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Lord, Teach Us to Pray

            It may have been one of the first collections of sentences you committed to memory at age three, melting the hearts of your parents when you clasped your tiny fingers together, clenched your eyes shut, and recited, “Our Father, who art in heaven.” It is usually one of the last memory bytes to be forgotten. When I minister to dying Christians who have lost nearly all their cognitive ability or to those serious stages of Alzheimer’s who can’t even say the alphabet or their own name, most of them still know the Lord’s Prayer and can say it as well as they said it when they were three years old. Maybe you’re discovering – or rediscovering – God and looking for a way to communicate to him; if so the Lord’s Prayer is your place to start. I didn’t conduct conclusive research but I would guess that the Lord’s Prayer has been spoken by more people more often than any other prayer in the world. Its very words have been authored by Jesus himself, so when God hears and answers this prayer it’s like hearing and answering his very own Son. When it comes to power and popularity no other prayer compares to the Lord’s Prayer.

            So it’s hard to believe that Martin Luther said, “Everybody tortures and abuses it; few take comfort and joy in its proper use” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 43, p. 200). Either Luther got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning or he’s telling us something we don’t like to hear but need to hear – that we could better appreciate the treasure we have in the Lord’s Prayer. Yes, its frequency of use and easy availability can lead us to recite the words mechanically. To fight against this we listen to our Lord Jesus today, study the words he first gave in the Lord’s Prayer, and meditate on their meaning so that all of our praying better pleases God and produces more blessings.

            “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’” The disciples saw in Jesus someone who knew exactly how to pray, when to pray, for whom to pray, and what words to say. Could they pray like that? Jesus was more than happy to teach them, and his instruction comes in the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Like a computer template can lay the framework for you to create a presentation or build a web site or line up a document with greater skill than you really possess, the Lord’s Prayer is a template – a pattern – that Jesus gives us. We can pray with greater skill (and results) than we thought possible if we simply use the template that Jesus gives us as a pattern for every one of our prayers. So we also ask, Lord, Teach Us to Pray.

            The first thing Jesus teaches us is what our relationship is to the one who hears and helps us. “Our Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:9). For his model prayer Jesus could have selected any of the titles the Bible ascribes to God. He chose “Father.” Not “Almighty God” or “Creator” or “Sovereign Lord” because Jesus wants us to remember that the One who hears and helps us is always available and easily approachable like any good father. I’ve discovered something about prayer by talking to people. When people have a prayer life that has stalled or even just sputters once in a while it’s not because they’re too busy to pray. It’s often because they’re too burdened to pray. Burdened with the fear that God isn’t interested in what they ask because they feel like a whiny little brat who needs to behave better before God will listen. That’s not what Jesus teaches about your prayers, though. Jesus says that you are God’s dearly loved child and he delights to hear about your problems and dreams, your ideas and desires despite any poor behavior. Like adoptive parents can see through poor behavior in their child and understand the hurt and pain at the root of the poor behavior, God the Father knows all and sees your hurt and pain, your feelings of guilt, your fears. He doesn’t turn away but embraces you with the sacrificial love that gave up his very own Son, Jesus Christ, to adopt you to be close to him forever. The Bible wonders, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things” (Romans 8:32)?

            The second thing that Jesus teaches us about prayer besides our relationship to the One who hears us and helps us, is the reliability of prayer. He says that our Father is “in heaven.” He’s not sitting behind a fax machine that runs out of paper, or waiting with cell phone in hand to lock onto a good signal, or at a desk unaware of your e-mail that got filtered into his spam folder. Prayer takes place on the most reliable communication network in the universe. Heaven. It is perfect and that means believers never lose our connection with God, our prayers are never dropped, or lost in space, or returned as undeliverable. Whatever you want God to hear, he hears. Better yet, he listens. Lord, Teach Us to Pray.

            I need your help in this next part of the sermon by joining in a word game. I’m going to tell you the name of a business, and based on their name you figure out what the business is known for – their reputation. Here we go. Speedy Pizza (quick delivery). Bilt-Rite Furniture (quality craftsmanship). Anytime Plumbing (unclog garbage disposal on Thanksgiving Day). In the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Hallowed be your name,” Jesus teaches us to promote God’s good reputation. Hallowed means “holy” or “set apart as special.” Now, God’s reputation is already holy, but we want to keep it that way in the eyes of others by teaching and living in a way that honors his reputation of saving love. Basically, we want to make God look good to others. Notice, by the way, the emphasis in this first part of the Lord’s Prayer is not on “me” or “my” or “us” because our lives are focused on God first. So the first petition and the next two petitions that Jesus teaches us speak to God with the pronoun “your.” Lord, Teach Us to Pray.

