Prayer

And it might be of some comfort if you feel that way, that you wish you knew better how to pray. It may be some encouragement to you to know that the disciples themselves felt that same need. And so the account of the Lord’s Prayer in Luke’s Gospel records the disciples as prompting this example prayer by a question on their part: “Lord, teach us to pray. Teach us how to pray.” And it’s in response to that request specifically that Jesus gives them this model prayer.

Now, it’s important to notice, then, that this prayer that he gives us, very famously in verses 9 through 13, is a model prayer. The focus here is not on the will to pray. The focus here is on how to pray. And we call this the Lord’s Prayer. There’s a sense in which that’s right, but this is not a prayer that our Lord himself would pray. Our Lord will not pray, “Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven others.” This is a model prayer for us to follow.

And as we have seen, this is not so much a prayer to be recited word for word, although that’s perfectly fine, but it provides for us primarily the categories of prayer—the kinds of things we should pray for. We saw that it begins with interests that pertain specifically to God and his purposes: “Hallowed be your name. Let your name be sanctified, exalted in the earth. Your will be done,” and so on. And then it turns to personal matters, our own needs: “Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts and lead us not into temptation.” So we have then the Lord’s Prayer, the substance of which is a model prayer for us to learn how to pray.

We have basically two parts of the prayer. We have the opening address in verse 9, “Our Father who is in heaven.” And then the rest of verse 9 through verse 13, we have six petitions, six prayer requests. Now these six petitions fall into two categories. We have two broad areas. First of all, the first three petitions are prayers for God’s glory, concerns that are concerns of God himself. And so it’s, “Hallowed be your name. Exalt your name in the earth. Your kingdom come. Your will be done.” These are God-ward in that sense. And then the next three prayer requests are our needs. The first three were for God’s glory. Second three are for our needs.

Now notice, first of all, the order of these prayer requests. And I think that ought to set some priorities for us in our praying. Prayer is not, first of all, about us. The first category is God-ward: his concerns, his glory, his name, his kingdom, his will. Now it does not mean that our needs, petitions to help us and provide for us—it doesn’t mean that that’s not important. But it does seem to indicate a sense of priority in our concerns. That we’ve lined up our concerns, first of all, with God’s concerns: the promotion of his name in the earth, promotion of his kingdom, his will. And then once we’ve aligned with that, we can ask for ourselves: for provision, for forgiveness, for protection. So prayer is first of all and foremost about God and his glory.

So keep this in the bigger picture. Our purpose in all of this is—the purpose of this passage is to teach us how to pray. So in the bigger picture, God invites us as His children to come to Him with all of our concerns. And I don’t mean at all to diminish the importance of coming to God with your own concerns. Pray about yourself, your family, your needs, your health, your grandmother’s health. Pray for all of that. Pray for our church. Pray for its ministry. But the point here is to think bigger. Prayer is not, first of all, about us.

Now, given that Jesus instructs us to pray this, we should notice, first of all, that God then is not unconcerned with our concerns. I’ve been pressing that we should think first in terms of his concerns, but don’t take from that that somehow it is impious or less spiritual to pray about your own concerns. We have it here from our Lord himself. Pray like this: “Give us this day our daily bread.” So it’d be a false kind of piety that regards this kind of praying lightly.

How is it that we can address God as Father? And of course, there’s gospel in the answer to that. We can address God as father because we are united to his son, the Lord Jesus, and united to him, he is our father as well. There’s wonderful gospel in that. J.I. Packer has a marvelous chapter in his book, Knowing God , a marvelous chapter on adoption. And he defines this doctrine of adoption as the climax of the revelation of the gospel. It’s a marvelous thing what God does for us in saving us. He justifies us. He declares us to be righteous. He goes further than that. He reconciles us. Brings us to himself. The enmity is gone, but even that’s not far enough. He actually makes us his children. He adopts us as his own, and so now we are his children, he is our father, and the relationship is cemented in Jesus. Through faith in Jesus, we become the children of God.

When we pray, we are not trying to wrench something from an unwilling deity. He’s our Father. His heart toward us is good. He wants to hear from us. He wants to do good. His heart toward us is to receive us. In fact, in Luke’s account of the Lord’s Prayer, he picks up on this in the following passage. It says, you who are evil, you’re sinful, and you fathers know how to do good for your children. How much more for your Father in heaven? So number one, our privileged status. Number two, God’s welcoming reception. But number three, and surely this is the bottom line, we are therefore to enjoy a certain boldness in prayer. And I’ll even use the word, even a kind of familiarity with God. Not a glib familiarity, but a family relation. He is God and we are his children. He’s our father. So we go to God and we acknowledge his greatness, we acknowledge his transcendence, but because of our privileged access in Christ and our status in Christ, because he is our father, and therefore his welcoming reception of us, there’s a certain trust, a certain confidence, a certain boldness by which we are allowed then to come to the God of heaven and make our requests known to him. Childlike kind of freedom before God because he is our father.

