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1. Why Pray?
2. The Nature of Prayer
3. How Jesus Prayed
4. The Pattern of Prayer
5. When Prayer Becomes Personal
Part Two
6. Prayer's Certainties
7. Praying Together
8. The Holy Spirit and Prayer
Part Three
9. The True Lord's Prayer
10. Prayer's Possibilities
11. Christ Prays for You
12. The Prayer for Unity
For Jesus, prayer was as necessary as breathing. If the Son of God felt such a great need for contact with the Father, how much more do we!
But why? Why do we need to pray? Certainly God, who knows everything, knows our needs. Why do we need to tell Him what He already knows?
Herein lies one of our most basic misunderstandings about prayer. We think the purpose of prayer is to give information to God: "Lord, I need this and I need that"--as if the Lord didn't already know everything we need!
No, the purpose of prayer is not to inform God about our needs, but to conform us to His will. Prayer doesn't change God. Prayer changes us. It changes our attitude from complaint to praise. It enables us to participate in God's eternal plan. It makes us aware of our total inadequacy--and God's infinite sufficiency.
The goal of faith is to bring us into direct, personal fellowship with God. If we do not move deeper into our fellowship with Him through prayer, we retreat from fellowship with Him. Prayer is active--not static. You cannot stand still in your prayer life. If you don't move forward, you move backward. You either pray your way to a deeper relationship with God--or you lose heart and ultimately give up on faith.
That, as we shall see, is the first thing Jesus teaches us
about prayer.
1. Why Pray?
Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.
"For some time he refused. But finally he said to him, self, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!'
And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night! Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:1-8 )
When I was in college, I had a roommate who was six feet, seven inches tall, and weighed two-hundred sixty-five pounds. His nickname, of course, was "Tiny." Clearly, this nickname was not intended to describe my friend, but to contrast with his true description. This common form of contrast is often used to call attention to an outstanding characteristic--for example, when a bald fellow is kiddingly tagged "Curly" or a portly fellow is called "Slim."
Though metaphors and comparisons can often give us a vivid word-picture ("as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs" or "as helpless as a trombone player in a phone booth"), contrast can often be effective in underscoring truth and making it vivid by surprising us. So it is this very form of teaching--the use of surprising contrast--that our Lord employs as He teaches His disciples about prayer in Luke 18:1-8.
Notice the context of Jesus' teaching in this passage: His discussion of prayer immediately follows His prediction of His second coming (this passage in Luke parallels the Lord's Olivet discourse in Matthew 24 and 25). He moves immediately from His words about remaining watchful for His coming to these words about prayer, so He directly links watchfulness and prayer.
The Lord's teaching on prayer in Luke 18 uses three strong
contrasts to focus our thinking on prayer. Let's look at those
three contrasts as Jesus presents them.
Contrast 1: A Contrast of Principles
Luke clearly and carefully shows us the point Jesus intends to make. Luke says, "Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up" (Luke 18:1)--or, as other translations put it, "not lose heart," or "not faint." By this Jesus means most simply that we are to pray and not quit. He wants us to be persistent in prayer.
Here Jesus boldly confronts us with a vivid contrast and an inescapable choice: We must either pray or give up, move closer to God or "faint." We must do one or the other. Either we learn to cry out to an unseen Father who is ever present with us, or else we will lose heart.
Some would challenge this principle. "What about people," they ask, "who seem happy without knowing God, without being Christian? They don't pray, yet they seem to enjoy life and experience excitement in their lives. Maybe it is possible to find meaning in life apart from God." Who has not seen such people and wondered if perhaps they have found another alternative, another answer?
Yet when we carefully observe those who seem to have found the secret of life apart from God, those who appear to live in an exciting yet godless world of adventure and romance, we are frequently surprised to find a hidden underside to their lives, a private core of despair that they hide behind a public mask of happiness. Only when they are arrested, check into a drug or alcohol rehab center, or turn up dead of suicide does the public discover the utter emptiness behind the glittering facade.
The list of idols and icons of our society who fit this description is endless: Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mantle, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison of The Doors, Elvis Presley, comedian John Belushi, Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys, football player John Matusak, comedian Freddie Prinze, actor River Phoenix, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, model Margaux Hemingway, billionairess Christina Onassis, billionaire heir Amschel Rothschild, and on and on. Outwardly rich, successful, and carefree, they were destroyed by their inner emptiness and despair.
One poignant illustration of this principle is the story of movie mogul Louis B. Mayer, who once ruled MGM studios as if it were his own personal empire. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he possessed untold wealth and the incredible power to make and break careers, to control the entertainment choices of a nation, and even to manipulate the Academy Awards presentations. But at the end of his life, as he lay dying of cancer, his last whispered words were, "Nothing matters, nothing matters."
So Jesus was right when He said that only two alternatives exist: Either we pray or we give up. We move deeper into the heart of God-or we lose heart and faint. We are to cry out to Him in prayer, for in Christ His voice has already called to us. We are to answer like a child crying out to his father. For, like children, we do not always know and cannot adequately express what is wrong with us.
Children cannot always express in words what they need or where they hurt, but a loving parent knows. "As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him" (Psalm 103:13). When we cry out to God in prayer, we may not understand or articulate our real need, our real hurt--but the Lord knows us through and through. We can depend on Him to hear us, to act on our behalf, to work in our best interests. Even if we do not receive from Him what we want or what we cry out for, we know that we will receive from Him what we need.
Here we see the contrast of principles--a contrast between praying
and fainting, between going on with God or giving up on God. This
is the first contrast Jesus draws for us in this passage on prayer.
Contrast 2: A Contrast of Persons
Next, in Luke 18:1-8, Jesus tells a story that presents a contrast of persons. We see a contrast between the widow and the judge. Who is more weak and defenseless than a widow? And who wields more power over the lives of others than a judge--especially a hard-boiled and unrighteous judge? Here is a tough, self-centered old skinflint, with a heart as cold as the underside of a pillow. In the story, Jesus shows us exactly how harsh he is!
The widow had a persecutor, someone who was harassing her, and she appealed for help. But the judge couldn't care less. He was a godless judge who was utterly unmoved by her pleas, and nothing could reach him. He cared nothing about morality and conscience; he had no regard for persons, so no political pressure could influence him. Clearly, the widow's plight was hopeless.
Nevertheless, explained Jesus, she found a way to get to this unrighteous judge: She made life miserable for him! Day and night, she gave him no rest. She continually made a nuisance of herself before his court, hounding him, harassing him, plaguing him, until finally the judge was forced to act. To get rid of her he granted her request--and she got what she needed!
Here is the point of the story. Jesus says that this widow had found the secret of handling reluctant judges. She had discovered the key to power. She found the one principle on which even a reluctant judge would act, despite his formidable authority. That principle was persistence.
So what is Jesus saying? Is He comparing God to an unrighteous judge? No, He is contrasting the ungodly, unrighteous judge with the supremely righteous judge over all the universe, God Himself! Here, Jesus gives us a contrast of persons to show us the key to the heart of God, our loving Father. The key to the hard heart of the unrighteous judge was persistent, perpetual pressure. The key to the loving heart of God is persistent, perpetual prayer.
When we, like the widow, find life to be hopeless and futile, when we fall victim to forces greater than we can manage (and who of us has not been in such a situation?), Jesus says there is still one way out. There is a path to power, there is a solution to our crisis: prayer. When we cry out to a God we cannot see but upon whom we may rely, we reach out to a God who possesses a father's heart and a father's compassion. Persistent prayer, says Jesus, always stirs the heart of God. Prayer moves God to action.
Jesus states in no uncertain terms that God is not like the unrighteous judge, that He will not delay in answering our prayers: "And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?" (Luke 18:7). We do not need to pester God into acting on our behalf. He acts on our behalf because He loves us.
It is sometimes taught that Jesus is encouraging what is called "prevailing prayer"--that is, belaboring and browbeating God into giving us what we want. It's kind of like picketing God, marching up and down, carrying signs, shouting demands, until we finally wear God down. That is an unbiblical and unchristian approach to prayer.
Many years ago, the newspapers carried the story of a Missouri man who announced that he was going on a hunger strike because of the declining moral standards of the nation. He would fast and pray until God sent a great awakening to restore the nation to moral health. He announced that he would continue his fast until he died of starvation or until God acted. Day after day, the newspapers covered the man's fast. His strength began to fail, he grew weaker and weaker, and he was finally confined to his bed. Bulletins regarding his condition were issued each day. Most of us would have quit after the third or fourth day--but not this man. He continued his fast until death. The funeral was widely covered and many lauded his persistence.
But was that truly prayer as God intended? No, it was actually an attempt to blackmail God. He held his own life as a pistol to the head of God, demanding that God bend His will to the will of one human being. This man insisted that God act according to a human time schedule. That is not prayer.
Jesus says that God is not an unrighteous God like the judge in the story. He is not grudging or hard-hearted, and we don't have to badger or bully God--nor could we if we wanted to. God hears the prayers of His children, as a father hears the cry of a beloved child, lost and frightened in the dark woods. The child may cry out to be led to an open road, or to be home safe in bed, or at least to see in the distance a light that shows the way to safety. But such prayer is not always answered the way a child demands, because God, our loving Father, already knows what we truly need even before we pray. And He will give us what we need, even if He does not always give us what we demand.
Paul reminds us in Romans 12 that we often do not know what to pray for, but God knows. He knows because He is a father, and He also knows when to answer in the particular way we have asked and when that may not be the best thing to do, or even the possible thing to do, under the circumstances.
From our perspective and in terms of what we want, God's answer may seem delayed. But if we could see our lives from a heavenly perspective, we would see that what Jesus tells us in Luke 18 is true: God's answer to our prayers is not delayed at all.
In 1988, a massive earthquake shook Armenia, collapsing hundreds of buildings and trapping thousands of people in the rubble. Many were rescued from beneath the ruined buildings during the first few hours of the disaster, but after the first day, hope quickly faded that any others would be found alive. One man, however, refused to quit. Why? Because this man was a loving father.
Working feverishly at the ruins of a school where his own son and dozens of other children had been buried by the earthquake, he removed bricks and timbers with his bare hands, working all day and all night. Three days he worked without sleep. Then four days. Then five. People told him to stop, to give up hope. Finally, six days after the quake, he removed a fallen section of wallboard and found an air pocket. He called his son's name--and several young voices weakly answered, including a voice that said, "Daddy, you came for me! I thought you had given up!"
We sometimes think that God takes forever to reach us when we call to Him. Perhaps, at times, it is because our lives are cluttered with so much rubble and debris that He must remove it before we can see the daylight of His love. But He is never slow to respond to our needs. When we cry out in prayer, God answers immediately, instantly, speedily, without delay--and He never gives up. God, our loving Father, never leaves any of His children bereft and alone in a time of need.
God's answer may be the squeeze of His hand on ours, the quiet
comfort of a Father's voice, the steady reassurance of a Father's
presence even though the woods around us are dark and echoing
with fearsome night-sounds. If we listen, we will hear an immediate
answering reassurance that the Father is with us and--in His own
time and way--He will lead us home to a place of light and warmth,
and He will put us safely, comfortably in our beds. This is what
Jesus means when He says, "And will not God bring about justice
for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he
keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice,
and quickly" (Luke 18:7-8).
