Teach Us To Pray
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A talk show host named Garrison Keillor once remarked of Christians, “They really believe in prayer, but would practically die if asked to pray out loud.” Relatable, right?
We don’t talk about Bruno. Ever heard the song from Disney's Encanto?
The song is about this family that talks about everything, except a person named Bruno, who mysteriously disappeared.
His disappearance is taboo. We don’t talk about Bruno, we don’t go looking for Bruno, but it’s perfectly fine to sing about not talking about Bruno. Because reasons.
The movie has been out long enough I shouldn't need to care about spoiler alerts. So the short of it is, Bruno never actually left the house.
How does this relate to prayer? Because sometimes we have a tendency to treat prayer a lot like Bruno. We talk about it without talking about it. And we definitely don’t volunteer to do it.
Prayer sometimes becomes this overshadowing thing that we know we should do, but we feel like we can’t…or won’t…or it’s awkward…or we’re insecure. And worse, it feels like if you don’t know how to pray, it’s wrong to ask for help. You should just automatically be an expert, right?
Well, if that’s you, you’re not alone.
And so it
was that as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, one of
His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray as John also taught
his disciples.” And
He said to them, “When you pray, say, ‘Our Father, Who are in Heaven,
hallowed be Your Name. Your Kingdom come. Let Your will be done even on
Earth, as in Heaven. Give us our daily bread each day. And
forgive us our sins. As we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And do not lead us into trial. But deliver us from the evil one.’”
Luke 11:1-4 (Revised Geneva Translation)
Yeshua frequently withdraws to pray, throughout the Gospels. One might picture half of his time on Earth as the disciples being like “Where did–okay, who has–has anybody seen Yeshua? Who is in charge of Yeshua? Oh, hey, never mind, we found him. He’s just gone off to pray again.”
The thing is, prayer was a huge part of Yeshua’s life on Earth, and it was so fruitful, so intimate, so real, that finally, one of the disciples just up and asked him “how do you do that?”
And the fact that Yeshua’s own disciples came to him and asked him how to pray, evidently, prayer is something to be taught. Don’t feel bad if you feel like you don’t know how to pray. It’s okay to ask for help. And today, I’m gonna try and be that help.
So here in Luke, Yeshua teaches his disciples what we commonly know as “The Lord’s Prayer”. And it’s everywhere. Even if you don’t go to church, odds are you’ve heard it in movies, on television, or in the very least, you’ve probably heard it at a funeral.
But our familiarity with it actually works against us. As Andy Stanley said, “Time in, erodes awareness of.”
Here’s one spot where I added my own observations. At one of my former jobs, one of my supervisors had a story about his first apartment he lived in. There was an elevated train, and the tracks ran through an alley a few stories below him. And further, the tracks curved right there.
So every night, the train would roar through, and as it hit the curve, the wheels would screech and throw sparks, from which the light would bounce around in the alley and into his windows, casting all kinds of flashing on his ceiling.
So he first moved in, not realizing the train was gonna go through every night. First night was horrible. But in a couple months, he stopped noticing the train. And when he eventually moved to another city, he found he had trouble sleeping because there wasn’t a train roaring through every night! So yeah, time in, erodes awareness of.
And this is the case with the Lord’s Prayer. We recite it, we memorize it, but in doing this, we completely miss the whole entire point of it. Our familiarity may even be something as an obstacle to our prayer life.
What’s interesting to note is that, when you dig into it, this prayer is entirely unoriginal. Everything is either a quote from the Old Testament, or from common prayers used in worship in that century. Yeshua wasn’t giving us much of anything original. He gave us a mix tape.
And given that he uses almost the exact same prayer in both the gospel of Matthew and in Luke, we might guess that he used this prayer as a lesson every time he taught about prayer. Not intended as a word for word religious recipe to be recited and memorized, but as a pattern to follow, so easy and simple that anybody can pray like him.
So we’re gonna take a look at a slightly different version of the prayer, not “our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name”
No, this one comes from the Complete Jewish Bible.
Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.
May your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.
Give us the food we need today.
Forgive us what we have done wrong
As we too have forgiven those who have wronged us.
And do not lead us into hard testing
But keep us safe from the evil one.
Notice the very slight linguistic differences. Just enough to throw you off, right?
But that’s really the idea. We aren’t studying the prayer for the sake of reciting words. We’re studying it to note the pattern. And there are six notable principles being taught here. Seven if you go look at Matthew’s version.
