Jesus Teaches Us To Pray

When General Ulysses Grant was losing his last great battle—a battle against cancer—his old friend General Howard went to see him in the hospital. Howard had earned a reputation for being a Christian soldier. And, as he stood reminiscing with his friend and fighting companion of days gone by, Grant suddenly interrupted him. Howard, he said, Tell me what you know about prayer. Face-to-face with death, Grant felt a desperate need to pray.

So in hours of desperation, every one of us resorts at last to prayer. When the needs of the hour demand more strength than we ourselves can muster, then instinctively we cry out for deliverance to the One in whom we live and move and have our being. In our hour of crisis, God teaches us to pray.

But God offers us a much grander lesson in prayer in those persons whose lives— saturated with prayer—shine forth with radiant confidence in the presence and power of God.

So it was that the disciples, witnessing Jesus’ daily exercise of prayer, asked him to teach them to pray.

Jesus was subjected to the greatest temptations, disappointments, and sufferings it was possible for a person to suffer. And yet, he moved among people with a confidence, a compassion, and a conviction which remained unshaken.

The disciples recognized the great gap which existed between their uncertain selfishness and the confident self-giving of Jesus. They could see that Jesus derived power for living from keeping his life constantly rooted and grounded in his Father’s will though prayer. And so the appealed to him, Lord, teach us to pray.

We who follow Jesus in our time still long for that deep and effectual communion with God which typified his prayer life. And the prayer Jesus gave his disciples at that time still serves as a guide for us. Through that prayer, and his related teachings, Jesus fulfills both their request and ours: He does teach us to pray.

Jesus taught his disciples what to pray for. And he gathered the whole up into three basic petitions: 1) For God’s glorification, 2) For the necessities of life, and

3) For help in living the Christian way.

1) GOD’S GLORIFICATION. As we pray, Jesus was saying, our first thoughts should center on God. The first movement in Christian prayer is always one of adoration. We pray out of love, because God has first loved us.

Because of God’s love, we can address God as Father. And when we pray, Hallowed be thy name, we are affirming that God’s name is sacred to us; and we are asking that all persons might worship God as we do ourselves.

If God should be worshiped by all person, then God’s Kingdom would indeed come, and God’s will would be done across the earth. So should God be truly glorified.

When we pray for God’s glorification, we offer ourselves in praise before him. But we also commit ourselves to make known God’s glory as we press for a world that perfectly reflects His will and way.

2) NECESSITIES OF LIFE. Jesus’ prayer moves from adoration of God and commitment to His purpose to a consideration of those things needful for daily living.

Jesus was no ascetic. He recognized that though, One does not live by bread alone, one’s continued life does require bread. And so Jesus taught His disciples to pray for that which the day required: Give us this day our daily bread.

Gathered up in this petition is much more than literal bread. For a child, it may include a most wanted toy. For a youth, the social graces which will lead to popularity. For a parent, it might mean the funds with which to insure adequate opportunities for their children. Or for an older person, it might include the desire for companionship in their seclusion.

Jesus never encouraged selfishness. But He did counsel honesty, and open sharing of our aspirations with God. And so in this model prayer, Jesus teaches us to share with God the desires of our hearts.

3) HELP IN CHRISTIAN LIVING. A third thing Jesus taught us to pray for was help in Christian living. Jesus knew that, despite our love for God and commitment to His way, we would often be tempted to neglect his fellowship and wonder into paths which were contrary to His will. Therefore, Jesus taught us to pray God’s help in remaining true to our commitment.

When we pray Forgive us our sins, (debts, trespasses) we are confessing our failure to fulfill God’s will for us; and we are asking God to restore us to a proper relationship with himself.

Lead us not into temptation, does not imply that God would tempt us. In the letter of James, we read specifically, God cannot be tempted with evil and He himself tempts no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Therefore, this petition is a plea that God will so lead us that we may not be tempted beyond our ability to withstand, so that we may not fall prey to our sinful desires.