Contrast 3: A Contrast of Practice
Jesus ends His story abruptly with a third contrast--the contrast of practice: " However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (18:8). Notice Jesus does not say, "When the Son of Man comes, He will not find faith on earth," nor does He say, "When the Son of Man comes, He will find faith on earth." He leaves it as an open question, hanging in the air.
But there is no doubt at all about the faithfulness of the Son of Man. He will come. He does not say, "If the Son of Man comes," but "When." The return of Jesus Christ is an absolute certainty. It does not rest upon humanity, upon human faithfulness or faithlessness. It rests entirely upon the sovereign determination of God. Never doubt that God is ready to do exactly what He says He will do in any circumstances at any time. There is with Him no shadow of turning. The uncertainty is entirely in the latter part of His statement. God is utterly faithful; it is people who are faithful or faltering.
Our Lord's words imply yet another thought: Is it not possible that human beings actually prefer weakness over power? Could it be that we actually prefer anxiety over peace, frenzy over rest, doubt over confidence, fear over faith, malice over love? Is it possible that-because of these human tendencies--when the Son of Man comes, He will not find faith on the earth? If our prayers seem to fail, it is not God's fault, it is ours.
Notice something further: Jesus does not ask, "When the
Son of Man comes, will He find men praying?" He has been
speaking of prayer but now His question is, "When the Son
of Man comes, will he find faith!" (italics added). Doubtless,
the reason for this change is that prayer is the expression of
faith. True prayer is not begging or cajoling a reluctant God.
True prayer is confidence, trust, and faith in God. Prayer is
thanking instead of complaining. Prayer is rejoicing, accepting,
appropriating, receiving.
Why Bother to Pray?
"Well," you might say, "if there is a Father out there, and He really knows what we need--why bother to pray?"
The answer to this frequently raised question is that the purpose of prayer is to bring us to an understanding of the Father's heart. Prayer does not always lead us to an answer that satisfies our wants, desires, and curiosities, nor an answer that solves all our problems. But prayer does lead us to a place where we can accept the fact that such answers are unnecessary to accepting and involving ourselves in the vast and mysterious purposes of the Father.
After all, a relationship with God cannot exist without communication.
Everyone knows of couples who have stopped speaking to each other.
A marriage in which communication has ceased is a marriage in
which intimacy and fellowship have disintegrated. That marriage
is headed for destruction. Human desires, needs, and feelings
must be expressed. There must be an interchange, a flow of ideas
and feelings, in order for a marriage relationship to be vital.
The same is true of the relationship between ourselves and God.
Prayer is an absolute necessity in the interchange of a child's
heart with the Father. This is why Jesus asked, in effect, "When
I return, will I find people exercising this blessed privilege?
Will I find people expressing themselves to the Father in a warm,
living, trusting faith relationship? Will I find people expressing
to God the Father all their hurts, joys, complaints, moods, triumphs,
failures, and deepest emotions?" That is what a faith relationship
with the Father is all about.
A story is told of a father and teenage son who lived in a Spanish village some years ago. One day, they had a terrible argument and both the father and the boy, Jose, said angry, hurtful things to each other. The son said, "I'm leaving this house, and I don't ever want to speak to you again!" And the father responded, "You won't have to--because you are no longer welcome in this house!" Young Jose stomped out of the house and was gone.
Years passed. The father regretted the things he had said in that moment of intense emotion. He longed for his son. Finally, the pain of separation became too much for him to bear. He left home and went searching across the length and breadth of Spain--but his son seemed to have disappeared without a trace.
Finally, arriving in the capital city of Madrid, he went to
a newspaper office and took out a personal ad in the classified
section. It read, "My son, Jose--I am sorry for the pain I've
caused you. Please forgive me. I have forgiven you. I've looked
everywhere for you and want only to see you again. I will be at
the plaza fountain every day this week at noon. Please meet me
there. Your father." It is said that hundreds of young men
named Jose came to the plaza fountain that week, hoping to reestablish
a relationship with their fathers.
That is the relationship we all long for, and Jesus has made it
possible. That is what prayer is all about--fellowship with the
Father. Prayer is the true expression of a living faith relationship.
Without prayer, without talking to the Father and listening to
Him, what kind of relationship is it? How can we claim to have
faith in God while failing to communicate with Him?
One sign of losing communication is that we become obsessed with talk about God. When people only talk about God instead of talking with God, they demonstrate a deteriorated faith. The purpose of all faith is to bring us into direct, personal touch with God. The mark of a decadent religion is that people become deeply engrossed in discussions about God, spending hours in lengthy, theological debate about the nature and character of God. As Martin Luther aptly put it, "You that manifest a concern about religion, why don't you pray?"
Our goal, as we journey together through the Lord's teaching
on prayer, is not that we gain more theological knowledge, but
that we experience a deeper faith relationship with the living,
true God. So please join with me and pray with me this prayer
from the heart: Our Father, these words of our Lord Jesus have
made us aware of the lack of faith in our lives. We cry out to
you now in our weakness and our failure for the burning desire
to exercise faith and move deeper into a living relationship with
you. Father, teach us to pray. Teach us to be men and women who
depend continually upon you, who pour out to you every aspect
of our lives without hindrance or reservation, who tell you all
things, and who listen to you about all things. In Jesus' name,
Amen.
2. The Nature of Prayer
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked
down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable:
"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'
"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. " (Luke 18:9-14)
Louis XIV was king of France during the golden age of French culture, 1643-1715. During his reign, he conducted many foreign conquests that added to the size and power of the French Empire. In 1704, however, Louis launched an attack on the village of Blenheim, Bavaria, and was soundly defeated by English and Austrian forces. Tens of thousands of French soldiers were killed, maimed, or taken prisoner. It was a turning point in the history of France. After that defeat, French military power in Europe steadily declined. When Louis heard about the crushing losses at Blenheim, he raised his hands to heaven and demanded, "God, how could you do this to me after all I have done for you? "
That is the arrogant prayer of a prideful, self-righteous heart. It is a prayer very much like that of the Pharisee, whom Jesus describes in Luke 18:9-14. But like the Pharisee of the Lord's parable, you may say, "I am praying. I pray thirty minutes every morning and ten minutes every night, and I am even one of those few who faithfully meet with a midweek prayer group--yet there is still much fainting in my experience. Life is not satisfying to me. I feel I'm not really living."
Or perhaps you are among those who must admit in all honesty that there is very little prayer in your life. For many of us it is hard to pray and easy to find something else to do.
But even if you resolve to try harder to put more prayer into
your life, it will not be long before you become aware, as perhaps
you already are, that a greater quantity of minutes spent in prayer
is not necessarily the answer.
Not More Prayer, But True Prayer
Is it possible, then, that Jesus is wrong when He says we must either pray or faint? Is prayer such an important issue? Is it possible to pray and faint at the same time? If it seems so, perhaps we need to discover more about the true nature of prayer. It may be that we need a new kind of prayer, not just more of the same kind.
True prayer is not a difficult thing. It is natural, instinctive, and comes easily. This kind of prayer is the key to God's power and glory. True prayer is an open channel to God's fatherly compassion and eagerness to help us.
In this parable of Jesus, which could be called "The Parable of the Two Pray-ers," Jesus contrasts two very different men praying two very different prayers from two very different hearts. It is not enough that we simply look at the first pray-er, the Pharisee, and say, "What a proud, self-righteous man!" We must also look at the second prayer and catch a glimpse of his heart and his motivation in prayer, for he is the Lord's illustration of what true prayer is like.
Notice that the structure of this parable (like the parable of the widow and the unrighteous judge that precedes it, as we saw in chapter 1) is one of contrasts. Our Lord teaches truth by setting it alongside error. By understanding the error of the Pharisee, we can more clearly grasp the truth and reality of the tax collector's prayer.
Now, the Pharisee was a man of prayer--no question about that! He prayed frequently, elaborately, and at great length. His words were loud, lofty, and eloquent. But though he was dedicated to the practice of prayer, the spirit and motivation of his prayer was entirely wrong.
The tax collector, on the other hand, was not accustomed to
praying. He was infrequently found in the temple courts. No doubt,
his words were halting and lacking in eloquence. This business
of praying was all new to him--but his prayer was exactly the right
kind of prayer.
In observing the Pharisee, we learn what prayer is not. This kind
of praying is not true prayer at all. It's show biz. It's a performance.
The Pharisee's focus is not on establishing intimate contact with
an infinite God. It is on looking good, on making a good impression.
He stood, Jesus said, with his arms spread and his eyes lifted
up to heaven. Among the Jews, this was the prescribed posture
for prayer.
"The Pharisee stood up," Jesus said, "and prayed about himself" (18:11). Other translations render this last phrase, "and prayed with himself." What a keen thrust that is! The Pharisee was not praying to God--he was praying to himself! No one was at the other end of the line! This prayer was a total waste of time. Many voices in this New-Age-influenced culture of ours falsely claim that the true function of prayer and meditation is to "commune with the inner person." If so, then this Pharisee would fit right into our culture today! When so many people have bought the lie that we are our own gods, then there is no reason to reach any higher in prayer than our own selves.
This Pharisee may have been gazing toward heaven, but he was
not reaching toward God--and he certainly was not touching God.
Jesus makes this point very clear in His parable.
Who Is a Pharisee?
What do we learn about prayer from the example of the Pharisee? We learn that it is not truly prayer to approach God while we are impressed with our own virtues. This man stood and prayed, "God, I thank you that I am not like other men-robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get" (18:11-12). He was self-impressed with what he saw as his claims upon God's attention and good favor. He believed that God deserved thanks for having made such a remarkable specimen of humanity as himself!
We laugh as we listen to his foolish prayer, but don't we often do the same? We pray, "Lord, come and help me do this task." In other words, " Lord, I will contribute my ability to exercise leadership, my talents for singing or speaking, and then, Lord, to top it all off, would you give me a little added boost of Spirit-power? Then you and I together will enjoy great success." Our philosophy is frequently, "I do my best and God does the rest." We would never exclude Him and say, "I can do it all" We're much more subtle than that! We simply relegate Him to a supporting role in our accomplishments. I suspect that many, if not most, Christian prayers are prayed from this position.
Sometimes the virtue we contribute to God's program is our "humility." Some Christians demonstrate a kind of reverse brand of Pharisaism that goes something like this: "Thank God, I am not as proud as this Pharisee is." We make ourselves out to be utterly vile, babbling continually about our shortcomings and our sins. We say, "Lord, I am a sinner, I am a louse, I'm no good." At some level, we think we can impress God with our show of "humility." In reality, we have invested self-righteous, pharisaic pride in our " humility, " which is not humility at all!
The simple truth is that we have no virtues of our own to contribute, none whatsoever. We have absolutely nothing to add to God's cause. We must forget all our talents, abilities, skills, gifts, and accomplishments. Those things all come from God, not from us. They are not our possessions, but merely on loan from Him.