First, we have the Father’s character. “Our father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.”
Second, we have the Father’s kingdom. “May your kingdom come, may your will be done.”
Thirdly, the Father’s provision, “Give us the food we need today.”
Fourth, the Father’s forgiveness.
Fifth, the father’s guidance, “do not lead us into hard testing”
and sixth, his protection, “deliver us from evil”
seventh, his glory. “Yours is the kingdom, power, and glory forever.”
And I’m going to actually add one more principle, not seen in the Lord’s Prayer, this being thanksgiving, which is commanded many times in scripture. For demonstration purposes, Ephesians 5:20, which says, “always give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah.”
And one of the most notable prayers of thanksgiving is from King David.
Yours, Adonai,
is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory and the majesty;
for everything in heaven and on earth is yours. The kingdom is yours, Adonai; and you are exalted as head over all. Riches
and honor come from you, you rule everything, in your hand is power and
strength, you have the capacity to make great and to give strength to
all. Therefore, our God, we thank you and praise your glorious name.
But
who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to give so
willingly in this way? For all things come from you, so that we have
given you what is already yours. For
in your presence we are temporary residents, just passing through, as
all our ancestors were — our days on earth are like a shadow, without
hope.
Adonai
our God, all these supplies that we have prepared in order to build you
a house for your holy name come from your own hand, all of it is
already yours. I
know also, my God, that you test the heart and take pleasure in
integrity. As for myself, I have given all these things willingly, in
the integrity of my heart; and now, with joy, I have seen your people
who are present here give willingly to you.
Adonai,
God of Avraham [Abraham], Yitz’chak [Isaac] and Isra’el [Jacob] our ancestors, guard forever the
inclinations of the thoughts in the hearts of your people; direct their
hearts to you; and give to Shlomo [Solomon] my son wholeheartedness to obey your mitzvot, instructions and rules, to do all these things, and to build the palace for which I have made provision.”
1 Chronicles 29:11-19 (Complete Jewish Bible)
So there we have our eight principles of prayer. And I won’t dive into all of them, but I want to touch on a few.
Firstly, our father in heaven. Though the text here was written in Greek, the original spoken language probably used the Hebrew/Aramaic word “Abba”, which is kinda a big deal. The Greek word “pater” is a title of position, merely identifying God as a father or an ancestor. But Abba is an actual name, a title of endearment, akin to ‘Daddy’, used by a beloved child in an affectionate, dependent relationship.
I want you to understand here, this concept was revolutionary. For thousands of years, Yahweh was this scary, impersonal force that was so holy that only the high priest could go into the Holy of Holies, and in fear and trembling. Yahweh was this harsh and righteous and angry judge, just waiting to rain punishment on those who broke his long list of laws and regulations. I imagine that when the High Priest prayed, he often wondered, “what in the world do I even say to this holy and righteous God? How to you talk to such a fearsome being?” And Yeshua is saying, “naw, fam, you got it all wrong. When you pray, just talk to Abba the same way a child talks with their daddy.”
He was completely obliterating the idea that only the High Priest could access Yahweh. It’s really no wonder that the religious leaders of that era absolutely hated him. And even many churches in this age still live like the Pharisees, bound in this stiff religion of law and condemnation. They don’t understand this level of liberation we’ve been given.
But there is another side to it. Father, may your name be kept holy. Some translations say “this be your name” instead of ‘holy is your name’. But this is gravely mistaken. Abba’s name is extremely holy, so much so that Jewish scribes started replacing his name with the word ‘Adoni’, meaning ‘Lord’, rather than risk profaning what they considered the ineffable name. It even became a crime to utter his name.
While I disagree with the scribes and Pharisees that Abba’s name cannot be uttered, we do want to recognize that it is holy, and should not be said lightly. The law says thou shalt not carry the name of Yahweh Elohiym in worthless conduct. I don’t think the point was “don’t say omg”, but rather, don’t claim to be a follower of Yahweh while living a life contrary to everything he commanded.
So we want to recognize that, and it is our obligation to keep and uphold that holiness. And see, what Yeshua is doing here, is he is setting us a contrast. Yahweh is Daddy, but Yahweh is still holy and righteous.
You are liberated from law and condemnation, but you still
need to be reverent and respectful and not go completely off the deep end into
unholy living. We keep his name holy.
