Lord, Teach us to Pray

Now, I know none of you ever have problems when it comes to prayer, but frankly sometimes I’m at a loss for what to say. I know, I know! That’s a terrible thing to say. After all, I’m the professional!
And that’s what I get all the time: At somebody’s house for a meal, they say, “Pastor, would you pray?” And typically I’ll say, “It ain’t my home . . . you pray!” Or like a few weeks ago when Stephanie and I were at our high school reunion. We went to a Lutheran high school in Nebraska, so of course after our old class president gave his big welcoming speech and right before we sat down for a little meal, he said, “ . . . and now pastor is going to lead us in prayer before we eat.” And in my mind I went, “oh, brother . . . okay, well I can think of something.” But thankfully in the ½ second I had to think as I took a breath and opened my mouth to begin praying for all my old classmates, I suddenly realized that he didn’t mean me, but the elderly pastor who served as the school’s alumni coordinator! Dodged that bullet, let me tell you!
But okay, okay . . . maybe some of you do have that same problem. When it comes time for prayer, you’re not certain of what to say. You’re not sure of what you can pray for. Can you pray for yourself? Is every prayer supposed to be for someone else? Are there certain prayers God just doesn’t want to hear?
I think that the main problem behind our fear to pray lies with confidence: we don’t have it. We’re pretty sure that God answers prayer, we know that’s what the Scriptures teach, but we just really don’t have the confidence that He’s going to answer this particular prayer. There’s a number of different reasons for this: we’ve never been taught how to pray, so we’re not confident that we’ll say the right words to get God to hear us. We’re nervous about speaking in public, so we’re not confident that we can pray without making some sort of mistake and look foolish in front of other people and God. But even worse, sometimes we’re not confident that God even wants to hear what we have to say. We’re afraid we’re just bothering Him, and so we lack the confidence that our prayers are even something that God desires.
Now, I can’t do much about you being afraid to pray in public (unless, of course, you’re in the Discipleship class, in which case I simply force you to! J). But would it surprise you to know that the disciples—the early leaders of the church, the heroes of the Book of Acts—that there was once a time when they weren’t so confident in how they should pray, either? It’s right there in the Gospel lesson for today. Open your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke, chapter eleven.
Jesus is praying—of course Jesus is praying. It seems like you can’t sneeze in the Gospels without Jesus praying—Jesus is praying, and the disciples look over and notice what He’s doing. And they realize something: they don’t know how to pray like Jesus prays. Now, these are good Jewish boys, all of them. They’ve been raised up attending the synagogue and no doubt they’ve memorized a number of prayers. But true to form, Jesus doesn’t seem to pray the way they’ve been taught. He approaches it differently. Maybe it’s just easier for Him . . . maybe His prayers sound more like He’s talking to someone that He knows personally, I don’t know. But the disciples recognize that He’s got a handle on prayer that they don’t, and so they say, “Lord teach us to pray.”
What comes next is interesting. The next words Jesus says are what we know as the Lord’s Prayer. We pray it every Sunday, really every worship service. It’s an excellent prayer, perhaps even the best, most sublime piece of beautiful, poetic prayer that’s ever been known to man.
But while the Lord’s Prayer is an excellent prayer and it is good and right to pray it, I want you to notice something: the disciples didn’t say, “Lord, give us a prayer”, but, “Lord, teach us to pray.” That means something.
It means something, because Jesus says, “when you pray . . .” “When you pray.” We could maybe even say, “whenever you pray” (that’s fair in the Greek). Jesus isn’t primarily giving them His words to pray, but giving them a model to guide their own prayers. While the Lord’s Prayer is an excellent prayer in and of itself, it also serves as a model for how to build our own prayers.
The Lord’s Prayer is a template that Jesus gives us for prayer, and it’s pretty good: approach God knowing that He is your loving Father, keep in mind that He wants us to be more and more holy, ask Him to give us all the things we need for daily living, ask for forgiveness, forgive others, and ask for strength to leave our evil ways behind. It’s simple. It’s straightforward. It’s a good prayer.
But so far Jesus has given the disciples a template for prayer, but He hasn’t necessarily given us them the confidence they need to pray. For that, Jesus offers two parables that aren’t a template for prayer, but incentive to prayer. The parables give us confidence to pray.
Luke 11:5-8 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.