Isn't it strange how easily we identify ourselves with our virtues-and how quickly we excuse our faults? Our failures we blame on everyone else; for our successes we take full credit. How many times have we heard public figures who are caught up in scandal say, "Mistakes were made," or, "I was a victim of poor judgment," instead of, "I have sinned," or, "I have committed a crime," or, "I alone am at fault." Unlike the humble tax collector's confession, "Mistakes were made" is not an admission of wrongdoing, but an attempt to excuse or cover up wrongdoing, in the proud, self-righteous tradition of the Pharisee. And if we are honest with ourselves and with God, we all have to admit that we are guilty of doing the same, time after time, in our own lives.
We easily forget our own failings and faults when we compare ourselves with others. We forget our clever manipulations, our lusts and evil thoughts, our deliberate deceits, our phony sympathies, our dubious business arrangements. We are careful to remember only our virtues. How do we become so impressed with ourselves? Like this Pharisee, we look downward. When he looked down on the tax collector, he immediately felt prideful regarding his own supposed "virtue." So he thanked the Lord that he was not like that vile, low-down tax collector.
This is the point Jesus makes in describing the Pharisee. He says in effect that when we approach God on this level, we are praying with ourselves. This is not true prayer. Our pious words, our properly phrased sentences, our completely orthodox approach is of no value whatever. We are praying out of an obsession with our own virtues.
Furthermore, Jesus says it is not prayer when we ask God's
help because of our own accomplishments. This Pharisee said he
fasted twice a week--much more than was required by the law, which
commanded a fast only once a year. He gave tithes of all he got;
again, that was more than the law required. But the Pharisee expected
God to act on his behalf because he felt God could hardly do otherwise
in view of his fine record of faithful service.
It's Not Fair!
Many years ago, an elderly missionary couple returned from Africa to retire in New York City. As their ship steamed into New York harbor, they reflected on their bleak situation: They had no pension, for they belonged to no missionary board. Their health was broken. They were defeated, discouraged, and fearful about the future. And they couldn't help comparing their circumstances with those of a fellow passenger who also had boarded the ship in Africa--President Teddy Roosevelt, who was returning from one of his big-game hunting expeditions.
As the ship pulled into the harbor, past the great city and the Statue of Liberty, the people on the ship could hear a band playing on the dock. A huge crowd had gathered to welcome the returning president from his hunting trip in Africa. The old missionary turned and said to his wife, "Dear, something is wrong. Why should we have given our lives in faithful service for God in Africa all these years? This man comes back from a big-game hunting expedition and everybody makes a big fuss over him, but nobody gives two hoots about us."
"Dear," his wife replied, "you shouldn't feel that way. Try not to be bitter about it."
"I just can't help it," he replied. "It's not right. After all, if God is running this world, why does He permit such injustice?" As the boat neared the dock, as the sound of the band and the cheering of the crowd grew louder, he became more and more depressed.
The mayor of New York City was on hand to greet the returning president, along with many other dignitaries--but no one even noticed the missionary couple. They slipped off the ship and found a cheap flat on the east side, hoping the next day to see what they could do to make a living in the city.
That night the man's spirit just broke. He said to his wife, "I can't take this! God is not fair! We don't even know anyone to help us, or where to go. If God is faithful, why doesn't He meet our need?"
"Why don't you ask Him?" said his wife.
"All right," said the man. "I will." He went into the bedroom and prayed for a while. Later, when he emerged from the bedroom after talking it over with God, he seemed completely changed.
"Dear, what happened?" asked his wife. "What has come over you?"
"Well," he said, "the Lord settled it with me. I went in and knelt beside the bed and poured out my feelings to Him. I said, 'Lord, it's not fair!' I told Him how bitter I was that the president should receive this tremendous homecoming, when no one met us as we returned home. And when I finished, it seemed as though the Lord put His hand on my shoulder and simply said, 'But you're not home yet!'
"That's a great truth, isn't it? God does reward believers,
but not necessarily down here. The rewards here have to do with
the strengthening of the inner life, not the outer. We have no
claim on God by reason of our faithful service. Serving Him is
only what we should do. We have no right to come to Him in prayer
and demand that He answer because we have done this, that, or
another thing. Jesus says that when we stand and list our accomplishments
before God, we are not praying. Is it any wonder then that we
have been fainting? Is it possible that after years of, praying
we must now realize we have never truly prayed?
Upside-Down Is All Right Now
Now let's examine the tax collector's prayer.
It seems at first that he does it all wrong: He stands at a distance. He doesn't even lift up his eyes--he fails to assume the proper position of prayer. But how totally unimportant are these external issues.
A poem by Sam Walter Foss, "The Prayer of Cyrus Brown,"
says it so well:
"The proper way for a man to pray,"
Said Deacon Lemuel Keyes,
"And the only proper attitude
Is down upon his knees."
"No, I should say the way to pray,"
Said Reverend Doctor Wise,
"Is standing straight with outstretched arms
And rapt and upturned eyes."
"Oh, no, no, no," said Elder Slow,
"Such posture is too proud.
A man should pray with eyes fast-closed
And head contritely bowed."
"It seems to me his hands should be
Austerely clasped in front
With both thumbs pointing toward the ground,"
Said Reverend Doctor Blunt.
"Last year I fell in Hidgekin's well
Headfirst," said Cyrus Brown,
"With both my heels a-stickin' up
And my head a-pointin' down.
"And I made a prayer right then and there,
The best prayer I ever said,
The prayingest prayer I ever prayed,
A-standin' on my head."
The tax collector would have identified well with Ol' Cyrus Brown.
He understood that what God wanted was not elegant speech or a
certain posture. God was interested in the sincerity and earnestness
of the tax collector's heart. So the man came into the temple
and stood with his eyes cast down. All he could do was beat his
breast and say, "God be merciful to me a sinner."
Someone has called the tax collector's prayer" a holy telegram." I like that description: A short, pithy, right-to-the-point prayer. Most of all, a true prayer, genuine and from the heart.
What do we learn about prayer from this man? Isn't it obvious that authentic prayer, the most profound prayer, is the expression to God of our helpless need? The tax collector saw himself as the lowest form of life on earth--a miserable, helpless sinner. The original language makes it clear that he is talking about the very lowest, worst kind of sinner. This man believed he deserved nothing from God, and without God he could do absolutely nothing to help his position: "I'm a sinner, Lord, that's all I can say; I have nothing else to add. "
The tax collector rests his entire case on the merciful character of God, nothing on his own merit. He says, in effect, "Lord, I haven't a thing to lean on but you." Yes, he wanted to change his ways and live a repentant, honest, holy life before God--but not to gain God's favor. No, he wanted to change his ways as a response of gratitude and thanks to God's mercy. He needed God. He had to have God. And so he came in complete humility and cast himself down on God's altar of mercy.
Judge Upward
How did the tax collector come to this place of repentant prayer? In exactly the opposite direction as the Pharisee. The Pharisee looked down on those around him. The tax collector looked up to God. The Pharisee judged downward, comparing himself with unholy men. The tax collector judged upward, comparing himself with a holy, righteous God. The Pharisee prayed with himself. The tax collector saw no one and prayed to no one but God. He had, heard the words of Scripture, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37; compare Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27), and judged himself on that basis: "Lord, I'm a sinner! I need mercy!" And by praying that abject, humble prayer for mercy, without excuses or evasions, everything that God is suddenly became available to the tax collector.
We will never find answers to the awesome problems that afflict us individually and as a society--juvenile delinquency, rampant adultery and immorality, broken families, pornography, teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol addiction, gossip and back-stabbing, scandal, abuse, and on and on--until each of us casts ourselves wholly upon God and cries out, "Lord, I'm a sinner! I need mercy!"
Unfortunately, we seem to think that such a confession is "for emergency use only." We cast ourselves upon God's mercy only when our backs are against the wall and we have nowhere else to turn. Instead, this should be our normal, everyday basis of living-the fact that we are helpless to save ourselves, that there is no righteousness in us, that we are sinners in need of mercy, beggars deserving nothing, without excuse before God. True prayer, then, is an expression of our helplessness, an awareness of need that only God can meet.
But the tax collector's prayer not only shows us our own inadequacy as sinful human beings--it highlights the reality of God's complete adequacy as the righteous Lord of creation. The tax collector said, "God, be merciful to me," and this is true prayer.
In that word merciful is hidden the entire, wonderful story of the coming of Jesus Christ, His lowly birth in Bethlehem, His amazing ministry on earth, the bloody cross, the empty tomb. In this prayer, when the tax collector begs God to be merciful, he uses a special word in the original Greek, a theological word that means "be propitiated to me." In other words, he is saying to God, "Having had your justice satisfied, Lord, now show me your love." And he believed that God's mercy was his, for Jesus said that this man went back to his house justified. He was changed; he was different; he was made whole. He claimed what God had promised--and that, too, is true prayer: Trusting, taking, claiming God's promises. Genuine prayer is more than asking; prayer is taking. Genuine prayer is more than pleading; prayer is believing.
Genuine prayer is more than words uttered; prayer is an attitude maintained. How many times we ought to be praying! Whenever there is an awareness of need, that is an opportunity to let the heart, the thought, and the voice (whatever form prayer may take) lift immediately to God and say, "God, be merciful. Lord, meet this need. My hope, my help, my everything is in you for this moment." It doesn't matter whether it is only tying your shoes or washing the dishes or writing a letter or writing a term paper or making a telephone call. Whenever there's a need, that is the time for prayer. Prayer is an expression of dependence that uses God's resources for any need in our lives.
Now, the question I ask of my own heart is this: Have I ever truly prayed? If what Jesus says is true--that prayer is the opposite of fainting-then why do I find my life so often filled with fainting, losing heart, discouragement, and defeat? The obvious answer is that I have not been truly praying, for true prayer and fainting, true prayer and defeat, cannot exist together.
Have you ever prayed? Have you ever truly prayed? Has your prayer life been like that of the Pharisee or like that of the tax collector? Have you ever launched upon a life of prayer where every moment you are counting on God to meet your need? Will you, this day, begin that life?
Perhaps today, for the first time in your life, you can say, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner." That is the true nature of prayer.
Holy Father, help us to take these examples of prayer seriously-both the example of the Pharisee and the example of the tax collector. The stories of Jesus are not intended merely to entertain us or even to instruct us, but to change us, to set us free, to enable us to live, to turn us from weakness and emptiness and barrenness, to truth and life and joy. We ask now that we may begin to live a life of authentic prayer, of authentic fellowship with you. We have no other help, no other adequacy. You alone are fully adequate. On this we rest. In Jesus' name, Amen.
One 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. " (Luke 11:1)
Jesus was a source of continual amazement to His own disciples. Life with Him was one unending experience of alternating joy and bewilderment, and they were forever attempting to explain Him to their own satisfaction.
