Thoughts on Prayer

Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His

disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." He said to

them, "When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom

come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread. And

forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us

into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."

Luke 11:1-4

When the disciples were gathered around Jesus, one of them asked Him to teach them to pray.

There’s a whole lot of qualifiers we need to discuss today. Let’s jump into some of them.

Number one: They did not ask Jesus, “Teach us how to get God to give us what we want.” Think

about that: the question regarding prayer was not identified by seeing prayer as a means to

one’s ends. It was more of a question of, “How do we talk to God? How should we talk to God?”

As you contemplate prayer, remember that it is first and foremost about talking to Him, not

getting things from Him. You and I need to be in His presence more than all those fleeting

desires we throw at Him now and then. Prayer is part of relationship; those who do not see

being a Christian in relational ways, but rather in transactional ways, fail to see the point of why

God would want us to talk to Him.

Number two: Jesus did not teach them how to manipulate the Father, because prayer is not a

binding of God to the will of the petitioner. Please hear that. Have you ever been desperate for

God to fix something, change something, or provide something? Sometimes we get in this rut

where we try to position ourselves just right, task as many people as possible, try to up our

moral game and ask and ask and ask God. We ask hard, we ask in sorrow, we ask articulately. If

we’re not careful, we start to think that it’s like some form of jumbling through keys and we’re

hoping one of them works to unlock the matter at hand. I’ve done this waaay to much in own

life, and usually all I get is the proverbial sound of crickets. Chirp, chirp. God knows what you

need and while He invites you to ask, making requests to Him in great earnest does not bind

Him to respond. It doesn’t. He’s free to do as He pleases and no one holds Him as some form of

prisoner to their wants or even needs. Think hard about this: am I going to God with a strange

sense of pious manipulation? You know, that destroys the relational aspect yet again of what it

means to pray.

Number three: this prayer is focused on principles, not on repetitious rehearsal. It is not about

mindlessly saying it at church or at home or anywhere else. It is about capturing the heart of

the response and who better could give it than Jesus, who is God the Son? There is no holy

nature to taking what is precious to God and making it mindless tradition to us. Ask the

question about this passage as to whether what Jesus is saying is descriptive or prescriptive: is

He teaching us how to talk to God or is He teaching us how to look religious before Him? God

knows the heart.

Number four: prayer starts with the identification of spiritual relationship (Father) and the

seeking of the glory of God, not just in our lives but in our lands and on our planet. Make your

name holy, God, to us and to those around us (hallow it). Bring Your kingdom and desires into

my life and those around me. Accomplish Your plans in me and through me. Give me what I

need (daily bread). Forgive me of my sins as I forgive those who have sinned against me:

meaning, I must live the Gospel and not just hope it for myself while refusing to be a person

marked by it. If I would want the fellowship and forgiveness of the Father, I must also be a

person willing to give fellowship and forgiveness. Don’t lead us into temptation (God, you know

our hearts and our vulnerabilities, our enemy the devil and how easy we stray). All of this

essentially is saying, keep us close to You, focused on You, more interested in seeing Your will

come to pass than our own. This prayer is completely centered on a high view of God,

encouraging us to carry a high view of God in the way we relate to Him.

Number five: Jesus never did discourage asking God for things that concern us. Nevertheless,

when we pray, we must recognize that God knows best as to what we need and that it’s His

right to give it or to hold off on it or to never bring it to pass. God does give us not just things

we need, but things we really like too, you know? That’s because He’s good, not just a Giver of

needs but also a Knower of His kids. Prayer acknowledges that God is the One who is sovereign

and that we must wait on Him.

To abandon prayer is to also invite striving to figure our lives out on our own terms. This can

look like worry, anger, manipulation for control, self-improvement for the sake of self-

sufficiency versus reliance upon God (not saying not to improve yourself, but never to dismiss

your need of God) and many other issues. The greatest problem we face, though, is not living in

relationship to God and converting this whole dynamic into that of transactions, I believe.

Giving and hoping to get; it becomes more business than personal , and that’s just not how this

was ever meant to be. God wants you and me to have a high view of Him; how we talk to Him

reveals so much about what we really think of Him.

Be brave, brave enough to talk to God and to be real with Him as you do.

Sam Stringer

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used

by permission. All rights reserved.