Feb. 18, 2001

Luke 11:1-13

How to Pray like Jesus Did

1. Introduction

1. Illustration – Virginia Mollenkott wrote, Most of the discussion of prayer I had ever heard centered on whether God answers prayer and how we can know that he does. But during the past decade I have come to believe that prayer is not a matter of calling in an attempt to get God’s attention, but of my finally listening to the call of God, which has been constant, patient, and insistent in my inner being. In relationship to God, I am not the seeker, the initiator, the one who loves more greatly. In prayer, as in the whole salvation story unfolded by Scripture, God is reaching out to me, speaking to me, and it is up to me to learn to be polite enough to pay attention. When I do have something to say to God, I am rendering a response to the divine initiative. So the questions of whether or no and how God answers prayer now seems to me bogus questions. God speaks, all right. The big question is do I answer, do I respond, to an invitation that has always been open.
2. Context – Jesus responded to the divine initiative by teaching His disciples how to pray. Let’s read Luke 11:1-13 to learn how Jesus taught us to pray.

1. Scripture Passages

1. Luke 11:1-13 - One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." ² He said to them, "When you pray, say: "‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. ³ Give us each day our daily bread. ⁴ Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’" ⁵ Then he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, ⁶ because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.’ ⁷ "Then the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ ⁸ I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs. ⁹ "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ¹⁰ For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. ¹¹ "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? ¹² Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? ¹³ 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!"
2. Jesus set a pattern here for His disciples and for generations of Christians to come on how to pray. Let’s take a look at that pattern.

1. Patterned Prayer

1. Jesus’ disciples saw and heard Him pray a lot. They saw the effectiveness of His prayer. So it was only natural that they would want to tap into the source of His power and strength. And since John the Baptist taught his disciples how to pray, why shouldn’t Jesus teach them?
2. Jesus knew enough of their need to learn to pray effectively that He didn’t even question their motives. He just taught them what they needed to know, and then gave them reasons to believe that they would be heard and answered.
3. There are acronyms for patterned prayer. There is ACTS – Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. I’ve also heard of PRAY – Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield. Both of those systems are good, so long as they remind you of Who you need to praise and rely on and don’t become mere rote. If either of these work for you, great, because they are based in part on the pattern Jesus taught.