The disciples had traveled with Jesus the length and breadth of the land of Israel, and it had been like a great military campaign. They saw inroads made into the dark powers of sickness, death, and despair throughout the land. They could not forget the mighty demonstrations of His power. They remembered the grateful eyes of the lame, blind, sick, dumb, and deaf--the afflicted who had been healed and set free and sent back to their loved ones. They were continually astonished at the wisdom Jesus manifested, and were forever watching Him, seeking to discover the secret of His wisdom and power. All the time He was eating, sleeping, teaching, traveling, they were watching.
In Luke 11: 1 we read that Jesus was praying, and when He finished, one of the disciples, speaking for all the disciples, said, "Lord, teach us to pray." This is a significant request, because these disciples undoubtedly were already men of prayer. When this one said to Him, " Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples," he did not mean that John had a superior school of ministry. He was not saying, "In that traveling seminary that John conducted, he had a course on prayer--but you have not told us anything about this yet." What he meant was, "Some of us once were John's disciples and were taught by him how to pray. But Lord, we have been watching you and we see that you are a master at prayer. Now, as John once taught us how to pray, would you also impart to us the secrets of prayer? We can see that, in some way, the marvel and mystery of your character is linked with your prayer life, and it has made us aware of how little we really know about prayer. Lord, would you teach us to pray?"
My heart's deepest desire is that in all simplicity and in an awareness of our deep need, we each might cry out as did this disciple, "Lord, teach us to pray." For the brutal fact is that we do not know how to pray, either as individuals or as a church. And the proof that we do not know how to pray as individuals is found in the tremendous amount of fainting that is visible in our midst-the discouragement, anxiety, fear, guilt, and despair that is evident in many lives.
People who are familiar with the strengthening ministry of prayer in their individual lives have an undeniable joy and glow that is wonderful to see. They can approach every circumstance with that compelling air of triumph that marks the authentic Christian faith, and in their lives the ministry of prayer is very evident. But we must admit there is much fainting, too, among young and old alike, and this marks the lack of real prayer.
If we who are Christians fail in this vital area, it is simply because we have not yet seen what prayer is or understood what part it plays in Christian living. Somehow the enemy has blurred our senses and dimmed our eyes so that we do not see this clearly.
Prayer, as we have seen in previous chapters, is simply the
expression of human need to an eager, loving Father. It is the
cry of a beloved child to a Father who is ready to pour out all
that He has to give. As we join this unnamed disciple, and cry
out to God from the depths of our desperate, needy lives, "
Lord, teach us to pray," one thing becomes immediately evident:
By saying these words from our hearts, we take the first and most
important step toward discovering the power of prayer.
The Breath of Life
What was it that so impressed the disciples as they watched Jesus pray? What convinced them that His prayer life and His amazing power and wisdom were somehow related?
They saw, first of all, that with Jesus prayer was a necessity. It was more than an occasional practice on His part; it was a lifelong habit. It was an attitude of mind and heart-an atmosphere in which He lived, the very air He breathed. Everything He did arose out of prayer. He literally prayed without ceasing, as the apostle Paul urges us to do.
Obviously, it was not always formal prayer. He did not always kneel or continually stand with bowed head in an attitude of prayer. If He had, of course, He wouldn't have been able to do anything else!
And it is amazing that He fulfilled His prayer life in the midst of an incredibly busy ministry. Just imagine how much ministry He crammed into three short years! He was subjected, like many of us, to a life of increasing pressure, of continual interruption. As He ministered, He met with growing opposition, with increasing harassment and continual resistance to the course He was taking, even from His own disciples. Yet in the midst of this life of incredible busyness and tremendous pressure and frequent interruption, He was constantly in prayer.
Prayer is often the first thing squeezed out of our busy schedules. We often excuse ourselves for our prayerlessness by saying, "I've got so much to do today, I don't have time to pray!" But one of the founders of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, looked at prayer another way. He was often heard to say, "I have so much to do today, I need to spend an extra hour in prayer!" It is amazing but true: Taking time to pray often adds time to our day. Spending quality time with God, talking to Him and listening for His response, helps us center our thoughts and prioritize our tasks. Who better to consult for time management advice than the One who created time?
Certainly, that is the example set for us by the Lord Jesus. He was praying in spirit when His hands were busy healing. He gave thanks as He broke the bread and fed the five thousand. He gave thanks to the Father at the tomb of Lazarus before He spoke those words, "Lazarus, come out!" (John 11:43), in that dramatic display of power. When the Greeks came and wanted to see Jesus, His immediate response was one of prayer: "Father, glorify your name!" (John 12:28). There was a continual sense of expectation that the Father would be working through Him, and thus, by His very attitude, Jesus was praying all the time.
Here we find the secret of prayer and of the effective prayer life: Practice an attitude of constant expectancy. When we do that, we are never very far from the thought that God is working in us and through us to perform His will and complete His plan. Jesus did this, of course, because He believed and practiced what He preached. He said continually, "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does" (John 5:19). Those were not mere pious phrases. He was not simply trying to make a good impression on those around Him. He was saying something that startled them but He meant it with every fiber of His being. "The Son can do nothing by himself"-what an amazing thing for Him to say!
Here is the Son of God Himself-the perfect man, the One who adequately and continually fulfilled God's expectation for humanity, the One who was the constant delight of the Father's heart, the One who was fully God and fully man. Yet He tells us that He did nothing--absolutely nothing--by Himself. Again and again, He declared His utter dependency on the Father: "Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work" (John 14:10).
Out of this constant, conscious sense of His own need for connection
with-and dependence on-the Father arose a continuing attitude
of prayer, a continuing expectation that if anything was to be
done, the Father would have to do it. The Son of Man did nothing
by Himself.
For Emergency Use Only?
John G. Patton and his wife, a missionary couple in the New Hebrides Islands, had an absolutely astounding experience with prayer. One night, some years ago, they found their mission headquarters surrounded by hostile tribespeople. The islanders carried torches, and their plan was to burn down the headquarters with Mr. and Mrs. Patton inside. The missionary couple prayed to God throughout the night. At dawn, they looked outside and saw that the tribespeople had gone. Surprised but grateful, the Pattons went to their knees and thanked God for their mysterious deliverance.
Some time later, the chief of the tribe was converted to faith
in Jesus Christ. Mr. Patton asked the new Christian about that
night, when he and his people had come to burn down the mission
headquarters. "Why," asked Patton, "didn't you
kill us that night?" "We tried to," said the chief,
"but we couldn't. The men who guarded your house wouldn't
let us near." Baffled, the missionary said, "What men?
We had no men guarding the house. There was no one in or around
that house but my wife and me."
"We know what we saw," said the chief. "We saw
warriors standing guard-tall men in shining robes, with fiery
swords in their hands. When we tried to attack, they held us off.
They surrounded the mission house so we could not get to it."
So
Mr. Patton and his wife have very good reason to believe in God, in angels, and in the power of prayer-especially in an emergency!
Unfortunately, a lot of people think prayer is only for emergencies. They operate by the saying, "If all else fails--I pray." If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that this has been our own attitude many times. Our problem is one of self-sufficiency. When everything is going well, when we are successful and comfortable, when the road ahead is smooth, we think, "I'm doing fine all by myself. Who needs God?" Oh, we would never express such a thought aloud, but that's what our self-sufficient attitude really comes down to.
Then trouble strikes--a difficult relationship, a stressful time on the job, a financial reversal, a catastrophic accident, a serious illness and suddenly we are intensely aware of our inadequacy and our need. Suddenly, we are ready for prayer. Why do we so often wait until trouble strikes before we go to God in prayer? Why do we so often think of prayer as "For Emergency Use Only"?
But the secret of Jesus' life was that prayer, for Him, was never a last resort. It was His first resort! A lifestyle of prayer maintained Him through the easy times and sustained Him through the hard times. He didn't depend on God to get Him through only life's tough times. He continually depended on God. His entire life was derived from God. His constant attitude was, "The Son can do nothing by Himself."
That must be our attitude as well. Prayer is not for emergencies
only. Our entire lives should be lived in absolute dependence
on God through prayer.
The Fishing Expert
On one occasion, our Lord addressed a great crowd on the lakeshore. As He spoke, the people pressed so closely He could no longer be easily seen or heard (see Luke 5:1-8). So He climbed into Peter's boat and told him to move out a bit into the lake. Peter rowed the boat a few yards from shore, so the Lord could be seen and heard much better. Jesus continued His sermon.
Imagine how Peter must have felt! At last he was able to do something for his Lord. It was his boat, and the Lord was his guest. The Lord had done so much for him that his heart must have rejoiced at this opportunity to provide something that Christ needed and without which He could not have carried on His ministry that day. But when our Lord finished His discourse and dismissed the crowd, He turned and said, "Peter, move the boat out into the deep part of the lake." When Peter had taken the boat out into the middle of the lake, the Lord said, "Now, Peter, cast in your net. Get ready to fish."
Peter looked at the Lord in amazement. You can almost see the incredulous look on his face and hear the patronizing tone in his voice when he replied, "Lord, we have been fishing all night long and caught nothing!" He was undoubtedly thinking, " Lord, I know you are a great teacher. You obviously know secrets that we know nothing about. But Lord, when it comes to fishing, I'm the expert. If you want to know anything about fishing, I'll be glad to instruct you. After all, Lord, I have been raised on this lake. I know where fish are and where they aren't. Take my advice, Lord-you stick to preaching, and I'll do the fishing."
But the Lord said, "Peter, let down your nets for a catch. "
Something about His tone was so irresistible that Peter replied, in effect, "All right, Lord, I think it's crazy, but if you say so, I'll do it." So Peter let down the net and enclosed a great host of fish so large that the nets began to break as they drew the fish into the boat. Peter dumped the fish into the bottom of the boat, then fell to his knees and looked up at his Lord in amazement. "Go away from me, Lord," he said. "I am a sinful man!"
What did Peter mean? He meant, " Lord, I see what you mean. I see that, even in those areas where I think I'm sufficient, I need you."
Surely this is what our Lord wants to teach us. This is one thing we must learn: every activity of life requires prayer, a sense of expectation of God at work. Is 'not this what that disciple felt (it may even have been Peter) as he watched our Lord praying? The disciple knew that, to him, prayer was an option. He prayed when he felt like it, only when he considered it necessary; he believed that prayer was designed for emergency use only, for the "big" problems of life. But he saw that, for Jesus, prayer was an ever-present necessity.
Where do we begin to acquire this Christlike need for prayer, this Christlike dependency on prayer? We need to begin right where we are. You begin with that phone call you are about to make-you can't do it right except by prayer. Before you pick up the phone, look to God and say, "Lord, speak through me during this phone call."
You begin with the letter you are about to write. The component you are attaching on the assembly line. The meeting you are about to attend. The interview you are about to conduct. The game you are about to play with your children. The homework you are about to begin. The report you must write for the boss. The room you are sweeping. The walk you are going to take. The drive to the store you are about to begin. The class you are about to teach. These are the unending needs from which prayer rises. You begin to acquire a Christlike prayer life when you approach every activity of your life saying, "Lord, I can't do anything apart from you. Father, please do this thing through me."
