Lord, Teach Us to Pray

Jesus' disciples made this request of him, and, according to Luke 11:2-4, He responded with what is a shorter version of what is commonly referred to as "the Lord's Prayer."

The interesting thing about the disciples' request is that it isn't, "Teach us how to pray," but rather, "Teach us to pray."  In other words, they weren't asking for instruction when they do pray, but they were looking for help in beginning to pray.  Perhaps the ancient world isn't that different from our present day after all -- people still struggled to discipline themselves to pray.  But because the disciples had seen their Lord as a man of prayer the likes of which the world had never seen (see Luke 4:42, 5:16, 6:12, and 9:18), they knew He had the secret to the prayer life they should have but don't.  Thus they ask Him, in effect, "Lord, give us a prayer life."

You remember Jesus' answer.  "When you pray, say: 'Father, hallowed be your name.  Your kingdom come.  Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us out sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.  And lead us not into temptation" (11:2b-4).

Again, remember the request is not for a how-to, but for a key to open the door to a prayer life.  And Jesus' answer is a prayer template.  The upshot is that if you pray like this, it'll drive you deeper into the Father's heart, and you won't be able to help coming to Him regularly.  Not that you won't be tempted to blow Him off for more important things like television, Facebook, or sleep; but that you'll begin to see, because of this template, what your real needs are.

Is that not often the reason why you don't pray -- that you don't know what you should pray for?  You don't know your needs.  So Jesus tells His disciples and us what our needs are.  Aren't you thankful that He came "to bear witness to the truth" (John 18:37)?

Your Needs

Jesus here says that your first need is the hallowing of God your Father's Name.  He is holy, and He must be reverenced if you would have life and vitality.  Any time it appears that there is abundant life being experienced by an individual or a culture where the God of the Bible is absent is a counterfeit.  All of life in God's creation is dependent on His Name being reverenced.
Your second need is that God's Kingdom comes.  The Kingdom was inaugurated in Christ's first coming (Mark 1:15), and it will be consummated in His second coming (Luke 19:11, etc.)  The Kingdom is the reign of Christ over the universe, and the universe recognizing it.  Material and felt needs are priorities, but Christ's Lordship is priority one, out of which flows all else.  If you're a Christian, you've been transferred already into His Kingdom (Colossians 1:13), and your desire is to see His Kingdom spread.  Thus, start with prayer that God would make it spread.
Your third need is daily bread.  Retirement and savings are good.  Long-term stewardship matters immensely.  But you don't even know if you'll live past today.  So pray for God to provide daily, and for grace to live with what he gives.  God already knows what you need (Matt. 6:8).  But your vocalizing your dependence on Him today is essential to your spiritual vitality.  As you speak it, you believe it more.  And you must believe it, because your and my absolute and utter dependence on Him couldn't be more true (Ps. 104:27, Acts 17:25).

Your fourth need is forgiveness of sins.  You're positionally perfect in Christ, counted righteous, and in a gracious standing with God (Rom. 5:3-5).  But you're still a sinner (Phil. 3:12, James 3:2) with issues that, if you weren't in Christ, would be grievous offenses to God.  Truly, they are grievous offenses to Him.  But He's made you His own because of His own love and Jesus' sinlessness.  Thus you must confess your sin (1 John 1:9) and seek forgiveness, sure that He'll respond.
And note that the second clause of that request isn't a request, but an assumption.  It's assumed that if you're coming for forgiveness, you're practicing forgiveness.  In other words, you can't claim the Fatherly grace of God if that grace hasn't made you gracious and forgiving to others.  Because holding a grudge is a sign of idolatry -- what someone took from you either was or has become a functional god in your mind.  But when one becomes a Christian, they turn from idols to serve God through Christ (1 Thes. 1:10), and they labor to keep themselves from idols (1 Jn. 5:21).  So it's assumed that you're growing in grace and grace-giving.

Finally, your last need is to be kept from temptation.  Sin is so engrained in your heart that you have things going on "of the flesh" which you haven't got a clue about yet.  Temptations are ever waiting to overtake you (cf. Gen. 4:7,  1 Pet. 5:8), and you may have no idea.  So Jesus says you must pray that the Lord lead you away from those things that would entangle and corrupt your walk with Him.  I believe that a Christian is a person who has followed Jesus because they've come to see the seriousness of sin: it's desire to devour, and how, in the individual's life, it's already begun devouring.  Thus they've turned to the Lord for grace both in forgiveness and in transforming and conforming them to Christ's likeness.  They've come to Him for Him to stop sin's reign over them, that through Him grace will reign (Romans 5:21).

Simplify Your Approach

Robert Murray M'Cheyne once wrote that a man is no more than he is on his knees before God, "and nothing more."  A. W. Tozer once said, "God discloses Himself to "babes" and hides Himself in thick darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to Him. We must strip down to essentials (and they will be found to be blessedly few). We must put away all effort to impress, and come with the guileless candor of childhood. If we do this, without doubt God will quickly respond."   Both men were expressing what Jesus had expressed to His disciples in this life-altering teaching (or at least, it should be life-altering): M'Cheyne, that prayer in its most basic sense is simply man before God, and thus you must bring yourself before Him and subject your needs to His priorities, and Tozer, that you must come with nothing but pure babe-ness -- with no illusion that you know better than Christ what you need, and with full confidence that our Lord, in teaching us what to pray, was in so doing teaching us to pray.