You no longer live under the law, but you need to remember that your conduct is under the eyes of a holy God. So we find a perfect balance. An idea of liberation, yet in holiness.
But the principle I really want to focus on is the tenant of forgiveness, because it really seems to be the central core. Everything else wraps around it. And the interesting thing is, here we see yet another new and revolutionary idea. “Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us”
Reading scripture, forgiveness seems to be a pretty big deal.
But your iniquities have built barriers
between you and your God,
and your sins have made Him hide His face from you
so that He does not listen.
Isaiah 59:2 (Holman Standard)
Then summoning him, his lord said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your hearts.”
Matthew 18:32-35 (Legacy Standard)
This is the end of the parable where the king forgives a servant who owes him money, then that servant goes and finds somebody who owes him, and tosses him in prison. So the king delivered the evil servant “to the torturers.” And then Yeshua warns Simon Peter and the other disciples, “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your hearts.”
Our heavenly Abba will deliver His own children over to torment, will allow their hearts to be miserable, their lives to be unhappy, and their prayers to be blocked, if they don’t forgive others!
And keep in mind, when Abba forgives, he doesn’t then go and remember our sins and hold a grudge. He doesn’t forgive us but then decide to abandon us and have nothing more to do with us. No, he removes our sins from his memory, as far as the east is from the west. And if we expect our sins to be forgiven, we need to forgive others in this same way, as a true heart change, as an act of true peace.
There is a story of a farmer whose house was robbed one night, and in the robbery, his son was killed by the burglar.
A few days later, the armed robber was caught and convicted, but the farmer went to the police and asked them to release the young man into his custody.
The young robber was terrified. He thought the farmer was gonna take him somewhere in the middle of nowhere and kill him. But the farmer took him home and adopted him.
It sounds like an insane story, yet this is exactly what Abba did for us, adopting us as his children even though our sins caused Yeshua’s death. And this is the same level of forgiveness Yeshua told us to show others.
But going back to the original topic, “teach us to pray”...understand, there are not many people who know prayer like the first century Jewish people. All Jews in general, really. The Jewish religion has a prayer for everything. If you’ve seen the old movie “Fiddler on a Roof”, you get the idea. The movie follows a Jewish community in Russia, and one recurring joke in the film is where a person will approach the community Rabbi and ask “is there a blessing for the Tzar? And he responds, “but of course, there is a blessing for everything. May God bless and keep the Tzar…far away from us!”
Jews are steeped in prayer. But yet these disciples, they realized they don’t know how to truly pray. They realized their long recitations, their formal liturgies, their traditions…they didn’t work. They watched Yeshua cast out demons that he said could only be cast out through fervent prayer, and they didn’t know how to do that.
So Yeshua taught us an off-the-cuff, mix-tape prayer. And ironically, we took it and turned it into a formal liturgy. Now, there is nothing wrong with reciting liturgical prayer. There’s an entire book in the Bible, it’s the biggest one, it’s called Psalms, and it’s a whole collection of liturgical prayers.
But the Lord’s Prayer is so much more. It’s like training wheels to teach us how to spontaneously pray, off-the-cuff, intimately, out loud, whether with other people or alone.
Left to our own devices, we inherently don’t know how to pray. Left to our own devices, we feel silly, inadequate, and unable to pray, OR arrogant, ego-centric, and thinking we have no further need of growth, like the Pharisees.
Left to our own, our prayer lives become infatuated with a cacophony of politicians, media, and current news events, that drown out the voice of what our father is actually saying and doing.
Left on our own, our pride or our false humility creates a disconnect from true intimacy with Abba.
Left on our own, our prayer lives become past sentiment far too easily. I know I am guilty of this. Far too often, I’ve seen people ask for prayer, and I’ll say “Of course I’ll gladly pray.” But I write them on my prayer list, I get preoccupied with life, and I completely forget to pray.
So I’m putting a conscious effort into it. If somebody asks me to pray about something, I wanna try and pray on the spot. I’m not being super spiritual. I’m just making a conscious effort of, “I’m gonna pray for them right here and now, cuz later I’ll forget.
But at the underlying core of everything else I’ve told you, the bottom line is this.
Prayer is not about the right words, or the right pattern, or anything else. It's just you intimately communicating with your holy Abba.
Some extra verses regarding prayer. You can look them up on your own. Consider it homework. :p
James 1:6
Matthew 26:41
Mark 11:25
Matthew 6:6
Philippians 4:6-7
James 4:13-15
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