Someone once asked a dear cleaning lady what her method of prayer was, and she said, "I don't know nothin' about method. I just pray like this: When I wash my clothes, I pray, 'Lord, wash my heart clean.' When I iron them I say, 'Lord, iron out all these troubles I can't do nothin' about.' When I sweep the floor, I say, 'Lord, sweep all the corners of my life like I'm sweep in' this floor.' " That is real prayer.
Necessary--and Natural
The second thing the disciples saw in Jesus was that prayer was not only necessary but it was also perfectly natural. Jesus did not struggle, strive, or drive Himself to pray. Prayer was not an act of self-discipline or duty--it was always His delight.
That doesn't mean our Lord did not have to make time and even schedule time for prayer-He needed to, just as we need to. He had to make choices between prayer and other demands on His time-just as we do. Sometimes He spent hours and even entire nights in prayer. Occasionally He slipped away when the crowds grew large and demanding-times when most of us might be tempted to cut back on our prayer time in order to meet those demands. In Luke 5:16, for example, a great multitude came to hear Him, but He withdrew to a desert place and prayed.
Certainly, Jesus experienced times of extreme weariness, times when praying was very difficult. The night He prayed in Gethsemane-the same night His disciples were overcome by exhaustion and sleep-He fought emotional and physical exhaustion and spent those dark hours in the presence of the Father. Scripture records no reluctance in His approach to prayer, no sense that He had to drag Himself away from something else in order to pray.
Why not? Because His actions arose from an overwhelming sense of need. He craved a daily, even hourly relationship with the Father-and He knew that, whatever else might be on His agenda for the day, time spent in prayer is never wasted. He knew that hours of activity without prayer would accomplish nothing. The Lord felt a continuous, urgent sense of need, an awareness that He was but an empty channel or vessel through whom the Father worked-and it was out of this awareness that His prayer life arose.
And this is what it must come to for you and me. We urgently
require a sense of need! Offer a sandwich to a man who has just
eaten a heavy dinner and you will have to use all your powers
of persuasion to get him to accept it. If he does, it will only
be out of politeness, and as soon as your back is turned he will
dispose of it behind the sofa. Why? Because he has no sense of
need. Though he may feel a duty to accept it, he does not want
it, and it is of no value to him. But offer that same sandwich
to a hungry teenage boy--and you'd better head for the kitchen
to make more sandwiches before he finishes the first!
To Jesus, prayer was as necessary as eating-and just as natural.
Just Talking to My Father
Prayer, for Jesus, often meant thanksgiving. We see such a prayer of thanksgiving in Luke 10:
At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Luke 10:21-22).
Jesus was always giving thanks. He was forever saying, "Thank you, Father. Thank you for the circumstance into which you have brought me, thank you for the victory that will be won through these circumstances, thank you for the needs that are being met." As He broke the bread to feed the five thousand, He lifted His eyes and said, "Thank You, Father." At the Last Supper, as He gathered with His own in the Upper Room, He took the cup and when He had given thanks, He said, "Take, eat." Throughout Jesus' life, He prayed His thanks to God.
Jesus sometimes prayed for counsel from His Father. On the occasion when He was about to choose His disciples, He spent all the previous night in prayer (see Luke 6:12-13). What was He doing? He was seeking and receiving illumination and guidance from the Father. He knew His own wisdom would be inadequate for this task. He went into the presence of the Father and together they went down the list of prospective disciples and talked over every single one. As He talked with the Father about each of them, a conviction came to His heart. When He had finished, He'd chosen the Twelve, including Judas.
For Jesus, prayer was also frequently intercession. We have a matchless example of it in John 17-that mighty prayer in which He prayed for the eleven apostles and through them for the whole church to every succeeding age. "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message" (17:20). He prayed for Peter in the hour of his disillusionment and defeat when his world came crashing around his head in the dark night that he denied his Lord. The Lord had met him (using his old name, Simon) before and said, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers" (Luke 22:31-32).
Both Judas and Peter denied their Lord that night, but one of the fundamental differences between Judas and Peter was that Christ had prayed for Peter.
He prayed for the little children and made intercession for them with the Father. And finally, His great prayer of intercession was prayed on the bloody cross. He prayed as they hammered the nails into the flesh of His outstretched arms, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34).
But above all else, prayer, to Jesus, was communion. He prayed on the Mount of Transfiguration, and as His disciples watched, He was suddenly transformed before them. The appearance of His face was altered and His garments became white and shining. In prayer, He experienced a communion so rich that the glory of the Father, the indwelling glory broke through the tent of His body in which it was hidden. As John 1:14 tells us, "We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."
Jesus prayed in the Garden and experienced real communion in an hour of deep anguish of heart. As He prayed, He was strengthened by an angel who ministered to Him in the midst of the pressures He faced. So, as we trace the prayer life of Jesus, we can see that prayer was necessary and natural to Him.
Why, then, do we struggle so with prayer?
Who Said That?
We often find ourselves very busy when it's time for prayer meeting. We piously favor prayer in general yet resist prayer at those specific times when the opportunity or need for prayer arises. If we reflect on what runs through our minds at such times, we may detect the subtle whispers of the enemy, Satan, whispering two very clever and destructive messages to us about prayer.
One message: "Of course Jesus prayed continually, easily, naturally what do you expect? He's the Son of God, after all! Certainly, you don't expect to live and pray on the same level as Him, do you? Isn't it obvious that a Christlike prayer life is far beyond your capacity? After all, you are nothing but a simple, ordinary Christian."
Like everything else the devil says to us, that is a filthy,
destructive lie. The Lord Jesus tells us, "Just as the living
Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who
feeds on me will live because of me" (John 6:57). As He lived
by the Father's strength, so we are to live by the Son's strength
in exactly the same relationship.
The second message: "Well, Jesus prayed as He did because
He felt a sense of need continually. It is easy to pray, you know,
when you feel need. So go ahead and pray when you need to. But
don't bother unless you feel you have to." That is just more
satanic mind-slime! It's a restatement of the current, widespread
philosophy: Follow your feelings. In other words, don't bother
to walk by faith.
Faith rests on fact, and the fact God reveals to us is that, whether or not we sense a need, we are needy. Whether we feel sufficient or not, we are insufficient. We are continually needy and we must constantly depend upon the indwelling life and strength of the Lord Jesus. When we think everything is fine and under control, and we need no help from God, we are suffering from a satanic delusion. It's nothing more than a soap bubble of imagination, destined to burst in slippery confusion.
Life is under control only when our attitude is what Jesus' attitude was: one of continual need and constant expectation. God is always the same, and our faith must continually rest on that great unshakable Rock, and nothing else. It is His job to give power and strength-and our job to receive. Prayer is to be our life and our breath. We should need no more urging to pray than we need urging to eat and breathe! We know we must pray.
Once, when I stood at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., I read again those amazing words engraved on the walls-Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address. The words of the latter came home to me with tremendous impact. It is more like a sermon than a political speech. I remembered that when Lincoln entered the presidency he was not a Christian, as he himself has said. But as the burdens of that great office devolved upon him and the crushing responsibility and sorrow of the war gripped his heart, he said that while he was walking among the graves of the soldiers at Gettysburg, there burst upon him an awareness of his need of the Savior. That is where he became a Christian.
In the terrible crucible of the Civil War, Lincoln learned to pray. For him, the purpose of prayer was not to get God to do man's bidding, but to enable man to see God's purposes and to experience the strength of relying on the everlasting arms. Lincoln left this testimony about prayer: "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go." In the strength of that continual reliance upon God, he became our nation's greatest president.
Will it take a crucible of testing to drive you to your knees in prayer? Or will you follow the example of your Lord, learning to pray as continuously and naturally as breathing, in the good times and the hard times? My prayer for you is that you make a commitment today, at this very moment, to make your everyday life a life of prayer.
Father, what can we say in this hour but to cry out as these disciples cried out, "Lord, teach us to pray." Teach us our need. Tear away this veil from our eyes that makes us think we have any adequacy in ourselves. Deliver us from this satanic delusion, this widespread worldly philosophy that our knowledge, our education, our training can provide an adequate background for activity. Give us instead a conscious sense of dependence on you, an awareness that nothing we do will have any lasting value apart from daily, hourly, intimate communion with you. In Jesus' name, Amen.
One 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. "
He said to them, "When you pray, say:
"'Father, hallowed be your name; your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.'" (Luke 11:1-4 )
A true story
During the 1950s, when Hollywood produced some of its most famous biblical epics (such as The Robe, Ben HUT, and The Ten Commandments), a couple of movie studio executives were discussing the possibility of producing a biblical epic for their studio. One asked the other, "What do you know about the Bible? I'll bet you fifty bucks you don't even know the Lord's Prayer."
"I do so," said the other. "Listen: 'Now I lay me down to sleep...'"
The first exec sighed, pulled out his wallet, and handed the other man fifty dollars. "Amazing," he said. "Where did you learn so much about the Bible?"
One shudders to think of the movie that emerged when these two Hollywood producers pooled their biblical ignorance! Jesus has given us His pattern for prayer-and that pattern does not begin with the words, "Now I lay me down to sleep"!
Last chapter we observed the prayer life of our Lord Jesus in Luke 11:1 through the eyes of an unnamed disciple who watched Him pray. As we looked together at Jesus' prayer life, I hope a dawning conviction stole over you, as it did over this unnamed disciple: Prayer was the secret of the Lord's amazing life, and it was both the most natural and most necessary aspect of His existence. I hope, too, that you heard within yourself the urgent cry of this disciple, "Lord, teach us to pray."
In answer to this request, Jesus gave His disciples what is called the model prayer, the Lord's Prayer. We have a very brief account of it in Luke 11:
He said to them, "When you pray, say: 'Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation' " (Luke 11:2-4).
This is slightly different from the more familiar form in Matthew which was undoubtedly spoken on a different occasion (Jesus frequently repeated the great truths He taught during His ministry):
"This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one' " (Matthew 6:9-13).
This prayer falls into two rather obvious divisions, highlighted by the use of two pronouns. The first part centers on God, using the pronoun your. "Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come." The second part concerns humanity, and here we see the pronoun us. "Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation." For now, we will confine ourselves to those first three phrases that center around the person, character, and being of God.
Begin with God
It is no accident, I am sure, that in prayer as in everything else, Jesus invariably puts God first. Surely this exposes a fatal weakness in our own prayers, which so frequently begin with us. We rush almost immediately into a series of pleading petitions that have to do with our problems and our needs and our irritations. This only serves to focus our attention on what is already troubling us and to increase our awareness of our lack. Perhaps that is the reason we frequently end up more depressed or more frustrated than when we began.
But Jesus shows us another way. He begins with God. Jesus' example shows that we must take a slow, calm, reassuring gaze at the Father-at His greatness and His eagerness to give, His unwearied patience and untiring love. Then, of course, the first thing we receive in prayer is a calm spirit, and we shed the need to plunge into a panicky flood of words.
