount of temptation,
(3) before his Transfiguration, (4) in the garden the night he was betrayed,
and (5) on the cross before he was taken into the presence of Father, to
mention but a few occasions. Our Lord was living out his life in this fallen
world and seeking to teach his disciples that he had a loving relationship
with his Father. In this relationship they had agreed that as the Son he
would not say one thing, do one thing, or go anywhere without first checking
in with his Father, for his desire was to do the will of his Father in heaven
on earth.
In Matthew 6:9-13 our Lord had been teaching the disciples the differences
between the way the self-righteous Pharisees were praying and they way they
should pray. At that time he taught them to say, "Our Father, who art
in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." The Jews would address God the Father
in a formal way: Ali, my Father, or Abinue, our Father. But Jesus used the
ordinary intimate form of the Aramaic word, which children used in addressing
their fathers: Abba. Abba is like our English term Daddy or Papa. The key,
both here and in the Matthew account, was the fact that our Lord, who had
a loving relationship with his Father, was telling his disciples that because
they had placed their faith in him as the Son of God they also could have
a loving relationship with his Father; they could now as beloved children
of God come into his presence and address him personally as Abba, Papa.
When I was in Israel one time, we had come down from Masada in the heat
and headed straight for the pool at the Sheraton Hotel. I jumped in the
pool and got cooled off, and then as I was relaxing in a lounge chair, I
was watching a one- or two-year-old boy with his father. In the pool he
looked like a little, chubby, black-haired, black-eyed cherub. He even had
water wings on. His father had maneuvered him over to the shallow steps
in the pool where he would be safe, and then he ran over to get a Coke from
the cart on the other side of the pool. But the little boy stood up and
turned around to show his father how well he was doing, and realized his
father wasn't there! There was terror in his big, black eyes, and he cried,
"Abba, Abba, Abba!" Over by the Coke cart his father called, "Aji,
Aji," and ran back. The little guy came up the steps out of the pool
with his wings fluttering on his back and jumped into his father's arms.
As his father held him, he turned around, and I saw the boy's face with
all the tears coming down, and I heard his little voice saying, "Abba,
Abba, Abba," but this time from the comfort and safety of his father's
arms. I have never forgotten that. I am allowed to run into the arms of
the God of the universe and cry, "Papa, Papa!" Now you tell me
a father who won't respond to that cry-imagine what a perfect God will do
when his children leap into his arms!
"Hallowed be Thy name..." When Jesus asked his disciples to say
this, he was reminding them of the need to come to the Father in an attitude
of worship, for while we know him intimately as our Father, the name of
God the Father is holy and is set aside from all other names in the universe.
He is above everything he has ever created, and his name is above every
name on earth and under the earth. So we're to enter his presence humbly,
seeing his worth. Now, it is most important not to allow our minds to equate
our heavenly Father with our earthly fathers. For our heavenly Father is
the one and only living God. He is the infinite, eternal, unchangeable,
self-sufficient, perfect, all-powerful, all-present God, whose heart is
filled with justice, truth, love, mercy, and grace. Our heavenly Father
is much more than our earthly fathers could ever be in their humanity. And
in fact, he is much more than he has even been able to reveal to us with
our limited ability to understand and know him now. But by having the right
idea about who he is, we can pray, "Hallowed be Thy name" from
our hearts.
The prophet Daniel understood clearly how to hallow the name of God when
he came before him in prayer seeking insight into the meaning of King Nebuchadnezzar's
dream. The Lord God answered the prophet's request in a night vision. As
a result Daniel blessed the God of heaven, and he hallowed and sanctified
his name (Daniel 2:20-23):
Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever,
For wisdom and power belong to Him.
And it is He who changes the times and the epochs;
He removes kings and establishes kings;
He gives wisdom to wise men,
And knowledge to men of understanding.
It is He who reveals the profound and hidden things;
He knows what is in the darkness,
And the light dwells with Him.
To Thee, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise,
For Thou has given me wisdom and power;
Even now Thou hast made known to me what we requested of Thee...
