Luke 11:1-4TEACH US TO PRAY

1One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples."

2He said to them, "When you pray, say: "'Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. 4Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into tempta-tion.'"

This request must have pleased Jesus a great deal. Usually when his disciples asked him a question, they asked a dumb question. It would be a question like Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? or Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? or my personal favorite Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?

No, this question was a deeply spiritual question – a request that every Christian should make of their Lord! Lord, teach us to pray. Now we understand that this disciple, whoever he was, already knew how to pray. As a Jew, he would have been taught the proper Hebrew prayers from boyhood. He would have been comfortable in the Temple or in the synagogue praying with everybody else who was worshiping.

But as they had learned from the disciples of John the Baptist, there was more to prayer than they had been taught. As they observed Jesus in prayer they, themselves, could see that prayer was much, much more than they ever realized. And in their desire to have this kind of prayer life, they came to Jesus with a request that he would joyfully grant. He would teach them to pray! This morning, let us listen and learn as he teaches us all how to pray and what to pray for.

When we pray, how are we to pray? What kind of attitude should we have as we approach the Lord? What is the right way to present our petitions to the God of heaven and earth? Jesus answers those ques-tions with a single word. When you pray, he says, say: Father. When we come to the Lord with our prayers we are to come to him as if we were coming to our father, or at least to what a father should be.

Granted, not every earthly father mirrors the image of our heavenly Father. But when we come to our heavenly Father, we may come to him as the ideal father we would want. And what kind of father would that be?

The ideal father loves his children as much as he loves himself. The ideal father always gives what is best for his children, no matter what sacrifice it involves. The ideal father is always ready to warmly receive his children and listen carefully to what they say. The ideal father makes his children know how much he cares for them. The ideal father always considers requests from his children and answers them.

That is exactly the kind of father our heavenly Father is! He loved us enough to bring us into being so that we might enjoy the pleasures of being his child! When we turned away from him in sin, he gave up his only begotten Son as the atonement for our sin. Through the Holy Spirit, he tenderly invites us to come to him with any and all of our concerns. He genuinely listens to us and answers every prayer in the best pos-sible way, whether or not we see or acknowledge it.

Clearly, the heavenly Father loves and cares for us more than any earthly father ever could! So it is that we may come to him boldly, confidently, without any reservations. That is exactly what Jesus teaches us in the little parables he relates in our Gospel reading. That is exactly what Abraham illustrates as he comes to the Lord in our First Lesson. That is exactly what Paul urges us to do in our Second Lesson.

We should not hesitate to come to the Lord in prayer at any time. We can never come too often. We should not hold back when we come to our Father. We should lay all of our needs and desires before him. He wants us to do this! He commands us to do this! Most of all we should place our wants and needs into his divine knowledge and love – to do with as he knows is for our greatest benefit. This is how we are to pray.

Jesus then goes on to tell us what we are to pray for. This version of the Lord’s Prayer can be easily di-vided into 3 types of specific requests. The first is contained in the words hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. As Luther teaches in his catechism, God’s name is certainly holy in and of itself and his kingdom will come even without our prayer.

What Jesus is teaching us to pray for with these words is that we, as his children, reflect the holiness that is his so that other people may see his holiness more fully. We pray that we may play a role, as the Lord enables us, in bringing his message of salvation to as many people as possible so that they, too, may be in-cluded in his everlasting kingdom.

This requires a conscious effort on our part to live our lives mindful of who we are and what we have been called to do! We are no longer bound to this sinful world and its godless words and deeds. Our speech should be free of profanity and sexual innuendo, which would not come from a holy God or his holy children.

Rather, our speech should be filled with words of love and encouragement – just like those of the heav-enly Father. Our words should show a genuine concern for both the body and soul of our neighbor. We should actively seek opportunities to share the peace and joy that is ours through faith in Christ Jesus. We should sound as holy as the Lord has made us! We should help other people see what a holy God is like.

And certainly the concern we have for other people, all people, includes a concern for their eternal wel-fare. There are many ways of salvation proposed in our world, but we know that Jesus is the only Way to heaven, the only Truth about God, and the only way Life can be ours. So, we are anxious to bring the Gospel to everyone in this world, be that the people we know personally or the people we can only reach through missionaries we support. This is what we pray for!

The second type of prayer Jesus teaches us to pray is found in the words Give us each day our daily bread. We are to come to our heavenly Father with our requests for everything we need and want in this life. We, again, realize that God does provide for his people daily even if they neglect to ask him for the things of this life.

With these words, however, Jesus teaches us two things. First of all, we are to ask for the necessities of life on a daily basis. We are to remember and acknowledge every day that we continue to live, and in most cases thrive, because of the generous nature of our God. It is his doing that causes the so-called nat-ural world to produce everything we need for body and life in what seems to be a normal way.

It is his doing that we have the strength of our bodies and the intellect of our minds needed to earn a liv-ing. It is a special measure of his love that we live in a country where freedom and opportunity to advance are taken for granted. Never a day goes by when we should not come to our God in prayer with our praise and thanksgiving.

The second thing Jesus teaches us with these words is that we may pray with trust and confidence. Never once has our heavenly Father failed to give us all we need. His love for us will never end. So when we pray, we place our wants and needs into his hands and accept that his decision in answering our prayers comes from his wisdom and love!

Once we bring our concerns to him in prayer, we may relax knowing that our Father will graciously take care of his children! There is no need, there is no purpose for worrying! The almighty, all-knowing, all-loving God will make his answer to our prayer work for our highest good! We have his ultimate comfort and assurance. This is what we pray for!

The final type of prayer Jesus directs us to is our prayer that the Lord preserve us in our saving faith. For-give us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation. Christians never forget that their relationship to the Father as dearly loved children is rooted in the for-giveness of sins. Christ Jesus, our Brother, died to forgive us all our damning sins.

We live in a constant state of awareness that we would not be who we are or have the eternal inheritance promised to us were it not for him and his death which made our forgiveness a reality. As the forgiven by God, we become the forgivers of others. As long as we have the love needed to forgive sins against us we are certain we have the love which forgave us first. Such an awareness keeps us strong in our saving faith.

And with our prayer we acknowledge that we continue to live in a world filled with temptation – tempta-tion orchestrated by Satan and designed to take us away from the Lord’s loving care into the eternal agony prepared for Satan and all who reject God. While it is the will of God that none be lost to damnation, and he never, ever will do anything to lead people away from him, we pray that he will keep us safe.

For, we know that we are in way over our head when it comes to dealing with Satan. His wickedness, his experience, his persistence would easily overwhelm us if the Lord didn’t give us the strength needed to stand firm in the faith. We pray that should we enter a temptation carefully prepared by Satan, that he will help us recognize and resist the sin it presents.

We also ask for that same strength when some weakness of our sinful flesh leads us back into a sin of our past, perhaps a sin that we love and enjoy. Whatever the temptation may be, we ask that the Lord bring us safely through. This is also what Jesus teaches us to pray for. May we all, with the boldness of a child, al-ways bring all our prayers to our heavenly Father. Amen.