HOW TO PRAY 101
Wouldn’t it be cool if Jesus just showed up in person at your church and gave a class on “How To Pray”?
I suspect that we’d all be shocked.
It would be a very short lecture. I have no reason to think that He would say anything different than He did when the disciples asked for a lesson on how to pray.
“And He said to them, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be Your name. Your 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 do not lead us into temptation.’ ”
Luke 11:2-4 NASB2020
This is slightly shorter than “The Lord’s Prayer” in Matthew but it hits all the same points. In fact, the earliest manuscripts of Luke are like the “cliff notes” version of Matthew. Instead of “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name…” the earliest copies read: “Father, hallowed be your name.” Later copies added the text from Matthew to Luke. Let’s look at the parts one at a time.
- To WHOM do we pray? Our Father in heaven.
- Jesus didn’t teach them to pray to Himself. Christians pray IN the name of Jesus but TO the Father and IN the Spirit.
- The Father is in Heaven. He is not “the inner light” or any other New Age nonsense.
- HOW do we pray? With reverence.
- We hallow the name (the person, the presence, the existence, the Being) of the Lord, we hold Him in sacred honor.
- WHY do we pray? So that His Kingdom will come and His will be done.
- We pray so that the kingdom of God will come into existence in the earth; His rule and dominion. We pray so that God’s will is accomplished and that our will bows to His.
- WHAT do we pray for? Basic needs, forgiveness, and divine aid.
- Daily bread is a kind of shorthand for the most basic human needs. It’s described in very manna-like language. We don’t ask for tomorrow’s bread or next week’s bread. We ask today for today’s bread.
- Forgiveness is a two-way street. We receive forgiveness and forgive those who have done us wrong. This is releasing the guilty party. Cancelling the debt. They owe you nothing. In the same way the Lord has cancelled your debt and released you. There’s nothing for you to pay back.
- We ask for the Lord to lead us (lest we find ourselves off into needless adversity) and rescue us from evil.
Even though Luke doesn’t include “for Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever,” I think it is very fitting to end our prayers with praise and affirmation of the Lord’s supremacy. The Lord’s prayer can be a kind of outline for prayer.
- Our Father in Heaven
- Hallowed be Thy Name
- Thy Kingdom Come
- Thy Will be Done
- Give us today our daily bread
- Forgive us our debts/trespasses
- As we forgive…
- Lead us
- Deliver us
- Thine is the Kingdom/Power/Glory
If you spent just 2 minutes meditating on and verbally unpacking and praying through each section, you’d easily pray for 20 minutes. If you spent 6 minutes on each section, that’s an entire HOUR of prayer.
But there are two more things Jesus teaches about prayer: persistence and chutzpa!
Jesus tells the story of the guy who goes to his pal’s house in the middle of the night to borrow 3 loaves of bread because unexpected company has arrived. The friend doesn’t want to get out of bed but because his buddy has the chutzpah to keep pounding on the door in the middle of the night, he gets up and gives him the bread.
😐 What’s chutzpah?
It’s yiddish. It means extreme shamelessness. Here’s an internet quote:
“Leo Rosten’s 1968 book The Joys of Yiddish, defines chutzpah as “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”
It’s a humorous definition but you get the idea. Wild audacity.
The word translated as “importunity” or “impudence” is a compound word that means “no shame.” Shamelessness or audacity. Here are some other synonyms:
We all know someone like this. You may be related to one. They will go up to anyone and just ask for stuff; usually to the embarrassment of their children and spouse.
Here’s what Bible commentator David Brown (Jamison, Faucett, & Brown) had to say on this passage:
Right after this story, Jesus does the whole, “if your son asked for a fish would you give him a snake?”
“Therefore if you, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father from heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
Luke 11:13 LEB
Even a grumpy man who didn’t want to get out for bed will get up and help his friend because of shameless persistence.
Even clumsy parents wouldn’t give a snake or a scorpion to their kid in place of basic food.
How much more will the Heavenly Father who is neither grumpy nor clumsy respond to our prayers?
The New Living Translation does a good job of conveying the Greek verb tenses in this passage:
“And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.”
Luke 11:9 NLT
It reminds me of the old tv show Kung Fu when young Caine waits and waits for days outside the Shaolin Temple to be chosen as a student. At first there were many boys waiting outside. Some were invited in. Others were told to go home. Some were told to keep waiting. Some gave up. He kept standing outside waiting, in the sun, in the rain, he was persistent.
And the door finally opened to him.
INSIDE vs OUTSIDE
Jesus has another confrontation with the Pharisees. The thing that set it off this time was His failure to “wash his hands.” 💦🧼
This does not refer to normal hand-washing. Here is an explanation from Chuck Smith’s commentary on this passage:
The Pharisees had some superstitious ideas about evil spirits getting on one’s hands and then if you touched your mouth or nose with your unwashed hands the evil spirits could get inside you or at least cause damage.
Hand-washing and keeping one’s hands away from one’s face does help stop the spread of disease and perhaps there is a primitive concept of that here, but no where in God’s law is their multi-step process of hand-washing commanded.
The Pharisees were SO concerned about the nitpicky methods of washing hands and cups and dishes, but were utterly careless about the cleanliness of their own hearts.
I suspect that legalistic nitpickiness and religious pomposity may be an unconscious attempt to create a sense of sanctification when real sanctification is sorely lacking.
Jesus unloaded on them with both barrels.
- Woe to you! (What sorrow awaits!)
- Fools!
- Filthy…
- You ignore justice and the love of God
- You love to be seen
- You’re like hidden graves, people have no idea how much corruption is under the surface
- You crush people with unbearable religious demands
- You are cut from the same cloth as your ancestors who killed the prophets
- You and your generation will be held responsible for the blood of every prophet ever murdered (and they were, in 70AD)
- You refuse to enter the Kingdom of God and you keep the knowledge of the kingdom from the people.
That last one has been pretty typical of religious (so-called “Christian”) power-structures over the centuries. Don’t let the common people read the Bible for themselves. Or, if you can’t keep them from reading, convince them they cannot understand it without the interpretation of the authority figure. Powerful people desire to control others and believe they are superior and therefore right to do so. And anyone who refuses to be controlled is a threat.
Jesus’ “Year of Popularity” is quickly closing. In just a few more chapters the situation with the Pharisees and Torah teachers is going to start moving from private debate around a dinner table to public conflict.
To The Reader 