            “Your kingdom come,” we pray to our God who rules not in places or from palaces but within the hearts of believers. Jesus once said, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). You know, there’s a lot of stuff in us. Anxiety about tomorrow, the after shock of yesterday, Attention Deficit Disorder, the disability, the expectation that fizzled, the missed deadlines, the temptations that have had their way, the happy hobbies and fun friends – but none of it rules us because the kingdom of God is in there! So we pray that God would make his kingdom grow in us, ruling more powerfully in some areas and more peacefully in others. We pray that unbelievers would come to believe in a better ruler than their sinful pleasures who can offer them more, giving them free forgiveness. Rule, God of grace, more in us and in more people! Lord, Teach Us to Pray.

            Now we shift from what God does to what we do when Jesus tells us to pray, “Your will be done on earth as in heaven.” The angels in heaven set the pace for us to obey God’s will with perfect obedience, unfaltering when asked by others to do otherwise, uncomplaining when it’s difficult, unyielding in determination to do what is right. In this petition we ask God to make us strong to do what we know he wants us to do, because the Bible says so. We also ask God to accomplish in our lives what we don’t know he wants us to do, his “secret will,” that is, his private idea about what’s best for us later today, this week, next year, and ten years from now. We ask that our hearts and minds and plans open up to him, willing to trust his agenda. The thing is, God knows better than we do, so doing his will is always best. Lord, Teach Us to Pray.

            Sandwiched between the first three petitions and the last three is the only petition that asks specifically for earthly necessities that provide for our physical well being. “Give us each day our daily bread.” When we pray to God each day and one out of seven requests asks God for necessities related to our spiritual well being it’s time to remember the proportions of the prayer Jesus taught us. Six petitions for spiritual blessings to one petition for physical blessings. Here’s the encouragement – Jesus has all kinds of bigger spiritual blessings waiting for us, and he’ll give them if we only ask. Lord, Teach Us to Pray.

            Following the only petition asking for physical blessings Jesus teaches us the petition that asks for the greatest of spiritual blessings. At the pinnacle of the Lord’s Prayer Jesus takes us to the solution for our sins, the answer that God has for everything anyone will ever do wrong. The cross. Because of the cross of Jesus Christ the guilt of sin is gone and the power of sin is condemned. “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” Sins are overpowered by forgiveness, made complete and effective by Jesus, not by us. Because we have been fully and freely forgiven, we will fully and freely forgive others whom Jesus has already forgiven first. Lord, Teach Us to Pray.

            God forgives our sins and doesn’t want us to sin again, so certainly he doesn’t tempt us to sin. When we pray “Lead us not into temptation,” we’re asking God to lead us out of temptation so that we triumph over it. A man was stranded on the top of his house after a flood and prayed to be rescued. A boat came and the captain told the man to get aboard. “No,” the man said, “God will rescue me.” Then a helicopter came and the pilot told the man to get aboard. “No,” he said, “God will rescue me.” The man prayed again to be rescued. This time, God spoke from heaven, and said, “I sent a boat and a helicopter to rescue you what else do you want?” Many times our ideas of being rescued from temptation are much different than God’s ideas and we fail because we’re not open to his way. His way may be dramatic or dull, difficult or delightful, but it’s his way and his answer if we’re willing to listen. Most often God doesn’t relocate us from temptation but he reinforces us for the temptation. God provides the will power, supportive Christian friends, and comforting promises we need to conquer the temptation. “He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). Lord, Teach Us to Pray.

            We pray for more relocation in the seventh, and final, petition, “Deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13). We can’t earn our own way to heaven and we cannot stand up on our own against the powers of evil, especially the devil himself. So we ask the Lord to destroy the devil’s deeds, to frustrate wickedness in our world, and to help us run the race and fight the good fight of faith to the end where we will, at last, lay hold of eternal life. Lord, Teach Us to Pray.

            Although the Bible does not contain the final words of the Lord’s Prayer, “the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and forever,” called “the doxology,” ancient Christians added these words as an excellent conclusion. They serve as a fitting reminder that the only one who has the power to influence the universe in every way for our every need is the God who loves us, hears our prayers, and wants what is best for us. The Bible puts it this way, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work in us, to him be glory … forever and ever” (Ephesians 3:20)! Lord, Teach Us to Pray. As surely as we see our fingers interlocking when we fold our hands to pray, we surely know and believe that the God of heaven and earth, the Savior who went to the cross, the Spirit of faith and love interlocks his plans and purposes with our prayers. God listens and then weaves his involvement into our lives to strengthen us, help us, and lead us confidently forward in a way we couldn’t have accomplished alone. To that we speak our final word of prayer, which is a word of praise, a word of faith, and a word of appreciation that means “this is certainly true.”   Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (http://www.gracedowntown.org/) on August 5, 2007

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Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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