Luke 11:1-10
1 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.”
2 He said to them, “When you pray, say:
“‘Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.’”5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
9 “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. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Prayer Is a Privilege
So, I warned you that during this new worship series I’d be leaning on you for some more interaction during these sermon/Bible study hybrids. Well, I want to hear your voices right away. I have a bit of a quiz for you: Name that Emoji! I’m going to show you 4 hand-themed emojis and I want you to tell me what they mean. If you sent this in a text message, what would you be trying to communicate?
Here’s your first one:
What does this emoji mean? “Hi.”
How about this one:
“Love”
And this one?
“OK”
And here’s the last one, which can be a little tricky:
“Prayer” Now, there’s some controversy about whether this is supposed to be prayer, or a high five, but I can send you the definitive, scholarly articles debunking the whole high five myth. This is the emoji for prayer. If you were to send this emoji to your friends – whether they’re Christian or not – chances are that they would immediately understand what this is.
That’s the interesting thing about prayer. It’s ubiquitous; it’s everywhere. People of just about every culture and background may not be able to write a dictionary definition for prayer, but they would be able to recognize it when they see it. Now, they may need some explanation, information, guidance, but even in our increasingly post-Christian world, prayer is still pretty common knowledge; and even in thoroughly Christian circles explanation, information and guidance are still very much needed.
We heard it a moment ago in Luke’s Gospel:
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.”[1]
Even Jesus’ own disciples – his inner circle – needed explanation, information and guidance for prayer, and so do we. That’s why for the next 9 weeks our focus in worship will not only be prayer in general, but the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray.
I gave you some sermon notes pages. If you grabbed a bulletin, there was one inside. If you didn’t grab a bulletin, they were still available to you from our service team today. We’ll use these as the basic outline for our conversation today (and throughout this series), and you can see that the first question on the page is a simple one: What is prayer?
Let’s read a few Bible passages that describe prayer before we try to define it:
May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.[2]
Have you ever noticed that at the start of every single worship service, while the bells are still ringing, I stop and pause and face the altar for a minute? I’m praying these words from Psalm 19. It’s a good way for any of us to approach a worship service. How does King David describe prayer here in Psalm 19?
It can be something spoken or just thought in your mind or felt in your heart.
How about another Psalm of David?
Trust in God at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.[3]
How does David describe prayer here?
It’s a pouring out of the heart. Prayer is pouring out our soul to God. If we have fears, concerns, worries, we can unload them on God. If we have joy and happiness and gratitude in our hearts, we can raise them up to the Lord. Whatever we are thinking or feeling we can communicate to our God in prayer.
Which leads us to the dictionary definition you would find in the back of your Small Catechism:
Prayer is an act of worship in which we speak to God from our hearts.
It’s a simple thing, right? Prayer is the way that we talk to God. But there’s a whole lot more to prayer than just blurting out your unfiltered thoughts to the Lord. Prayer is a command God gives us. He says:
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and faithful.[4]
How should we approach prayer? With devotion and diligence and faithfulness. Prayer is not something God wants us to do willy-nilly, whenever we feel like it or remember to. He commands us to be devoted and watchful and faithful, to make it a regular practice we do intentionally and purposefully.
Or how about what Samuel says:
“As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you.”[5]
What would Samuel call a failure to pray? A sin. Prayer is a command of God, not to be taken lightly but to be obeyed.
And yet, that command is not burdensome. It’s a privilege and a joy, a gracious invitation from our God:
Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.[6]
Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.[7]
What does God invite you to do with prayer? To turn to him in time of need, to unburden yourself from your cares and worries, to rely on him to get you through your most challenging moments in life.
Yes, prayer is “speaking to God from the heart.” But it’s more than that. It’s a command of God we are meant to faithfully obey, and an invitation we gratefully accept because of the promises God makes us.
I’m going to read a series of passages for you now, and, as you can see on your sermon notes page, we can think of them from both a negative and a positive perspective. As I read them, I want you to think about how you can fill in these blanks, but not only that. I also want you to think about why these passages give you confidence to pray to God at all:
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.[8]
God never _ignores us_. God always _hears us_.
Now why would that promise give you confidence to pray to God? Because in prayer, you’re not talking to a brick wall. You’re not voicing your fears to the void. You have an audience who wants to hear from you and promises to hear you.
God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?[9]
God never _lies_. God always _keeps his promises_.
Why would this promise give you confidence to pray to God? Because he’s trustworthy. You can count on him to tell the truth and you can rely on him to keep his promises. He’s not a hypocrite like we can often be. He doesn’t make promises he doesn’t or can’t keep. He’s steadfast and dependable.
“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 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 good gifts to those who ask him!”[10]
God never _withholds good from us_. God always _gives good gifts_.
Why would this promise give you confidence to pray to God? He’s so much more than just a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen. He can actually do something for you, and what he does for you is always good.
That’s why we should pray to God! He always hears us, always keeps his promises, always gives us good things. That’s why we should pray to God.