This is why this pattern of prayer begins with a word of relationship: Father. It is essential to know to whom we are praying. When we come to God in prayer, we are not talking about God, nor are we engaging in a theological dialogue. We are experiencing fellowship with God. We are talking to God the Father and listening to God the Father. And since we converse directly with Him, it is essential that we understand to whom we are speaking. Our Lord gathers it all up in this marvelously expressive word Father and says true prayer must begin with a concept of our relationship to God as our loving but holy heavenly Father.
Immediately, this sense of our relationship to Him as our Father eliminates a number of false conceptions regarding God. It shows us that prayer, real prayer, is never to be addressed to the Chairman of the Committee for Welfare and Relief. Sometimes our prayers take on that tone. We come expecting a handout. We want something to be poured into our laps, something we think we need. In making an appeal to Him, we are only filling out the properly prescribed forms. That's not authentic prayer.
Nor is prayer addressed to the Chief of the Bureau of Investigation. Prayer is never to be merely a confession of our wrongdoings, with the hope that we may cast ourselves upon the mercy of the court.
Nor is it an appeal to the Secretary of the Treasury, some sort of genial international banker whom we hope to interest in financing our projects.
No, authentic prayer is an intimate conversation with the Father--the God who possesses a father's heart, a father's love, a father's strength, and a father's concern for the best interests of His children. The first, and truest note of prayer must be our recognition that we come to this kind of father. We must hear Him and come to Him as a child, in trust and simplicity and with all the frankness of a child--otherwise it is not prayer.
The word father answers all the philosophical questions about the nature of God. A father is a person; therefore, God is not a blind force behind the inscrutable machinery of the universe. A father is able to hear; therefore, God is not some impersonal being, aloof from all our troubles and problems. And above all, a father is predisposed by love and relationship to give a careful, attentive ear to what his child says. God is like that. From a father a child can surely expect a reply. And when we pray, we are talking to our Father.
Our Lord goes on to teach us more of what a father is like in the parable that follows this prayer:
"Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! (Luke 11: 11-13).
The point is that God, being a loving Father, is interested in what we have to say. A father can be expected to respond to our pleas.
We are not only to address God as "Father"-that is, by simply saying the word with our lips. We are to believe that He is a Father, and relate to Him as a Father, for all that God makes available to us must always come to us through faith, must always operate in our lives through a trusting belief in Him. Belief invariably involves not just an intellectual agreement with a set of creeds, but an actual commitment of the will, a moving of the deepest part of our heart. Belief is not expressed by addressing God as "Almighty God" or "Dreadful Creator" or "Ground of all Being." Such grandiose terms actually betray our fatal ignorance or unbelief! The greatest authority on prayer says that God is a loving, caring, providing Father!
When I come home, I do not want my children to meet me in awe and terror, chanting, "Oh, thou great and dreadful Pastor of Peninsula Bible Church, welcome to this unworthy and miserable home." It would be an insult to my father-heart. I want my children to greet me as a father. It is never prayer until we recognize that we are coming to a patient and tender father. That is the first note in true prayer.
Dark Closets
The second note of true prayer is one of surrender: "Hallowed be your name." I am sure this is the petition that makes hypocrites out of most of us. We may be able to say "Father" with grateful sincerity, but when we pray, "Hallowed be your name," we say this with the guilty knowledge that there are areas of our lives in which His name is not hallowed, and in which we truly don't want it to be hallowed.
Hallowed means holy and honored. When we say, "Hallowed be your name," we are praying, "May the whole of my life be a source of delight to you and may it be an honor to the name which I bear, which is your name." We find the same sense in this prayer of David's from the psalms:
"May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer" (Psalm 19:14).
The trouble is that we have great areas of our lives that are not hallowed. We have reserved to ourselves certain monopolies, privileged areas that we do not wish to surrender, where the name of our career ambition or the name of some person or the name of our sinful habit or the name of the almighty dollar is more dear and hallowed to us than the name of God.
But when we pray, "Hallowed be your name," if there is any degree whatsoever of sincerity or honesty, we are really praying, "Lord, I open to you every closet; I am taking every skeleton out for you to examine. Hallowed be your name in every compartment of my life." We cannot have any contact with God, any real touch of His power, any genuine experience of the glorious fragrance and wonder of God at work in our lives until we truly pray, "Hallowed be your name in my life."
Notice that this prayer is not phrased simply as a confession or an expression of repentance to the Father. We are not to pray as we so frequently do, "Father, help me to be good," or "Help me to be better." Isn't it rather remarkable that throughout this whole pattern prayer not once is a desire for help in the sanctification of life expressed? Many of our primary concerns and so many concerns of Scripture are never reflected in this prayer.
Instead, Jesus turns our attention entirely away from ourselves and toward the Father. This phrase, "Hallowed be your name," is really a cry of helpless trust, in which we are simply standing and saying, "Father, not only do I know that there are areas in my life where your name is not hallowed, but I know also that only you can hallow them. I am quite willing to simply stand still and let you be the Holy One who will actually be first in my life."
When we pray according to Jesus' instruction, sanctification naturally follows. Whenever we let God be our Lord and surrender everything to Him we are drawn quite spontaneously into a great learning process. We can't help becoming different people. Martin Luther once said, "You do not command a stone which is lying in the sun to be warm. It will be warm all by itself."
We are truly saying, "Hallowed be your name," whenever
we say, "Father, there is no area of my life that I hide
from you. Search me, illuminate the dark corners of my life. Reveal
to me the flaws and sin in my relationships, my social life, my
sex life, my thought life, my business life, my school life, my
recreation and vacation times." When we pray that way, we
discover that God will walk into the dark closets of our life-places
where the stench of our sin is so great we cannot even bear it-and
He will clean them out and make them fit for His dwelling. "If
we walk in the light," John tells us, "as he is in the
light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus,
his Son, purifies us from all sin" (1 John 1:7).
To walk in the light does not mean to live sinlessly--that is impossible
while we are in these bodies, living in this world. It means living
honestly and openly before God, so that the light of His truth
can illuminate and cleanse the dark corners of our lives.
Kingdom Hope
The third cry of true prayer also begins with God--and it is a cry of hope: "Your kingdom come." Now, this can be a sigh for heaven. Who does not feel homesick for heaven, longing to be free from the humdrum sameness of life, and experiencing the glory we read of in the Bible?
Or this can be, as it ought to be, a cry for heaven to come to earth. In other words, "May the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ." This is the expectation expressed in the words of the old hymn,
Jesus shall reign where' er the sun
Does his successive journeys run;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.
Scripture often mentions this, and all of us long for that day to come when God will rule in righteousness over all the earth.
But I think this prayer means more than that. It is more than
a long, wistful look into the future, whether on earth or off
the earth. It is a cry that God's will may be done right now,
in the midst of the blood and sweat and tears of life. In other
words, "Your kingdom come through what I am going through
at this very moment." This is our kingdom hope-a hope not
only for a future in heaven but a hope that our present trials
can be used as part of God's plan.
Scripture reveals to us a truth that we never could know by ourselves,
but which becomes self-evident as we look at life through the
lens of God's Word. That is, God, in a manner of speaking, builds
His kingdom in secret. God is often accomplishing the most when
it is least evident that He is at work. Behind the scaffolding
of tragedy and despair, God frequently builds His empire of love
and glory. When we think God is silent, when we feel God has removed
His hand and we no longer sense the warmth of His presence, God
frequently is at work accomplishing the greatest good for ourselves,
for others, and for His eternal plan.
God's Building Materials
I once talked with a young man who had gone through a fearsome accident that had left a disfiguring mark on him. Yet that physical scar was nothing compared with the scarring pain he experienced when his marriage dissolved. He had been raised in the church, and had once looked on those who went through pain and problems with a self-righteous disdain. But, he told me, "The humiliation of my divorce cut the ground right out from under my self-righteous attitude. I know I never would have learned to feel for others and experience the joy of God's purpose for my life if I had not become a divorce statistic." These are the ways that God builds His kingdom. What a mystery this is! As the poet wrote,
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread Are filled with mercies, and shall break
In blessings 'round thy head.
Can any liturgy or ritual of the church speak this more eloquently to us than the Lord's Supper? When we gather for the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine, we remember that each is a symbol of the pain, anguish, and sorrow of the bitter death our Lord went through. But, as Cowper writes,
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will.
Out of darkness God calls forth light; out of despair, hope. From death comes resurrection. You cannot have resurrection without death, hope without despair, or light without darkness. By means of defeat the kingdom of God is born in human hearts.
This is the meaning of prayer: "Oh, Lord, I am but a little child. I do not understand the mysteries of life. I do not know your ways in this world, but Lord, I pray that through these circumstances in which I now find myself--these painful troubles and struggles-your kingdom come." The transforming agent is prayer-simple, trusting prayer, rising out of the helpless need of a child to- touch a father's heart.
Father, how frequently we misunderstand life even though you have gone to such great lengths to show us the secret of life. How many times, Father, have we rebelled foolishly against you and your workings in our lives? How many times have we turned away from you? And yet, have we not also seen that through these hours of resentment and burning shame and bitterness, you have been lovingly at work to teach us the truth and to bring us to an understanding of reality, to bring us back to your loving heart? Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come--both in the world to come and in the world we live in every day. In Jesus' name, Amen.
5. When Prayer Becomes Personal
"Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation. (Luke 11:3-4)
The Lord's Prayer consists of exactly 66 words in the King James Version. The Gettysburg Address is made up of 286 words. The Declaration of Independence is comprised of 1,322 words. However, federal regulations governing the sale of a head of cabbage total 26,911 words. These statistics suggest a fascinating principle: The wiser, grander, and more profound the idea to be expressed, the fewer words are needed to express it. In the Lord's Prayer we find that Jesus has reduced to the simplest and most elegant terms some of the most mighty and life-changing themes of our existence. If we could grasp the grand truths of life that He has captured for us in these few words, our lives and relationships would be utterly transformed!
In the previous chapter, we examined the first part of this magnificent model prayer-the part that relates to God the Father, His glory and holiness, His kingdom in heaven and on earth, and our need to submit to His will. Now we come to the part of the prayer that deals directly with our own experience of life, our behavior, our relationships, our moral character. This is a prayer for the whole human being--body, soul, and spirit. With pinpoint accuracy, Jesus targets each of these areas of our lives, so that if we understand this prayer properly, and pray it as it should be prayed, nothing further really needs to be said.
I believe one of the great tragedies surrounding the Lord's Prayer is that we have turned it into a religious ritual, and so we have missed its profound and practical meaning for our lives. This prayer was never intended to be merely repeated over and over in some mechanical fashion, like a Buddhist chant. Our Lord gave it to us as a guide to a vital, practical prayer life. Each of these short phrases is infinitely expandable as to detail-and Jesus fully expects each of us to fill in the details! We are to pray this prayer in our hearts, specifically listing the sins we have committed, then specifically listing the people who have offended us, asking God for strength to forgive them every time that twinge of anger or bitterness arises in us!
If we as Christians will use this prayer as a model for authentic
interaction with God, and not as a meaningless Christian mantra,
then our lives will be changed and our churches will be transformed--guaranteed!