And finally, Deliver us from evil, is an appeal that God save us from becoming subjected to the destructive forces either of people or nature.

Be recognizing and confessing our own weakness and tendency to sin, we open the way of God’s Spirit to abide with us and to strengthen our resolution to be faithful.

Jesus not only teaches us what to pray for, he also teaches us how to pray.

1) With Sincerity. In order fro prayer to be effective in one’s life, Jesus said, it must first of all be offered in sincerity. In his CONFESSIONS, Saint Augustine says that before his conversion, he used to pray to God to make me clean. But he always added a postscript under his breath: But not yet.

Jesus was highly critical of those hypocrites who paraded their piety by praying on street corners just to be seen by their neighbors. God sees the hearts of His people, Jesus would say, and He knows whether they mean what they say.

The Publican who cried, God be merciful to me, a sinner, did not offer a sophisticated prayer. But his words expresses a desire that was genuinely in his heart. And Jesus assured his hearers that God heard and answered the Publican’s prayer.

Many persons are self-conscious and fearful because they have nothing profound to offer through prayer. They do not know what to say or how to say it.

Paul helps us greatly at this point when in Romans he assures us that, The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.(Romans 8:26) In other words, whenever we seriously want to open our lives to God, He knows our desires, and He receives our prayers.

2) With Simplicity. A second guideline Jesus gives us for prayer is simplicity. It was the style of Jesus’ day for men to pray long and complicated prayers. Sometimes our own prayers sound like a news report to God. But in this prayer of our Lord, we have a classic example of simplicity.

Matthew’s version of the prayer shows how the church expanded, polished, and smoothed out the prayer to make it more flowing in public worship. So, in Matthew, the simplicity is not so apparent. But as we have it in Luke, its original form is much more simple; so we can see how simply Jesus addressed His Father.

In the entire prayer, there is not an unnecessary word or a pompous phrase. It is a model of brevity, and yet, also of completeness. He said what was on his heart, and then He closed his prayer.

This is not to say that Jesus would limit us to the form or content He himself used here. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He was laboring heavily to master the revulsion He felt over his coming death. No form prayer could have sufficed for that hour. But still His prayer was simple: Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.

So in our prayer life, it is not the form that matters. What does matter is that we commune with God. And God hears us, not because we speak so much or so well. God hears us because we care enough to speak.

3) With Certainty. And finally, Jesus teaches us to pray with certainty. He said that even an unkind neighbor would lend you groceries if you pestered him long enough. And no decent parent would reward his child’s request for food by giving him something harmful.

If then, we who are so easily put out with one another still honor each other’s requests, how much more will our heavenly Father who loves us all take pleasure in giving us the needs and desires of our lives.

Jesus always counseled that we pray expectantly. In Mark’s gospel, for instance, He says, Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.(Mark 11:24) But this kind of bold assertion raises problems for us. What are we to say about unanswered prayer?

In his book, Making Prayer Real, Dr. Lynn Radcliffe says of this:

All prayer is answered. The answer is the experience of God himself, sometimes manifested through the release of new energies within us, sometimes revealed through the action of God’s other children who come to our aid, sometimes released in the change of the situation itself through God’s creative action upon it, sometimes unveiled in the ultimate answer he is unfolding, and sometimes discovered in a new consciousness of His powerful Presence by our side.

Yes, all prayer is answered—not always in just the time and form we anticipated—but always in keeping with our best good in life. Therefore we should pray with the power which comes from certainty—certainty that our Father God does hear, and does answer, our prayers.

I came across a poem which I believe summarizes quite well what I’ve been trying to say:

Our human thoughts and works, are not so mighty, that thy can cut a path to God unbless’d. And so from HIM the gift of prayer is sent us, to hallow both our labor and our quest. Over life, and death, and starlit spaces, the highroad runs, that at His word was laid, and reaches Him across the desert places; By prayer is our pilgrimage made.(Author unknown)