The question was a little strange: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). It was strange because, being Jewish, the disciples of Jesus knew how to pray. From childhood, their parents had taught them to pray the Shema three times a day: “Hear O Israel, the LORD is God, the LORD alone” (Deut. 6:4). It is true that rabbis would often teach their disciples unique adaptations of the Shema. But I think Jesus’ disciples were asking for something more. Although they knew how to pray, in Jesus they saw a deep, powerful connection in how Jesus prayed and how he lived.
The Gospel writers emphasize how Jesus prayed: he prayed often; he prayed alone, sometimes for long hours in solitude; he prayed with others; he prayed right in the middle of talking with people; he prayed before big decisions; he prayed about small things; he prayed all the time. Prayer seemed to permeate Jesus, and then seep through. Was prayer the reason why he could be so bold one minute and so tender the next? Was it prayer that sensitized him to the need of the person in front of him? Was it prayer that enboldened him so that he could tell his fearful followers, “Why are you so afraid?” Was it prayer that gave his life passion and purpose? Was it prayer that made a coherent whole of all he faced everyday? Was it prayer that allowed him to set his face like flint toward Jerusalem and certain death on a cross?
The disciples knew how to pray. But they didn’t know how to pray like Jesus prayed. So, like any good follower of Jesus should, they asked Rabbi Jesus: “Teach us to pray.” And he obliged. How beautiful it is that the God to whom we pray also lovingly tells us how to talk with him.
JESUS TEACHES US HOW TO PRAY BEFORE WE SAY A WORD
Maybe the first thing we learn from Jesus about how to pray, even before we hear his words, is how critical and life-giving prayer is. Prayer is the most important habit we can form because it forms us. “Prayer is the main way we experience deep change—the reordering of our loves. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life.”[1] For Jesus, prayer was intentional– a habit, a practice. This wasn’t lost on the apostle Paul, who advised this: “Prayer—devote yourself to it, being watchful and thankful” (Col. 4:2). Being devoted to prayer means we keep at it until the “duty becomes a delight.”[2]
Prayer is simply talking with God, and just like any relationship, the give and take needs time to grow. As Tim Keller writes, “Prayer is a conversation that leads to encounter with God.”[3] Prayer is connecting our hearts, souls, mind, emotions, relationships—everything we are and do—with the Reality that is God.
Remembering Who we are talking to is a good place to begin. Thinking about and meditating on the goodness of God prepares us to pray. Reading passages that tell us about the heart of God help, like Exodus 34:4-7; Psalms 103; Philippians 2:6-11; and Romans 8:28-39. “Meditation is taking the truth down into our hearts until it catches fire there and begins to melt and shape our reactions to God, ourselves, and the world.”[4]
As we meditate on the goodness and love of God, we feel His invitation to go deeper. This is letting God connect what your mind knows about God to your emotions. Stop, be quiet, and listen to God tell you personally, “I love you and will take care of you. You can trust me.” As Jonathan Edwards wrote, this is the difference between knowing that honey is sweet and tasting honey. “Taste and see that the LORD is good” (Ps. 34:8).
JESUS’ WORDS BRING ORDER TO OUR SOULS
And then Jesus tells us, “This is how you pray.” His beautiful prayer has been prayed for 2,000 years and continues to be recited every day by billions the world over. Just as God gives us Psalms of lament to help us verbalize our frustration and anger toward God, so God now gives us a prayer that can help center and order our souls. As we converse with God, we can turn over in our minds each phrase, reflecting on what it means for today, opening avenues of other things to bring to Him.
Our Father. Jesus invites us to call on God as Abba, the most personal name for a father. We enter the Presence of the Almighty as if we were the smallest of children coming to our parents, opening our deepest desires, hurts, and longings. We say “our” Father because we bring into our conversation with God all the people in our life. And as we listen to him, he reminds us how connected we are to others and helps us understand how to love others as we should. We also say “our” because in prayer we encounter the God Jesus revealed, who is not a “solitary” God, but a Community of Love—Father, Son, and Spirit.
In Heaven. That God is in heaven should give us comfort with all the troubles of earth. Our pain and hurt will not last forever. Jesus came to bring heaven back to earth so that God’s Desire (his good will) will be done on earth as it is being done now in heaven. Heaven is a safe place, and in Jesus, we can enter into the safe place of God here and now with the assurance that we will be with him forever.
Holy is Your Name. Although we call on God as Abba, these words sober us to the realization of just Who we are encountering. Think about it—we are talking to the God who created the trillions of galaxies in this universe! And who also lovingly and exquisitely created your intricate body and mind. “Reverence for God is the beginning of wisdom.” Is there anything too difficult for God?
Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. With these words, we submit our agendas and our day under the authority of God’s good ways. God’s Kingdom has come already in the death and resurrection of Jesus—the future is assured. So, what we ask is for God to open our eyes today so we can be part of what Jesus is doing. As Marianne Maye Thompson says, in Jesus “the future—God’s action for our salvation—has reached into the present, and it is this inbreaking of the revelation of God’s glory, of the promises ‘kept for you in heaven,’ that gives hope in the present, hope that the situation of the world will be transformed, and that God has not abandoned the world to its own devices.”[5]
Give us today just our daily bread. The rule of the Kingdom is to ask. We ask because God loves to give, and we can trust Him. So, we ask him about every little thing that is worrying us. But we don’t pile up our worries. As Jesus said, “Don’t be anxious about tomorrow; today has enough for you to focus on” (Matt. 6:33, 34). Like the Israelites with the manna, he teaches us to be content with today’s portion.
Forgive us as we forgive others. Here we ask God to reveal what’s inside us that we may not realize. We confess our failings, our fears, our anger—we pour it all out to God. We ask for forgiveness, and at the same time we forgive others who have hurt us. We let it go into the hands of God. We bring before him the people in our life, asking God to help us know how to pray for them and how we might help them.
Keep temptation away from us and deliver us from evil. With these words we align our heart with the heart of God because he does not want us to be careless in how we live. God does not want us to get close to those things that might tempt us, with the assurance that God will always provide a way out (1 Cor. 10:13).
For Yours is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory forever and ever. These words are for our benefit as we leave our time with the true King. We remember that this King surrendered his throne to raise us up, and He glories in being the “With Us” God, rescuing us and traveling with us throughout the rest of the day.
[1] Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (New York: Penguin, 2014), 18.
[2] See J.I. Packer and Carolyn Nystrom, Praying: Finding Our Way through Duty to Delight (Downers Grove, Il: InterVarsity Press, 2009).
[3] Keller, Prayer, 165.
[4] Keller, Prayer, 151.
[5] Marianne Meye Thompson, Colossians & Philemon (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 22.