Praying for the Body
Jesus begins this section of the prayer with the needs of the body. I like that! We have such a distorted concept of prayer that we often feel that we shouldn't pray about physical needs. That is a reflection of a pagan--not Christian!--concept of life. The Greeks regarded the body as coarse and unworthy of redemption, and they therefore mistreated it. They tortured and tormented their bodies. This idea that the body must be either neglected or subdued by physical mistreatment is widespread in Asian cultures today, but you never find this in New Testament Christianity.
Some might point to Philippians 3:21, which speaks of Jesus Christ "who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." Some translations use the word vile instead of lowly, meaning that the body is somehow repulsive and disgusting. But that's not what the original Greek word means. This verse describes the body as being lowly in the sense that it is not yet glorified. It has not yet entered into the ultimate state for which God has designed it. But Paul is not saying that there is anything wrong with the body.
God likes bodies. That may startle you, but it is true that God engineered and designed them, and He likes them. He cares about our health and physical well-being, and it is perfectly proper for us to pray about the needs of the body. Bread, as expressed in the prayer, is a symbol of all the necessities of physical life; it stands for all that our physical life demands--shelter, water, food, exercise, clothing-anything the body requires.
The vital concern expressed here is that an immediate and sufficient supply be made available to us. The only limit in this prayer is that we are never to pray for a warehouse, a full supply for a year ahead. Each day we are to pray for that day's supply.
The question this prayer poses to you and me is this: Do we pray daily for our physical needs? Do we take time to ask God for them, or at least give thanks for them? Perhaps this has become such a familiar request in the repeating of the Lord's Prayer that it has lost any real meaning for us and we do not take it seriously. This may be the most flagrant and frequent area of Christian disobedience. After all, our Lord meant it when He told us to pray, "give us each day our daily bread."
I am sure that the Lord must have had some good reason for telling us to pray in this particular way. Some will argue that Jesus said elsewhere, "Your Father knows what you need before you ask him" (Matthew 6:8), so the purpose of this prayer is not to inform God of our needs. Others say it really makes little difference whether or not we pray about physical things because we receive the necessities of life, regardless. So, what's the point of praying?
Obviously, prayer is not a means by which we inform God of our needs. Prayer is not so much a channel by which we influence God as it is a channel through which God influences us! It is we who need prayer, not Him. He already knows our needs, because He knows everything about us. But prayer is something we need.
Just ask yourself what happens when you neglect to pray for
your daily needs and to thank God for His daily provision of blessings.
If you honestly examine your life over an extended period of prayerlessness,
you will see that a slow, subtle, but inevitable change steals
over your heart. You begin to take His blessings for granted and
gradually succumb to the foolish delusion that you have provided
all those blessings yourself! That is the path to vanity. Prayer
is the path to wisdom--the active, grateful realization that all
we have and all we are and all we are able to accomplish comes
directly from Him. Prayerlessness leads to pride and blindness-a
blindness that darkens our spiritual insight, making us cynical,
anxious, restless, and depressed. Prayer leads to humility and
spiritual wholeness.
Human--or Dog?
The book of Daniel describes the spiritual pride of Nebuchadnezzar, proud king of Babylon. In the evening, he walked out on the battlements of his palace, looked out over the city, and said, "Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?" (Daniel 4:30). He reveled in what he thought were his own powers, which he credited for the splendor he saw.
As a result of that defiant assumption about the basic powers
of supply in his life, God brought upon him the judgment of bestiality.
He became a beast, and was turned out to eat grass in the fields
like an animal. This was God's dramatic way of saying that ingratitude
causes people to become animal-like, with all the mindless ferocity
and self-centeredness of beasts growling over their food.
Dr. H. A. Ironside once told of an occasion when, as a young man,
he went into a cafeteria to eat. He took his tray and looked for
a place to sit, but found all the seats occupied except one chair
opposite a man seated at a table. So Dr. Ironside approached the
man and asked if he might sit down. The man looked up, nodded
his head, and grunted something unintelligible. Dr. Ironside sat
down and, as was his custom, bowed his head and silently gave
thanks for his food. When he looked up, he saw the man glowering
at him. "What's the matter?" the fellow asked gruffly.
"Something wrong with your food?"
"No," Dr. Ironside responded, "it seems all right to me."
The man persisted: "Have you got a headache, or something? "
"No," Ironside answered, "I feel fine. Why do you ask? "
"Well, I noticed you bowing down and putting your hand up to your head and closing your eyes. I thought maybe there was something wrong with your head."
"No," Dr. Ironside replied, "I was simply returning thanks to God for my food."
The man snorted derisively and said, "Oh, you believe in that bosh, do you?"
"Don't you ever give thanks?"
"Nah," the man sneered. "I don't believe in giving thanks for anything. I just start right in."
"Ah," said Dr. Ironside cheerfully, "you're just like my dog!"
"Huh?" The man looked puzzled-and annoyed.
"My dog never gives thanks, either," Dr. Ironside
explained. "He just starts right in!" And the other
man had nothing more to say.
The fact is, God doesn't need our prayers and our thanks--but we
certainly need to give thanks to God! If we fail to remind ourselves
whose hand has provided all we have, then we become like Dr. Ironside's
dog-brutishly digging in to life's blessings, never elevating
our spirit to recognize and commune with the One who provided
those blessings in the first place.
Everything we have comes from God's hand, and it could all be stripped from us in a moment. Our daily bread, and even our moment-to-moment respiration and heartbeat, come to us purely by His grace and His goodness. To avoid the brutish sin of ingratitude, we must follow the example of Christ, praying daily to the Father, constantly remembering that
Back of the bread is the snowy flour
And back of the flour, the mill
And back of the mill is the field of wheat,
The rain, and the Father's will.
A Prayer for Relationships
Junior had been trying his mother's patience all day. Finally, Mom had had enough and sent Junior to his room. Later, after he had served his sentence, Junior was allowed out of his room on parole. "Mom," he said, "I prayed about our problem while I was in my room."
Mom was delighted to hear it. "That's wonderful, Junior," she said. "If you ask God to help you be good, He will help you."
"Oh, I didn't ask God to help me be good," replied Junior. "I asked Him to help you put up with me."
Well, this little boy didn't quite grasp the "lead us
not into temptation" part of prayer--but he did understand
that prayer is a crucial factor in healing strained relationships!
For that, in fact, is the focus of the second request of the Lord's
Prayer. In this passage, the model prayer of Jesus moves into
the area of human relationships, our conscious life, emotions,
intellect, and will. This is the section that deals with the human
soul.
Here our Lord touches on the central issue in this area of life: forgiveness. "Forgive us our sins," Jesus teaches, "for we also forgive everyone who sins against us." This prayer addresses the need for a cleansed conscience, for a sense of peace, for reconciliation of ourselves with God and with one another. God knew that the emotional clutter of our life takes a very deadly toll on us, so He created this path of cleansing through prayer.
Who of us has never experienced the painful results of imagined illnesses? Not that they are really imaginary, for they are actually the physical symptoms that arise from disarray in our emotional life. Familiar to all of us are such symptoms as palpitations of the heart, shortness of breath, skin rashes, throbbing migraine headaches that seem to split the skull, stammering, stuttering, nervous compulsions, and more. Then there are the really troublesome mental symptoms: morbid depression, anxiety, irrational apprehension, bitterness, insecurity, and so on.
Where do all these grinning physical and emotional demons come from? Both Scripture and modern psychology agree that underneath these symptoms lurk two frightening monsters: fear and guilt. If only we could slay these fiery dragons, the whole emotional atmosphere of our lives would finally be at peace.
In this simple prayer that Jesus gives us we find a mighty sword for dragon-slaying. When we pray, "Forgive us our sins," we are asking for the reality that God promises to every believer in Jesus Christ, "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8: 1). I don't know of anything that troubles Christians more than a sense of guilt, of self-condemnation. Guilt is the most frequent problem behind the distressing ailments evident in many a Christian's experience, but in this simple prayer we find a fully adequate answer. For if we have laid hold of the forgiveness of God, we know that nothing lies between us and the Lord. Our hearts are absolutely free before Him and the result is a pervading sense of peace.
But Jesus immediately adds a limitation: We cannot ask God to forgive our sins unless we are willing to forgive those who sin against us.
I want to head off any confusion at this point. Jesus is certainly not referring here to the divine forgiveness that accompanies conversion. The Lord's Prayer is meant for Christians, because only Christians can really pray it intelligently. No non-Christian ever receives forgiveness from God on the basis of claiming to forgive anyone else. No one can authentically forgive in a Christlike way who has not received the forgiveness of God. That forgiveness is offered on the basis of Jesus' death.
Paul says, "In him we have redemption through his blood,
the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's
grace" (Ephesians 1:7). God's grace-that's all! We come thanking
Him for what Jesus' death on the cross has already done in taking
away the awful burden of our sin. But, though we have received
that forgiveness, we will never be able to enjoy forgiveness from
the defilements of our Christian walk unless we are ready to extend
it freely to those who offend us. Such forgiveness keeps us enjoying
unbroken fellowship with the Father and with the Son, which is,
of course, the secret of emotional quietness and rest.
As a Christian it is useless to pray, "Father, forgive my
sins," if you hold a grudge against someone else, or burn
with resentment and bitterness. Our instructions are clear: "First
go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your
gift" (Matthew 5:24). Forgive your brother, and then the
healing forgiveness of God will flood your own heart. You will
find then that nothing can destroy the God-given peace down at
the very center of your being. If we refuse to forgive someone
else, we are really withholding from another the grace that has
already been shown to us. It is only because we have already been
forgiven the great and staggering debt of our own sins that we
can ever find the grace to forgive the relatively insignificant
slights others have put upon us.
A man once said to me, "I know I'm a Christian, but someone once did an awful thing to me--something I just can't forget or forgive." I replied, "Are you sure that you can't forgive him?" He maintained that he had really tried to forgive this man, but was unable to do so. As we continued talking, I said, "You know, I have found that we often use the word can't when what we really mean is won't. Isn't it possible that what you are saying is not, 'I can't forgive him,' but 'I won't forgive him'? If it is really true that you cannot forgive this man, then it indicates that you yourself have never been forgiven and you are only kidding yourself about being a Christian."
This shook him a bit. He thought it through and then, with
rather a sheepish grin, he said, "I guess you're right. I
guess it is won't. It wasn't long before he came back to me
and reported with joy that he had finally forgiven the man who
had injured him.
If we take these words seriously, what a revolution this will
make in our lives, in our homes, and in our churches! We will
never discover what God means in terms of the sweetness of forgiving
grace in our own lives and hearts if we are not willing to melt
the black frost of bitter years of withered, broken relationships.
Dealing With Temptation
The third area of prayer is in the realm of the spirit: "And lead us not into temptation." Again, Jesus penetrates to the vital core of the matter. In the unseen war of the spirit, the greatest needs of our lives are deliverance and protection. But an immediate problem arises here, for Scripture reveals that temptation is necessary to us and no Christian escapes it. Furthermore, though God Himself never tempts us to sin, He does test us with difficult and discouraging circumstances, and these become the instruments of God to strengthen us, to build us up, and to give us victory.