Our Lord didn't waste words, and He desires that when we approach Him, we wouldn't either.  As Tozer said, if we simplify our approach -- and what is more simple than coming to God how God Himself said to come? -- He will draw us in, wrap us up, never let go, and answer.  And we won't be disappointed with His timing or His answers, because we'll even consider the trials and valleys as graces from a Father who's Name we've learned to hallow, and who's Kingdom is our ultimate prerogative.

Let the Waves Crash and Do Their Damage

I was driving this morning listening to Christian radio and was struck by how many songs are written with the tenor of, "You used to be happy, now you're broken and struggling with faith, but God will restore you to what you once were."  How true is it that we need encouragement regularly?  Life is hard, we are sinners in both choice and nature, and we constantly need truth to build us up and strengthen us.  That is why we have the Scriptures given to us -- our encouragement (Romans 15:4), so that through the Scriptures God will restore and strengthen us when we've suffered (1 Peter 5:10).

But my fear is that the broader Christian culture is perpetuating two dangerous ideas which should both be confronted:
First, that you, Christian, are a victim.  You're not.  While it is true that Satan has led the world astray and blinded many to Jesus' truth, you are given grace and lavished with love from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-10, 2 Timothy 1:9).  You are not a victim, but are beloved.  The multitudes are hardened in heart to the Creator whose truth they suppress every day, while you have faith.  Not all have this faith.  And you have faith because God has revealed Himself and His Son to "little children" and not to the proud (Luke 10:21-22).  Not that you don't magnet to pride!  But you're a child of the most high God, and He has loved you into adoption so that you couldn't even imagine life without Christ.  You're not a victim.
Jesus was a victim at the cross.  He was truly innocent, but He was murdered as though He was a criminal.  And through the wicked actions of evil men, God gave salvation to the lost world.  This message of redemption goes out to the world, and you're among the few (yet an unknown multitude) that He has raised up to new life in His Son (2 Cor. 5:16-21).  You're not a victim.

Second, that brokenness is an unwelcome intruder, and that you should be allowed to "go back" to when things were "better" or "simpler".  Brokenness is so common to God's people in the Scripture that it would take me a thousand blog posts to unpack the examples.  But it stains the pages of Scripture so that the observant reader who wants to understand the inexhaustible ways of the Lord can only cry out with the Psalmist, "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your Word ... It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes" (Psalm 119:67, 71).  The one who feeds on God's Word knows that affliction is a faithful friend from the Lord, whom He sends to drive His people toward Him so that He will drive His Word into their hearts further.  "I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life" (Psalm 119:93).

"But what about my pain and my struggle?  I remember days when things were easier and simpler -- since I've come to know the Lord, it's like a cross to bear every day.  Doesn't God want me to be happy?"  Yes, but happiness is deceptive and deadly if it isn't found in terms of the Lordship of the risen Christ.  The world is full of people who have convinced themselves that they're happy, but they're killing themselves.  Some people, like OneRepublic, realize it -- "Everything that kills me makes me feel alive" -- but the multitudes largely don't.  They'll see it one day.  John Piper once likened deceptive happiness to fondling an expensive brooch that hangs around your neck, and then the lights turn on, and you look down and realize it's a cockroach.  One day the lights will turn on and the cockroach under your chin will be seen for what it is.
The call of the Gospel is that God does want your happiness, but He has to have your heart too.  And it takes a cross on which to die for those two to meet.  That is why it feels like you're bearing a cross daily.  And Jesus said you would (Luke 9:23), adding that one must despise their life in order to gain life (John 12:25).  "Despise" here is not passive but active -- you don't always feel despise for your life, but you actively despise by setting in on the altar, to be given life by He who alone has it.   And when it is time for the trial to lift and the suffering to end, it will, and you'll be restored, strengthened, more mature, and a little wiser in the Lord.  Further, you'll be able to better carry out what is the ethical command of the Scripture, to love your neighbor, in being able to comfort those who inevitably go through the same struggle, having yourself been brought through it faithfully by the Lord.

"Do not say, 'Why were the former days better than these?'  For it is not from wisdom that you ask this" (Ecclesiastes 7:10).  Notice Solomon doesn't say you aren't allowed to feel this or even think this -- it is often a thought that just rises up outside of your control.  But you apparently mustn't say it, because, I think, saying it is entertaining it.  Jesus didn't call you into a discipleship where you stay the same as you were when you started.  He called you to suffer the loss of all things and count them as rubbish.  The church will look like the New Testament church when the disciples in the church treasure Christ as the disciples of the New Testament did.  And this treasuring will happen when Christ is the only life the disciples have.  Whatever it takes for the Lord to bring us there, I hope you'll echo my prayer: Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come, and your will be done.