There’s another implication to this. If God is our Father, and if he is our Father in heaven, there ought to be in prayer a notion of submission. What you don’t find here is what you find often in pop theology today, where you name it and claim it, go to God and make your demands and expect that he will give. Every time I hear something like that, I think and I want to scream back at them and think and say, we cannot dare to pray any better than the Lord Jesus himself who prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

And then he gives, in verse 8, some fascinating reasoning. Don’t be like them. Why? “Because your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” This is interesting. God doesn’t need us to inform him of our needs. That’s fascinating because it’s exactly what we do when we pray. We’re taking our needs to God. But don’t think that God is looking on saying, “Oh, oh you need that? Okay. I didn’t know that.” That’s not it at all. Of course, then that raises the question: then why pray at all if God already knows the need? And I think at least part of the answer is going to be to underline the relationship. What Jesus is doing here is encouraging us to seek God in worshipful trust—to recognize that everything we have comes from him. And if any need at all will ever be filled, it will be because of God’s grace in giving it.

Must never give way to desperate feelings—”Well, if God is going to heal, he’s going to heal. What difference does prayer make?” I’ve said it before, and I love to say it often, because we need reminding of it: We should never assume that God will do, apart from prayer, what he has purposed to do through prayer. Now if you can figure all that out, that’s great, and tell me about it at some point. But the important point is not that you can figure out the mysteries of the divine providence and how he works through us, and how he accomplishes his purpose through means and secondary causes and all of that. The point is God accomplishes his will, but he often does it through means, and one of those means is prayer. And that’s what’s being encouraged here.

Part of the answer to this problem lies in our misunderstanding of God’s promises. Surely no thoughtful Christian would assume that God has bound himself to grant our every whim. God is not so naive as to think that loving us requires him to give us everything we ask for. Every parent, Christian or not, knows that such indulgence is harmful, not helpful. Children often are so naive, however, and they are convinced that if they are being denied anything at all they are being abused! And the fact is we, God’s children, often think the same way.

Sometimes, however, we do not receive what we ask for because we ourselves are wrong. Our hearts are deceitful, and we can pray out of a context of otherwise sinful behavior. Beyond that, our motives can be self-serving (James 4:1-3), and we make request not for God’s glory but for our own selfish advancement in one way or another. We do not seek kingdom interests first (Matt. 6:33) but our own. In such cases the reason for unanswered prayer lies in us.

But we must notice that this problem of unanswered prayer is not a problem of supposedly “low level” Christians. Even great saints have struggled with this problem. Three times the great apostle Paul asked for relief from his physical suffering (2 Cor. 12), but the request was denied. Instead, God taught a most important lesson — that God’s grace is sufficient and that his power in us is most realized in our weakness. And it may be that in such cases God gives us the desires of our heart by transforming our desires! By one discipline or another God molds us to conform to his Son, and our values and goals are shaped accordingly — and so also are our prayers. And at some point we eventually learn that we cannot pray better than Jesus, who said “Not my will, but yours be done.” Eventually, we learn to be content in God’s faithful providence.

God nowhere promises to be our heavenly vending machine — just deposit your prayer, and receive your specified blessing. No. We must remember that every request we make is a request for mercy, something we do not deserve. We must remember that he knows what is best for us. We must remember that his will, not ours, is supreme and right. And we must remember that he works all things together to accomplish his good purpose for us. And so when we pray, we pray expectantly. But we also pray submissively, like Jesus, bowing before the God who is too wise ever to make a mistake and too good ever to do us wrong.

Now, in that parable, you have to be careful with this. He’s not likening that neighbor to God—that God is unwilling and doesn’t want to help or any of that. That’s not the point. He’s likening us to the man in need. The point of it all seems to be pretty clear, and that is that it has to do with persistence. Perseverance in prayer. Our translation renders it “because of his impudence.” Not a word we use very often. Persistence is the idea. Persevering in prayer. So the needy man receives what he requested from the man because he persisted. And again, God is not the unwilling, cold-hearted neighbor like this man, but he says because of our persistence, we should be encouraged to know that we can go boldly before God and ask with assurance that he will hear us.

And once you see that, that Jesus is encouraging persistence in prayer, you may wonder what blessings we have forfeited because we have not persisted in prayer. I’ve heard some say that, well, you make a request, you leave it there, and if you believe, that’s all you should do. Once and done. Praying again betrays a lack of faith, or something like that. That’s precisely what Jesus is not saying. He’s encouraging us to pray, and to keep on praying, and to keep on asking.

Number one, and that is just that prayer—he is presenting prayer here as a standard feature of the Christian life. “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it and all things with thanksgiving.” A standard feature, continuous: continue steadfastly in prayer. It’s to be regular, not just occasional, not just when mom gets sick or the baby gets sick, but continue steadfastly in prayer. It should be continuous, regular, a mark of the Christian life.

