Tag: The Lord’s Prayer

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Teach Us To Pray

“One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray'” (Luke 11:1).

Jesus had a need to be alone with God the Father for fellowship, to seek guidance, and to obtain power for his ministry. He lived in constant dependence upon his heavenly Father. In this respect he was an example to his disciples and to us.

When the disciple asked him to teach them to pray, Jesus gave them a pattern for prayer, and a story to illustrate prayer. The pattern is what is commonly called the Lord’s prayer. Luke’s version reads, “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'” (Luke 11:2-4).

In this model prayer our Lord taught us to think of God as a Father. Prayer is to be an expression of a relationship, not an empty ritual. The Father is to be worshipped, revered, hallowed. To ask for his kingdom to come is to seek his will and to submit to his authority, now and in the future kingdom.

Jesus teaches us in this prayer to ask for our daily needs to be met.  We are taught to confess our sins to God. “Lead us not into temptation” means that we need the Lord’s guidance to avoid the temptations of the evil one. This is how we should pray!

Then Jesus told a humorous story to illustrate prayer. “Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.’

“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.’ 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” (Luke 11:5-8).

This is a story about inadequate resources, inconvenient circumstances, and irritated people. It recognizes that life is messy sometimes, and especially in those times, we need to pray. What is the Lord Jesus teaching us about prayer?

For one thing, he is teaching persistence and boldness in approaching God. John Newton wrote, “Thou art coming to a king. / Large petitions with thee bring. / For his grace and power are such / none can ever ask too much!”

Also, this is a lesson about God. He is not like the reluctant neighbor in the story. He is a loving Father who delights to do what is best for his children. “He will get up and give him as much as he needs.” Phillips Brooks said, “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance. It is laying hold of his highest willingness.”

Our Lord concluded his teaching on prayer with these words: “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!” (Luke 11:13).

Pastor Randy Faulkner

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Made for Community

We were never intended to go it alone in the Christian life. We were made for community. There are some things we can only learn in community with others. Words like grace, forgiveness and love have meaning only in a context of relationship with others.

The Lord’s prayer teaches us that we are meant to pray with other believers. The personal pronouns in the prayer are plural. The first person singular (I, me, my) is completely absent from the prayer. “Our Father” has meaning only when expressed in fellowship with others. Community is part of an essential theology of prayer.

Albert Mohler, in his book on the Lord’s prayer, The Prayer that Turned the World Upside Down, wrote, “One of the greatest problems in prayer is that we begin with our own concerns and our own petitions without regard for our brothers and sisters. Many of us falter in prayer because we begin with the wrong word: ‘I,’ instead of ‘our.’ Jesus reminds us that we are part of a family, even when we pray . . . we are in this together.”

Tish Harrison Warner, in Liturgy of the Ordinary, wrote, “Jesus sent his Spirit to a people. The preservation of our faith and the endurance of the saints . . . is a promise that God will redeem and preserve his church — a people, a community, an organism, an institution — generation after generation, and that even the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

Paul knew that. That is why he wrote, “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership (fellowship, community) in the gospel from the first day until now” (Philippians 1:3-4).

Paul was in a helpless situation. He was a prisoner in Rome, not knowing if he would survive or be martyred. He was separated from his friends in Philippi. Fortunately he was not alone. He had a friend from Philippi, Epaphroditus, there with him to assure him of the ongoing concern of the community of faith.

Do you have a church family to surround you with concern and prayers when you are in need? Are you invested enough in the lives of other Christians so that you pray for them? The Christian life was not intended to be lived in isolation. We were made for community.

Pastor Randy Faulkner

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A Strategy of Subversion

A Strategy of Subversion

The sermon on the mount was subversive. Our Lord Jesus subverted and re-framed time-honored religious precedents: alms-giving, fasting, public rituals, interpersonal relations, and prayer. The climax of the sermon is the Lord’s Prayer. It is an expression of the desire that God’s kingdom will up-end and replace all earthly authorities, powers, and customs. “Your will be done on earth” (Matthew 6:10).

This is the main idea of Albert Mohler’s book, The Prayer that Turns the World Upside Down: The Lord’s Prayer as a Manifesto (Thomas Nelson, 2018, 175 pp). I read the book on a recent trip. It refreshed and renewed my understanding of the Prayer, in its simplicity and power.

In the introduction, he writes: “Looking across the landscape, it becomes clear that very few revolutions produce what they promise. Arguably most revolutions lead to a worse set of conditions than they replaced. 

“And yet, we still yearn for radical change, for things to be made right. We rightly long to see righteousness and truth and justice prevail. We are actually desperate for what no earthly revolution can produce. We long for the kingdom of God and for Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords. We are looking for a kingdom that will never end and for a King whose rule is perfect.

“This is why Christians pray the Lord’s prayer.”

Mohler writes with the conviction that this short prayer is a call to spiritual revolution. The kingdoms of this world will indeed pass and give way to the kingdom of Christ, in which God’s will will indeed be done on earth. The Lord’s prayer asks that the rule of God be made visible. That is the kind of authority in praying that seems to be lacking in many sectors of Christendom. That is why this book is valuable and deserves a wide readership.

The author confesses his own human weakness in a story he told about going about the business of prayer as one robotically performing a familiar task. He gives other examples of the tendency to pray badly, for which the Lord’s prayer is a corrective.

Analyzing various religious traditions, he asks us to consider what we really believe about God and about prayer. The fact that human beings are created in God’s image means that we are given the privilege of communication with our communicating creator who wants us to think of him as “our Father.”

Faithful to the gospel, Dr. Mohler sets forth the necessity of redemption through faith in Jesus Christ. The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer for disciples of Jesus to pray. We can only relate to God as Father if we have become his sons and daughters through faith in Christ.

The fact that we are social creatures means that we are not to live or to worship in isolation, and the Prayer challenges our individualism. “Jesus is reminding us that when we enter into a relationship with God, we enter into a relationship with his people.” Mohler rightly emphasizes the fact that there is no first personal pronoun in the entire prayer. The plural pronouns mean we pray this in solidarity with other believers.

Point by important point the author applies the wisdom and beauty of the Lord’s Prayer in helpful lessons for all Christians. Dr. Mohler is a theologian who writes with the clarity of a journalist and with the empathy of a pastor. This is the kind of book I intend to give as gifts to people I care about and recommend to people who read this blog.

Romans 8:26 says “We do not know what we ought to pray for.” That has often been true in my experience. I am thankful for the promise that the Holy Spirit “helps us in our weakness.” One of the ways the Spirit helps me is the example of the prayers of the apostle Paul. Another is to pray the psalms, which are a guide to praise and worship. Another is the Lord’s Prayer. It is a model, or template, for praying in accordance with the will of God.

C.S. Lewis, in his Letters to Malcomb, Chiefly on Prayer, wrote about how he added to the Lord’s Prayer is own private overtones, or “festoons,” which were his way of using the Prayer as architecture for his personal praying. The categories and structure of the Lord’s Prayer, he said, allowed for freedom of personal application and expression of his worship, intercessions, and confessions.

Dr. Mohler would agree, I think. Reading his book has strengthened my praying. It has reminded me that Jesus has this world situation well in hand, and somehow our praying this way is a part of achieving his victory over the powers of darkness. Think about that when you are praying the Lord’s Prayer this coming Sunday in church.

    –  Pastor Randy Faulkner

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