There’s three characters in the story. One character is us: we’ve had a friend come to visit and need to lay out a little spread for him, but we don’t have any bread. Bread’s important; in those days it was the staple of every meal. In fact, it was the utensil that they used to eat. Not having bread would be like you or I not having forks or knives or spoons to lay out on the table. The friend we go to get bread is God. We’re asking him to give us what we need to provide for the third character: the friend that’s come to visit us.
The way that I’ve commonly understood this story was that we go to God and we hammer and hammer and hammer on his door until He gives us what we are asking for. The moral of the story, as I’ve always understood it, is that persistence in prayer pays off.
But wait . . . wait. Look at that passage more closely. Kenneth Bailey, in his book Poet and Peasant, points out several important facts about this parable. One, there is no indication of persistence in that parable! Where does it say that the guy bugs his friend until he finally gets up out of bed, goes down to the cupboard, throws some bread out the door and says, “THERE! Are you satisfied now?!?!?” Because God’s not like that . . . He’s not doesn’t answer our prayers just because He’s irritated half to death with our asking.
Instead, Bailey points out that the custom of the time dictated that a guest be given hospitality. A host was obliged to honor his guest by setting out a meal. But we have no bread. Our friend needs a meal, he’s been traveling long and hard and he’s tired and worn out. He needs what we cannot provide. Where will we get what we lack to provide for our friend’s needs? We’ll go to the One who can provide out of His surplus.
The women of the day baked bread in a communal oven, one that was owned by the whole village. Since they all met there, they each knew who had extra and who had yet to bake some. Therefore, the host goes to the house of a man whom he knows has bread. He knows where to get the things he cannot supply for his guest, and so he goes to the only place that can provide what he lacks: he goes to the house that has a surplus.
And when he gets there, note this: he doesn’t knock. Strangers knocked. Soldiers hammered on the door. But a friend? A friend calls out. “Friend, give me what I need to provide for my other friend . . . for I do not have what he needs myself.” As we pray for the needs of others, then, we go to the house that can provide. We go to the house of our friend—we go to the Father—and we call out in prayer that from His surplus He may provide us with something to give to our friend in need.
But now that we have the confidence of where to go to receive what is needed, do we still lack the confidence that once we get there our request will be granted?
Luke 11:11-12 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?
Does a father love his child? One of the things that’s always impressed me about both my parents as well as Stephanie’s is that they have always been willing to give us good things that we lacked. No matter what the problem was, when we have had a need, they’ve always been willing to help out. And why? Because we’re their kids . . . and they love us. We’ve never been embarrassed to approach them with our needs, because we know that out of their love for us they’ll do what they can to ease our burden. No strings attached, just a generous gift given from the heart.
God’s the same way. When we approach Him in prayer we call Him “Father.” And because He loves us He’s not about to look down His nose at us and say, “You want whaatt?? A new car to get to work? Whattsamatta, you can’t walk, or something? Oh, heck . . . here’s this old beat-up skateboard. Now take it and go away, you’re bothering me.” No! God gives us good gifts! Why? Because He loves us! And we can have confidence in approaching Him with any prayer request, knowing that He will listen to that request in love and answer our prayers in a way that results in good.
So there it is: Jesus has taught us to pray. He’s given us an outline for prayer, and He’s given us the incentive to pray.
Do you have the confidence to pray now? God is your Father, He loves you. You only have to look to the cross to see that. That’s where this all ties together. At the cross we see God’s care and concern for us, the depths of His love for us. But we also see the enormous surplus that He has to offer, for in the cross of Christ every sin that you have ever committed or will one day commit has been paid for. All from God’s surplus of grace and mercy. The cross proves that God cares about your needs, because it was at the cross that He met your need for forgiveness even before you realized your need for it. And it proves that God wants to hear what you have to say, because the Scriptures teach us that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord—everyone who looks at the cross and trusts in the forgiveness that God offers there—everyone who calls upon God to save them through the cross will be heard. The cross reveals to you the confidence you have in prayer, knowing that God will hear your prayers and answer them with the love of a father for His children.
What would happen if we all began to pray with the confidence that Jesus says we can have?
Would we pray more often?
Would we pray more fervently?
Would we prayer with greater hope?
. . . might we pray expecting?

The answer, of course, is yes. With the confidence that Jesus gives us in prayer—the model for prayer, the incentive for prayer, and with the cross as the basis for prayer—we will pray.
. . . and God will hear.