Now notice then that prayer here is not a separate piece of armor. It is something that is to be used in connection with all of the pieces of armor. Now I’ve told you how much I love John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress , and that you have to read that, and you’re really not quite saved if you don’t. Here’s one exception where I think he got it wrong. He speaks of the weapon of “all prayer” as though prayer is a separate weapon. Now, what he’s exhorting us to in the book is right enough, but on that precise point, I think he got it wrong. I think the hymn that we sing, Stand Up for Jesus , I think it gets it right: “Put on the gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer.” That’s what Paul is saying here. The point is not that prayer is a separate weapon or a separate piece of armor, but it’s a continual requirement in connection with the armor. The armor then cannot be used effectively apart from prayer.

Acquaintance with revealed truth is not enough. There must be divine enablement. There must be divine enablement. And so we put on the gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer. Notice he says, “praying,” verse 18, “at all times in the spirit.” That again speaks of divine enablement. You’re familiar, of course, with Romans 8 and verse 26, which speaks to this exactly, where the Spirit helps us in our praying because of our weakness and our ignorance. But what kind of prayer? How much prayer? Notice it: “Praying always. All kinds of prayer, with all perseverance, and for all your fellow soldiers as well.”

That is, your heart will likely tend to grow indifferent regarding the necessity of prayer and the need of prayer. You are likely to think that you can get by with this struggle on your own because you’re so smart after all, and because you’ve learned so much Bible now after all, and because you’ve been a Christian now for so long after all, that you can do this and you’re up to it. Paul says you be alert to that. Praying always, be very careful, praying always with all persistence. Don’t think that you are up to the task. What you need is divine enablement, therefore pray.

We recognize, all of us, that we should pray for one another. How should we pray for one another? What should we be asking? Here’s a great place to start. Thank God for the believers that you see, that God has given that faith, and thank God that He’s put it in their hearts to love one another. And then you can move from there to ask for more of the same.

Number one: Pray with gospel-informed thanksgiving. Pray with gospel-informed thanksgiving. That is, pray with a joyful appreciation of what God has done for us in Christ. That ought to mark our prayers continually. Don’t just jump into “give me this, do that.” Our prayers ought to be marked by gospel-informed thanksgiving. It ought to be on the tips of our tongues every time we pray. Give praise to God for what he has done for us in Christ. Number two: This is what was already suggested. Pray with gospel-related concerns.

Number four, and this is in keeping with what Travis pointed out, but it takes it a little bit further. Number four: Pray beyond your own little circle of friends. Pray beyond your own little circle of friends. Remember, Paul had not been to Colossae yet. They didn’t know him, they’d not seen him, and yet Paul prays for them. Now, it’s certainly good to pray for your own friends, and I’m not discouraging that at all. But think bigger. Think in terms of the work of the gospel elsewhere. Last Sunday evening, April mentioned her missionary friends. That should be in our prayers. Everywhere we know the gospel is, that should be on our prayer list as well. Now we can’t do that exhaustively, but yet we can pray beyond our own little circle of friends. I think too often we confuse our corner of the kingdom with the kingdom. And we need to be aware that God is at work big time around the globe and we should pray accordingly.

But I think there’s more to the point here, and that is when he says, “prayer with thanksgiving,” all these needs you have, pray with thanksgiving. I think the point is that we should not be so overcome with our needs or our sense of the times that we forget—and we become, lest we become unthankful. This is, I think, extremely important. Because it’s likely on part of all of us to be so overwhelmed with, “I need this,” “this is wrong,” “so and so is sick,” “I need this for my job,” “I need this for my home.” And to be so overcome with those very legitimate concerns and prayer requests to forget all that God has given to us already. So prayer should be marked always by thankfulness.

And I might say as an idea of application for you parents, teach your children this. When you pray together, don’t just list the needs that you have. Teach your children to pray and give thanks for what we have. Thank God for your family. Thank God for the food that he gives, the clothes, the provisions that he has. Thank God for your church. Thank God for the gospel. Thank God for his Son who has saved us. Thank God for all the treasures that we have in Christ. Prayer ought to be marked by thankfulness throughout.

And I know what you’re thinking when you read this passage. It’s what we all think when we read it: “That’s Elijah. He’s a prophet of God. How many of us have prayed for God to stop the rain or to start the rain, and it’s worked just like that? This is an exceptional guy.” And it’s just because we want to think that way that James says what he does at the beginning of verse 17: “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours.” His point is that he is made of the same fallen stuff that we are made of. He had the strengths, but he had the same weaknesses as well.

Elijah was a man of great faith. And he was a man of great depression and despair as well. He was a man who was brave and resolute in serving God, and yet he’s a man who runs for his life at the whiff of a danger. He’s a selfless man in concern for others, and at the same time he’s a man filled with self-pity. Sounds like the rest of us. And that’s James’ point here. Sounds like an ordinary believer. He’s flawed, but he’s a righteous man. And the prayer of a righteous man, God hears. And as I say, God has heard our prayers more times than we have taken time to notice. In the prayer of a righteous man, verse 16 is effective. That is the thrust of the passage—an encouragement to pray. The point here is not the oil. The point is certainly not a ceremony. The point is prayer. And God gives healing.