1. Jesus’ Pattern

1. First, Jesus tells His disciples to say, "Father, declared to be holy the name of you." That’s the literal Greek translation of "hallowed be your name." In the Hebrew culture, your character was reflected in your name. Who you were was reflected in your name. You were what your name translated as being. Jacob grew up being called a cheater because his name meant "he deceives." That’s why God changed his name to Israel, meaning "he struggles with God," after Jacob spent a night wrestling with an angel. So when Jesus says the Father’s name is holy, He is describing the basic character of God. God is holy, and we need to remember when we pray that God is God and we’re not. Jesus is helping us understand that a key to avoiding presumption in prayer is to acknowledge whenever we pray Who God is, that holy is His name.
2. Second, Jesus says to pray that God’s kingdom will come. "Come the kingdom of you" reads the Greek. And it’s not just like saying, "Let your kingdom come whenever you get around to it." The Greek uses the imperative, or command, mood here in saying "come" just like it was used in "declared to be holy." Is it presumptuous for us to use a command voice in praying God’s kingdom to come? Obviously not, because Jesus told us to do it. What we are doing when we pray that way is expressing a deep, heartfelt desire, a thirst, a longing, for His kingdom to take control of us and our world. And there is nothing wrong with that at all, for that is just what the world needs.
3. So we declared God’s name to be holy, then we express our longing for His kingdom. Third, Jesus tells us to ask the Father to provide for our needs each day. Why can’t we do it once and for all? Why can’t we just pray, "Father, meet my needs for the rest of my life"? Because we need to express our daily dependence on Him for everything we need. If we don’t remind ourselves daily how much we need God, we tend to forget and to rely on ourselves for the things we need instead of relying on God. Jesus is telling us that it is not enough to depend on God during the big crises of life; we have to depend on Him for the little everyday things as well. When we pray "Give us each day our daily bread," we are telling God and ourselves that we can’t make it through today without Him. And that is something that we sorely need to realize. We can’t make it through today with our souls intact without God.
4. Jesus tells us to declare God’s name to be holy, to call for His kingdom to come, and to ask Him for our daily bread. But that’s not enough. Jesus tells us that we have to ask the Father to forgive us our sins. More than that, He tells us that the basis for us being forgiven is our forgiveness of others. It’s interesting that the Greek says, "for to them we forgive all owing a debt to us." So we are to ask the Father to forgive us our "sins" (that is the Greek word) as we forgive everyone owing a debt to us. Why is it worded that way? When someone sins against us, don’t we tend to feel like they owe us something? Like they have to do something to make it up to us? We all sin against God, but does He require us to do something to make it up to Him? No. All He requires is that we confess, plead the blood of Jesus, and repent or turn away from committing that sin again. So Jesus is saying that His forgiveness of us depends on our releasing our right to have everyone who sins against us make it up to us. It’s part of repentance. Showing others the same kind of love that Jesus shows us, and showing them the same kind of forgiveness that He shows us. Not holding a grudge. Not demanding that our rights be satisfied. But forgiving that debt so that the Father will be freed to forgive us. And for some of us that is the hardest thing in the world to do, but with God’s help we can do it.
5. Declaring God’s name to be holy, calling for the coming of His kingdom, asking Him to meet our daily needs, asking Him to forgive us as we forgive others. A lot to pray, but Jesus said that doesn’t go far enough. Jesus tells us to pray that we might not be led into tests or trials. In other passages, Jesus tells us that there will be trials and tests. Is He contradicting Himself? No, He is simply telling us that we pray that we won’t be overcome by these trials and tests. Why does He leave this until last? Because He knows that the areas He has already addressed will be major areas of temptation for us. We are daily tempted to fail to revere God for Who He is. We are daily tempted to want our own kingdom to grow rather than His. We are daily tempted to rely on ourselves instead of Him to meet our daily needs. We are daily tempted to ask forgiveness for ourselves when we have no intention of forgiving someone who has wronged us. The essence of sin is trying to meet a need, a natural God-instilled need, in an ungodly way. We need the God of the universe, but we can choose another god and not revere the One we have. We need God’s kingdom to come and transform us, but we can rely on building our own personal kingdom’s to try to meet that need. We need God to meet our daily needs, such as food, shelter, and clothing, but we can rely on others or ourselves to meet those needs for us. We need to have our sins forgiven, and to forgive others so that bitterness and anger don’t slowly eat us up inside, but we can choose to bury the pain and try to ignore it, all the while begging God to forgive us. We can ask Him to keep us from being tempted to sin, and do everything we can to put ourselves in a position to sin. That is why Jesus has instructed us on how to pray. If we leave the door open in any of these four areas, then we will fail the trials and tests in our lives.
6. Illustration – Tom and Henry Blackaby write, Remember the process of God uses a man. God chooses a man, calls him, prepares, and uses him. This will be important to keep in mind as you pray. It helps explain God’s response to our prayers… God will match his blessings to our character… God may deliberately withhold certain blessings because it would feed your character flaws and give opportunity for Satan to tempt you to sin. As our character becomes more godly and as we become more trustworthy and faithful, God is able to answer more of our prayers. God can then give us our heart’s desires (Ps. 21:2) because they will not lead us to sin, and our character will be able to handle the blessings. The man God uses trusts that God knows best and will not withhold anything good from his servant unless, (1) it is for his protection, (2) it is in his best interest, and (3) God has something better in mind. The Blackabys brought out what Jesus says, that God has good things in store for us when we pray. But why should we believe Him?