Are you willing to say, "Lord, teach me to pray?" If so, then
when you pray say, "Father, hallowed be Thy name." Then...
II. When you pray, be aware of the spiritual kingdom
Luke 11:2b
When Jesus was teaching his disciples to pray that God the Father would
send his righteous kingdom to earth and that the world would acknowledge
his Son Jesus as King of kings, both the kingdom and the King were being
rejected by the rulers of the Roman Empire as well as by the Jewish nation.
So for the time being our Lord was invading the spiritual kingdom of Satan
which resided in the hearts of evil men, and offering redemption to all
who would acknowledge him as their Lord and Savior. Once men and women accepted
him as their new Lord and Savior, Jesus would set up his spiritual kingdom
in their hearts and fill their lives with peace, joy, and righteousness
in the Holy Spirit. Later the Apostle Paul would write to the Romans and
remind them, "For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." (Romans 14:17.)
When Jesus said, "Thy kingdom come," he was calling us to keep
praying that it would come in the hearts of men and women everywhere, that
the righteousness that is in heaven might come to earth, in and through
us, to those who are held captive by the evil one. One day all the world
will acknowledge Jesus as King of kings when he comes again to this earth
and sets up his kingdom of righteousness, and we will actually be able to
see it. But for now his kingdom is spiritual, and you and I are to be part
of his wonderful plan of redemption.
What is our part in the spiritual kingdom of God? Now, since we have established
a personal relationship with Jesus as King and Lord of the universe as well
as of our own personal lives, we need more than ever to not only pray, "Thy
kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," but to
realize that God wants to use us to establish his divine rule in the hearts
of men and women all around us right now. We need to be asking God in this
terrible, false, materialistic, and humanistic society, "How do you
want to use me so that your will in heaven is done on earth? Should I be
establishing a Bible study at my workplace? Should I have a home Bible study?
Should I be involved in a local prison ministry, work with AIDS victims,
or show up at the Stanford Children's Hospital? Lord, should I be a counselor
at our Crisis Pregnancy Crisis Center, or cook for Green Pastures? Would
you give me the courage to work with our East Palo Alto ministry or the
vision to help and encourage our shut-ins and elderly? Lord, what would
you have me do with the homeless and the teenage runaways, the crack addicts
and their crack babies? Lord, use me as salt and light within my immediate
family, community, school systems, and workplace. Lord, use me as a minister
of reconciliation in your wonderful plan of redemption for struggling marriages,
rebellious children, and injustice within government. Lord, Thy kingdom
come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And Lord, please include
me!"
This prayer can affect your life! Life gets adventurous, exciting, and rich
when you pray this prayer. You might end up crying out to God, "Please,
there are too many coming into the kingdom; give me workers! I can't do
it all, the responsibility is overwhelming!" May that be your prayer.
I hope your prayer isn't, "Oh God, I wonder what there is to do today."
If we're bored, something is wrong. We haven't understood the prayer, "Thy
kingdom come."
When you pray, address your heavenly Father and be aware of his spiritual
kingdom. Next...
III. When you pray, be aware of your daily needs
Luke 11:3
"Give us each day our daily bread." In the garden before the fall
of Adam and Eve this prayer was not necessary, for it was the Lord's delight
to provide for his children. But then when sin entered into the world all
that changed. Man was then faced with sweat and toil as he approached hard
soil, thorns, and thistles, and his crops were jeopardized by disease and
death. Since the fall, mankind has been faced with the lack of physical,
emotional, mental, and spiritual bread. Therefore, we are encouraged to
come before our loving heavenly Father and ask for bread not only ourselves
but also on behalf of others. Bread stands for everything we really need
for our earthly existence so that we can live out our life within the will
of God. The longer we live, the more we should be conscious of how utterly
dependent we are on our Father to provide our daily needs. You need to relate
to him every day. It's like not eating for that amount of time, and then
you can experience spiritual starvation.