But now for a harder question. Why should God listen to us?
The short answer is, he shouldn’t. Consider Isaiah’s warning in chapter 59:
Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.[11]
What could prevent God from hearing our prayers? Our sin. It’s not an inability on God’s part or a failure to hear. He’s not the one to blame when our prayers are not heard. We are. It’s our iniquities that separate us from God. It’s our sins that hide his face from us.
This is where it gets real. Prayer is meant to be a really happy thing – a lifeline with the Lord – but our sin can sever that cord. Isaiah even warns people who persist in their sin:
“When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening.”[12]
Is there a sin you persist in? Have you gotten so addicted to a substance or a secret habit that the moment your eyes see it or your lips taste it you feel powerless to do anything but disobey God? Have you given up trying to live life by God’s rules and just given in to whatever feels right in the moment? Have you made choices that have consequences that make you feel uncomfortable to be around certain people because of what you’ve said or done (or haven’t said, or haven’t done)?
Prayer is supposed to be a beautiful thing that keeps us connected to God throughout every moment of our lives, and yet our sin threatens to muddy it all up and separate us from our God forever.
And yet, God still commands and invites even sinners like us to pray to him. God had every right to turn his face from us forever, and yet his ears are still attentive to our prayers – not because of us, but because of him, as Daniel prayed in Chapter 9:
Give ear, our God, and hear; open your eyes and see… We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, my God, do not delay.[13]
What did Daniel appeal to when he prayed to God? God’s mercy and love to forgive. And forgiveness is exactly what God sent Jesus to give us. Even though our sin separated us from him, he bridged the gap and spanned the gulf that our sin created, through his sinless Son Jesus Christ. God sent Jesus to be our Saviour, to give his life as a ransom for our sin, to wash all our sin away forever. Through Jesus, God promises you:
In him we have redemption through his blood. The forgiveness of sins.[14]
In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.[15]
Our sins would have separated us from God forever… had it not been for Jesus, for the sacrifice he made for us on the cross, for the forgiveness he won for us through his blood. That’s mercy. That’s grace. That’s the reason you can be sure that God does listen to your prayers, despite your many sins, because God’s love for you is greater than your sin, and he wants you to be reconciled to him.
That’s one of the reasons why God invites you to pray in the first place, so that you can say with David and the many generations of sinners who have prayed before you:
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.[16]
What was David appealing to when he asked God to cleanse him from his sin? His mercy and unfailing love and great compassion. That’s what you can appeal to as well. That’s the reason you can be sure that God does listen to your prayers, because he loves you and has forgiven you, because your God is merciful and gracious and compassionate.
Why should God listen to our prayers? He shouldn’t, but he does because he loves you.
So, because God loves you, because he commands and invites you to pray, because he makes all these promises about prayer, how should we pray? Let’s take one last look at Luke’s Gospel today. Jesus tells a parable about one friend going to another friend at an ungodly hour of the night to ask for 3 loaves of bread for a guest popped in. The guy with the bread doesn’t sound thrilled at the prospect, but then Jesus says:
I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.[17]
In other words, even if your friendship isn’t strong enough to get your buddy out of bed, your boldness will. The good news is, God loves you even more than your best friend does and God’s love for you would cause him to leap out of bed for you at the first knock on his door. But as Jesus says later, you still have to knock:
“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.”[18]
Jesus wants you to be shamelessly audacious in your prayer life. Shameless – not that you have nothing to be ashamed of. There are going to be plenty of situations in your life that you need God’s help with that are entirely your fault, situations in which you have every reason to be ashamed. But you should never be too ashamed to ask, because you know who you’re asking, i.e. your compassionate and gracious God who loves you and forgives you and promises to bless you.
Jesus invites you to be audacious in your prayer life – don’t be afraid to ask God for anything, big or small, whether you think you deserve it or not. That’s for him to decide. But you can ask. Jesus gives you that permission and invitation.
Prayer is a privilege. It’s a precious gift from God, a lifeline with the Lord, a constant source of communication with your compassionate God. Don’t take it for granted. Obey God’s command. Accept his invitation. Pray with devotion and faith in your heart to the God who promises to hear and answer you according to his good will.
I mean it! Right now! There’s a space on your sermon notes page. Write your prayer there. There’s a space in our service right now. Pray for anything with shameless audacity to the God who promises to hear and answer you according to his good will. Amen.
[1] Luke 11:1
[2] Psalm 19:14
[3] Psalm 62:8
[4] Colossians 4:2
[5] 1 Samuel 12:23
[6] Psalm 50:15
[7] 1 Peter 5:7
[8] 1 John 5:14
[9] Numbers 23:19
[10] Matthew 7:9-11
[11] Isaiah 59:2
[12] Isaiah 1:15
[13] Daniel 9:18,19
[14] Ephesians 1:7
[15] Galatians 3:26
[16] Psalm 51:1,2
[17] Luke 11:8
[18] Luke 11:9