1. Why Believe God?

1. Jesus knows enough about human nature to not just leave us with the instructions. He knows, as the saying goes, that the proof is in the pudding. So He outlines the reasons why we should believe that God will answer if we pray earnestly and sincerely the way He teaches us to.
2. First, He uses the comparison of having a overnight guest drop by unexpectedly. Courtesy required that the guest be fed, but it was considered to be rude and unacceptable to feed a guest a partially eaten loaf of bread. There’s no time to bake some more, and the markets are all closed. So you have no option than to ask your friend for some bread, enough to share some of the meal with the guest, which was also considered proper manners. And mistreating a guest was considered a stain on the reputation of the whole town. So even though it’s midnight, and even though inconvenient to climb over the rest of the family to get to the food, the friend does it because you had the guts to ask. Jesus isn’t saying that we are inconveniencing the Father. He is saying that if we know how to help each other even when it’s inconvenient, imagine how much more God will meet our needs.
3. Then we have the oft misinterpreted ask, seek, and knock passage. Many people read into it that we will get anything we ask the Father for. They forget to include verses eleven, twelve, and thirteen, especially verse thirteen. Jesus says that, in spite of our evil sin nature, we still know how to give good gifts to our children. So if we know how to do that, how much more will the Father, who is good and holy and pure, "give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" In other words, the asking, the seeking, the knocking, are all pointed toward receiving the power of the Holy Spirit. If we ask God for the Spirit, we receive the Spirit. If we seek the Spirit, we find the Spirit. If we knock on the door in order to get the Spirit, it is opened so that we will receive the Spirit.
4. The thrust of the passage is that the Holy Spirit is the goal of the asking, seeking, and knocking. The Holy Spirit is the key to our needs being me. The Holy Spirit is the key to our reliance on the Father, to our realizing Who the Father truly is, to our longing for the kingdom of the Father to come, to our forgiving others and having our sins forgiven, to our resisting temptation. We do all these things by the power of the Holy Spirit. We pray effectively by the power of the Holy Spirit.
5. Illustration – James Finley, in Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, writes, Prayer as the distilled awareness of our whole life before God, is meant to lead us to a radical transformation of consciousness in which all of life becomes a symbol. All of life is seen as God sees it. All of life is simply as it is. Prayer is the fertile soil in which the insight into our true self in God takes root and grows. As our true awareness grows, as we see through the eyes of the person we are, we see with a new vision. We see the Presence of God in all that is. Each thing becomes a symbol of communion with God just by being the thing it is. Prayer leads us not only to self-revelation, but to God-revelation in all that we see and experience. Prayer is delightful interaction with God.

1. Conclusion

1. When we follow the pattern that He has laid out – declaring God to be holy, expressing our longing for His kingdom to come, asking Him each day to meet our every need, asking for forgiveness and forgiving others, asking for help to resist temptation – we are praying in a way that is pleasing to God and that He can answer. We are praying in a way that helps us realize how much we need God. We are praying in a way that He takes delight in.
2. As we prepare to celebrate communion today, we need to rejoice that God has chosen to have fellowship with us, that He has chosen to hear us. Let’s take a few moments of silent prayer to thank Him for Who He is and for the relationship He wants to have with us.
3. Now let’s take a few moments of silent prayer to pray for His kingdom to come on each one of our hearts and on our church and on our world.
4. Now let’s take a few moments of silent prayer to ask Him to meet our needs today.
5. Now let’s spend a few moments in silent prayer asking His forgiveness for our sins, and asking Him to help us forgive in our hearts those who have sinned against us.
6. Let’s spend a few moments in silent prayer asking Him to help us to resist temptation and to stand firm during trials and tests.
7. Finally, let’s spend a few moments in silent prayer asking for the empowering of the Holy Spirit to come upon us in a new and refreshing way.
8. Amen. That’s all it takes to pray as Jesus taught His disciples. And in the process, we’ve prepared our hearts and minds to celebrate communion together. Iran, will you come up and help me serve? When we’re ready, please come up the center aisle and get the bread and the juice and return to your seat down the sides, and we’ll partake of them together.