Our loving heavenly Father is the one who was so willing to provide the
manna and meat on a daily basis to his children the Israelites in their
40 years of wandering in the wilderness. He was willing to feed his faithful
prophet Elijah during a drought in the days of the wicked rule of Ahab and
Jezebel by sending some ravens with bread and meat. Then later Elijah was
fed by a widow who was on the verge of dying because of lack of food. The
Lord provided flour and oil, and her supply never ran out during the three
years of drought (I Kings 17). The Father met Jesus' physical needs on the
mount of temptation after Satan left him. Later he provided wine at the
wedding of Cana. He was able to provide bread and fish for the crowds that
followed him on two occasions. He provided fish for his disciples on two
occasions. And it was Jesus who taught his followers: "...do not be
anxious for your life, as to what you shall eat, or what you shall drink;
nor for your body, as to what you shall put on...But seek first His kingdom
and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you."
(Matthew 6:25, 33.)
Look at the prayer requests in our Sunday bulletin. These are men and women
who are turning to the Lord Jesus for their daily needs. They are not turning
to the Ed McMahans of this world or to the California lottery to provide
their needs. They are not turning to a lifestyle of lying and cheating on
their income tax or in their business dealings. But they are seeking to
become humble men and women who are depending on the one and only living
God of this universe to provide their daily needs, sometimes directly and
other times through us. We need to be calling on our merciful God on their
behalf, that he will provide for them.
Are you willing to say, "Lord, teach me to pray?" Then address
God as your heavenly Father, be aware of your part in his spiritual kingdom,
and turn to him for your daily needs. Then...
IV. When you pray, be aware of your sinfulness
Luke 11:4a
"And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who
is indebted to us." Sin corrupts our lives and destroys the fellowship
between us and God and between each other. Sin is rebellion against God
and against each other. Sin is missing the mark of God's intended purpose
for our lives. Instead of having giving lives, we have taking lives. It
includes greed, lying, murder, all the ways we act wrongly and break the
laws of God. As we come into the presence and light of a holy and just God,
we become immediately aware of our own spiritual darkness, our hearts filled
at times with sinfulness, guilt, and shame. We know that except for our
relationship with Jesus Christ as our Savior and mediator between the holy
God and sinful man, we would suffer the wrath of God. But in order to be
forgiven of our sins, we must first be willing to forgive from the heart
all those who have sinned against us. Otherwise we are hypocrites. Our forgiveness
is given to us by the grace and mercy of God (Ephesians 2:8-9). We need
to extend that same grace and mercy of God toward those who are also victims
of a fallen nature and who live in a fallen world.
Jesus, the innocent Lamb of God, was dying on the cross for the sins of
the world, and yet he cried out to his heavenly Father, "Father, forgive
them; for they do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23:34.) The
apostle Paul would write later to the Ephesian believers as one greatly
forgiven by the Lord Jesus, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you."
(Eph. 4:32.) Each day as we come to the Lord and ask him to forgive our
sins and then sense the great joy of being forgiven, are we just as willing
to forgive others so that they also can have the burden of shame and guilt
lifted in forgiveness?
We all fail each other. We are never quite the person others think we are.
So we might be tempted as I was one evening to evaluate my friends and get
a new set! But my wife reminded me that there isn't any other kind of person,
and if there were, they would form their own club, and they wouldn't invite
me. This is it until we get our new bodies. One day my younger son asked
me why I was spanking him, and I had to confess I didn't know. I was still
in the process of learning to be a father. As we learn from God and go through
the process of growing, we need to be patient with each other and forgive
one another.
Are you willing to say, "Lord, teach me to pray?" Then address
God as your heavenly Father, be aware of your part in his spiritual kingdom,
turn to him for your daily needs, be aware of your own sinfulness, and finally...
V. When you pray, be aware of temptations
Luke 11:4b
"And lead us not into temptation." (Matthew 6:13 continues, "but
deliver us from evil." The word for temptation can also be translated
test or trial. Once we come into a personal relationship with Jesus as our
Lord and Savior, we soon realize that "...we...are being transformed"
(2 Corinthians 3:18) into the very image of Jesus Christ. We are "...new
creature[s]; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come."