When we read this portion of the Lord's Prayer, we are confronted with this question: Are we really expected to pray that God will not do what He must do to accomplish His work within us? After all, even Jesus, we are told, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
So what does He mean, then, when He says, "And lead us not into temptation"? I have puzzled and prayed and read about this issue over the years. I am now convinced that what Jesus meant is that we should pray to be kept from unrecognized temptation. When temptation is recognized, it can be resisted, and when we resist, it is always a source of strength and growth in our lives. If I am filling out my income tax and find that some income has come to me through other than ordinary channels and there is no way of anyone checking it, I am confronted with a temptation to omit it. But I know that is wrong. No one has to tell me; I know it. And when I resist that, I find I am stronger the next time when an even larger amount may be involved.
You see, it is a rather simple matter to resist obvious evil, if we really mean to walk with God. But temptation is not always so easily discerned. There are times when I feel sure I am right, and with utmost sincerity and integrity of heart I do what I believe is the right thing, but later I look back and see that I was horribly wrong. I believe that is what Jesus is talking about in this part of the prayer.
Peter is an example of this. In the Upper Room, with brash confidence and utter naïveté, Peter said to the Lord,
"Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will." "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times." But Peter declared, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." And all the other disciples said the same (Matthew 26:33-35).
Still confident, Peter went into the Garden of Gethsemane and
when the soldiers came, he cut off the ear of the high priest's
servant in his eagerness to show his faithfulness to the Lord.
Earlier Jesus had said to him in the garden, "Watch and pray
so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing,
but the body is weak" (Matthew 26:41). But Peter didn't heed
that word. Instead he slept, and after waking him our Lord again
asked him to pray-not for the Lord, but for himself.
But Peter did not pray, and when he came into the court of the
high priest and was standing before the fire, Satan wrung out
his courage and hung him up to dry. There, with cursing and swearing,
Peter found himself trapped. He denied his Lord, and in the awful
realization of what he had done, Peter went out into the blackness
of the night and wept bitterly. This is what our Lord refers to
in the phrase, "Lead us not into temptation." This prayer
is the recognition of our foolish weakness and our tendency to
stumble into blind folly.
Living in Dependence on God
When Hudson Taylor, that intrepid missionary to China, was only a young man, he journeyed from Swatow up to the great city of Shanghai, earnestly seeking to do God's will. There he planned to get his medical instruments and medicines and return with them to the city of Swatow where he expected to labor with a Scottish missionary who had formerly been his companion there. Arriving in Shanghai, he discovered that the building in which he had left all his supplies and instruments had burned to the ground. All was lost.
Baffled and discouraged, unable to fathom why God would allow such a disaster, he sat down and pondered. Then, with hardly any money in his pockets, he got up and made his way along the network of canals to the city of Ningpo where he could buy some supplies from another missionary, then take a boat back to Swatow. In the heat of summer, he journeyed, preaching as he went.
Arriving at the end of the canals, Hudson Taylor hired some local Chinese workers to carry his baggage. He started out and soon outdistanced the Chinese baggage carriers, and finally had to wait through one long, hot afternoon for them to catch up. To his dismay he discovered when they finally arrived that they were all opium-smokers and would be unable to carry the load over the distance ahead. So he dismissed most of them, retaining only the leader of the group, whom he delegated to hire more baggage carriers. Then he started out once more. Soon he had to stop again-and this time the baggage carriers did not catch up. In fact, he never saw them or his baggage again.
Completely discouraged, he went to an inn for a night's sleep and found it rat-infested and bug-ridden. He hardly slept. The next morning he pressed on to the coast and, after a long, hot, discouraging march, he entered a city to find someplace to sleep. He was turned away by several inns because he was a foreigner. Then the police began to shadow him, and he didn't know where to turn.
Finally, a young man offered to help him. Together they trudged around the city without success until one 0' clock in the morning, and then the young man abandoned him. He had to spend the rest of the night on the steps of a temple with three thieves lurking in the shadows, waiting for him to fall asleep so they could murder him and take his few possessions. Taylor stayed awake the rest of the night, singing hymns and repeating Bible verses to himself until the thieves gave up in disgust and left. Only then did he manage to catch a few moments' sleep.
In the morning the young man who had taken him through the
city streets came back and demanded an outrageous fee for his
"guide service." This was too much. Hudson Taylor lost
his temper, grabbed the fellow by the arm, shook him, and told
him to go away. Weary, broken, and dispirited, he started the
long, painful journey back to Shanghai. For eight long miles he
dragged himself along in spiritual rebellion, wondering why God
had abandoned him.
Then it came to him: He had denied his Lord, just as Peter had!
All his anger and pain melted into tears of repentance as the
truth broke through to him that he had never asked God's guidance
and protection along the way. He had been so intent upon his own
trouble that he had forgotten to commit the matter to the Lord.
He wrote in his journal that, as he went along, he confessed his prayerlessness and faithlessness to God, asking the Lord to forgive him. And at that moment his heart was flooded with a glorious sense of the presence and forgiveness of Christ. The initiative and control passed once again from Hudson Taylor to the Lord where it belonged.
This was what God wanted. When Taylor got to Shanghai, he found a letter waiting for him with a check in it for the exact amount needed to cover his losses. And he learned soon afterward that if he had gone on to Swatow, he would have arrived just in time to be imprisoned, and perhaps executed. All the worry, fear, despair, and perplexity he experienced was totally unnecessary. The events might have been the same, regardless of whether he prayed or not, but the emotions he experienced would have been far different if only he had prayed, "Lord, lead me not into temptation."
All three of the requests in the Lord's Prayer reflect the one great truth that Jesus labors to impress upon us: We are forever in need--body, soul, and spirit. Only as we walk in continual, step-by-step dependence upon the living God can any of these needs be adequately met. When we fail to pray, we fail to depend on Him. We condemn ourselves to physical, emotional, and spiritual starvation. But when we pray continually, maintaining our heartfelt connection with God through an authentic prayer life modeled on this simple, childlike prayer, we guard our souls against upset and failure. We bind our hearts to the heart of the One who created the universe, the One who loved us enough to send His Son to us.
Jesus died for us. He rose for us. He taught us how to pray. He showed us how to live in dependence on the Father. He is our example, and our part is simply to imitate Him.
Our Father, we can only echo these words our Lord Jesus taught us. Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our sins, lead us not into temptation. In Christ's name, Amen.
Asking, seeking, or knocking-the answer is certain, if we believe God. Faith takes His answer for granted.
The fulfillment of all our need is an activity of the Holy Spirit--and yet, mysteriously, He waits until we ask before He moves! The invisible events of heaven, which will be reflected on earth, are determined in the heart of a praying Christian. Because Jesus went to the Father, He has promised to do through us works of lasting, eternal value--even greatest works, in fact, than the works He did while on earth!
A Christian's work is never anything but borrowed activity,
based on borrowed authority-authority borrowed from God.
6. Prayer's Certainties
He said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.' "Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs. "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:5-13 )
"Lord, teach us to pray," begged the disciple.
As we have seen in the preceding chapters, the Lord responded to that plea and taught His disciples a model prayer, which He intended us to use as a guide. Immediately after giving us this model prayer, which has come to be called the Lord's Prayer, Jesus expands on His response to the disciple's plea by telling a story-the familiar parable of the obstinate friend in Luke 11:5-13. The lesson Jesus wants us to learn from this parable is found in the introduction:
He said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.' "Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything' " (Luke 11:5-7).
The link with prayer in this story is obvious: True prayer never
occurs apart from a sense of need. The first note in the story
Jesus tells is one of dire, pressing necessity. Here a man comes
to a friend after midnight and announces that he has unexpected
company arriving after a long journey-he has nothing in the house
to serve his company, and he demands that the friend help him
out.
The needs of others often seem more urgent and pressing to
us than our own needs. I doubt that this man would ever have gone
to his friend's house in the middle of the night to borrow bread
to meet his own hunger. But when company arrives after a long
journey, a deep sense of necessity makes him willing to go to
his neighbor to ask for bread even though it is late and he knows
his neighbor is in bed.
There is a note of audacity here. Not many of us today would even
think of troubling a friend after midnight for a mere loaf of
bread! As someone has said, "He may not have any bread, but
he certainly has plenty of crust!" Yet it is obvious, as
our Lord tells the story (and he tells it with a touch of humor
that I'm sure was intentional), that this man is driven by a deep
sense of concern. He simply has nothing to give his hungry friend
and is forced to go to his neighbor for help. Is anything quite
so likely to bring us to our knees in prayer as the request of
another person for our help, and the shattering awareness that
we simply have nothing to give?
What Shall I Say?
One evening around ten o'clock, my telephone rang. I picked it up and recognized the voice of a young man, a relatively new Christian who had been steadily maturing in his newfound faith. That night, however, he was very troubled and there was a note of desperation in his voice. "My wife just phoned me," he said. "She's out someplace with a girlfriend of hers, and she wants to bring this woman home to talk to me."
"Why is that?"
"Well, my wife's girlfriend is a good friend from their college days together. This woman is an unmarried schoolteacher and she's been going through some very tough times lately. Fact is, she told my wife she is contemplating suicide."
"And your wife thinks you can help this woman by talking to her?" I asked.
"That's right," the young man replied. "She
says that, since I'm a Christian, I should be able to say something
to this young woman that will help her with her problems, so she
won't be suicidal anymore."
"Why does your wife think you can help, just because you
are a Christian?" I asked. "Your wife is not a Christian,
is she?"
"No, she's not. In fact, she's been very resistant to the gospel and has really been harassing me because of my faith. "
"But now that her friend is suicidal, she thinks the Christian faith may have something to offer."
"That's right," said the young man. "But Pastor Stedman, I'm in a panic! I mean, what can I say? What if I say the wrong thing? I'm just a new Christian-not a pastor or a counselor! What should I say to her?"
Perhaps you know how my young friend felt. You may know that strange, sinking sensation when someone asks for help and you do not know what to say. Immediately you have a sense of pressure, responsibility, or even terror. "What shall I say?" Perhaps a neighbor comes for coffee and suddenly a question arises or a problem is laid bare. Or a school friend stammers out a question as you are walking to class together. Or a letter arrives from a friend or relative with an urgent plea. Or a friend invites you out to lunch, then tells you he or she is contemplating divorce or having an affair or diagnosed with an incurable disease or dealing with some other loss, tragedy, sin, or difficult decision. And you only have time for one brief, panicky prayer, "Lord, what shall I say?"
It is as if you are rushing to your great neighbor, God, after
midnight, knocking on His door out of your great sense of need
and inadequacy. It is as if you are crying out to Him, "Lord,
I need to give this person bread and I have nothing to give! Please
give me bread to share with this person!" It is out of such
moments of deep necessity that true prayer is born.
In this parable, our Lord immediately moves on to sound a note
of absolute certainty:
"I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened" (Luke 11:9-10).
What an amazing declaration! The implications are staggering. Some interpret verse 8 as though our Lord is saying that we must wear God down with our prayers. They suggest that the only way we can expect to get anything from God is to be relentless and obstinate in prayer,