(2 Corinthians 5:17.) But as new creatures we still live in a fallen world,
and we discover early on that at times our flesh, the old Adamic nature
with all its weaknesses, tempts us to fall back into some old sin. Now temptation
is not sin, and at times like that we need to realize that because we now
have the person and power of the Holy Spirit within us and the power to
choose between going back into a former sin or letting Jesus control our
new life, we can say with Paul, "No temptation has overtaken you but
such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to
be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide
the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it." (1 Corinthians
10:13.) But as new creatures in Christ we need to keep in mind the powerful
temptations that come to us daily from the world, the flesh and the devil
himself.
In this case we are praying that our Lord would not lead us, or allow us
to come, to a temptation where we might fall. Twice in the Garden of Gethsemane
our Lord asked his disciples to "pray that you may not enter into temptation"
(Luke 22:40, 46). The temptation was that they would deny the Lord when
the going got tough. They fell asleep only to discover later that Judas
would betray him, Peter would deny him, and the rest would flee.
But at times in our new life in Christ, we need to realize that the Lord
may want to test or try our new life in order to help us learn how to depend
on him for everything. Paul had a terrible trial in Asia, a trial in which
he almost lost his life, but the Lord delivered him, and he was able to
write to the Corinthian church, "...indeed, we had the sentence of
death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but
in God who raises the dead." (2 Corinthians 1:9). The apostle James
tells us, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various
trials (temptations), knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete,
lacking in nothing." (James 1:2-3.) Sometimes God allows us to be tested
so he can show Satan, as he did with Job, that we really are his man or
woman, in order to bring maturity and great joy to our hearts and honor
and glory to him. But we're allowed to ask the Lord to guard us daily.
I am privileged to be in a discipleship group of men from this fellowship.
We are ten in number who have made a commitment to the Lord and to one another
to help each other grow in our love for our Lord Jesus Christ, each other,
his Word, his spiritual family, and the world around us. In the process
of growing together the men are starting to share their lives, and we have
been discovering that each man in the group is being blessed by the Lord,
and at the same time many are being led into various temptations or trials
not of our own choosing. As a result we are privileged to see each other
growing in our relationship and walk with the King of kings, Jesus, our
eternal Lord and Savior, as we pray for one another's pressures and trials
and then see God's provision.
What we have been studying together is called the Lord's Prayer, but in
reality it is a model or form of prayer offered to the disciples that covers
all their needs as well as ours. It covers (1) our relationship with our
Father, Abba, (2) our relationship with his spiritual kingdom on earth,
(3) our personal needs as human beings, (4) our relationship with those
who have sinned against us, as well as our sins against God, and (5) our
relationship to the daily temptations from the world system, the flesh and
the devil.
This prayer is our Lord's teaching to his teachable disciples, so it should
be call the Disciple's Prayer. It is not a prayer that should be cranked
out as one on some Tibetan prayer wheel, for our Lord is more interested
in the motives and content of our hearts than any form. For some 2,000 years
now, millions upon millions of believers in every country and in every language
have approached their heavenly Father in the name of Jesus his Son using
this five-step outline, expanding it according to their own personal needs.
And God has answered them and all of us who are willing to approach him
in faith believing that he, our loving and merciful heavenly Father, Abba,
is willing to listen to us and then to answer our prayers according to his
own eternal purpose. And this is the principle underlying our prayers: "Lord,
teach us to pray. We want to know the secret of your life because we want
to be like you."
And it came about that while He was praying in a certain place,
after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach
us to pray just as John also taught his disciples." And He said to
them,
"When you pray, say:
'Father, hallowed be Thy name.
'Thy kingdom come.
'Give us each day our daily bread.
'And forgive us our sins,
For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.'"
Catalog No. 4148
Luke 11:1-4
33rd Message
Ron R. Ritchie
April 14, 1991
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