“How Long to Pray” (Luke 11:1-13), February 15, 2009

The requests Jesus teaches us to make are not of the kind that would EVER, in this life, cross off your prayer list and say, “God answered that one.  Praise the Lord.  I can stop praying for that.”

Curling iron

Last year I preached a series of sermons on “clichés you can’t trust.”  Here is one I want to add to the list:  “Find what works for you.”  That cliché is especially untrustworthy on the subject of prayer.

Clichés, as we said last year, usually have an element of truth.  That’s why they are common.  But they don’t tell the whole truth, and sometimes mislead.  So it is with “Find what works for you.”

Let me illustrate with exercise.  For the past 7 weeks, I have been getting up at 5 AM on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to join a small group of men for exercise in the Abernethy Student Center at 5:45.  “Small group” – “5:45 AM” – no mystery there, right?

Having never been much of an extreme fitness buff myself, I asked David Washco to choose the exercise program we would use.  He chose P90X.  I had never heard of it, but I showed up.  Most of the guys are in their 30s and 40s, then there’s me (50s).  Neil Forrest might be a little older than I am.

The web site for this program gives you a little hint of where it’s going.  www.beachbody.com.  I not only don’t have a beach body, I don’t even want to have a beach body.  I just want to have some accountability with some other guys to make sure I exercise.

Neil and I were in for a bit of a shock on Day 1, and the shock has continued pretty much every day we showed up.  Do you know how P90X attempts to build “beach body” biceps?  With curls.  Do you know what curls are?  We’re not talking hair rollers here.

So, we non-beach-body people think, “That’s OK, I can do a few curls.  I’ve done that before.  They have machines for that at the Y.  I have done curls.  Sure.”

That’s not the P90X way.  The last three Wednesday mornings, we’ve done more varieties of curls than I knew existed – twenty-ones, one-arm cross body curls, standing bicep curls, one-arm concentration curls, open arm curls, static arm curls, crouching cohen curls, one-arm corkscrew curls, curl-up hammer downs, hammer curls, in-out hammer curls, and strip-set curls.

Do you think that “works for me?”  It depends on what you mean.  When I hear, “what works,” does that mean I measure my biceps before and after each session to see if there is visible change?  When I hear, “do what works for you,” does that mean “do what’s comfortable, do what you enjoy, do what will keep you doing more”?

I have not measured my biceps.  I do not enjoy doing 15 sets of curls in an hour.  (I did not mention the varieties of pull-ups mixed in there.)  But will it “work for me” in terms of meeting my fitness goals?  I don’t even know that.  The only way I can find out is if I persevere.  Exercise is more about endurance – because I know it’s the right thing to do – than about what “works for me.”

The basics

In Luke 11:1, Jesus’ disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray.”  In response, Jesus notably did NOT say, “Do what works for you.”  He did talk about endurance.

There is something else he did not say.  Most of our prayers are in two categories – thanks and specific petitions.  Giving thanks for what God has done, and making explicit requests for God to change or improve things for ourselves and others.

Without suggesting either of those is a wrong way to pray, don’t you find it interesting that when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, he says nothing about giving thanks, and nothing about making requests for God to heal the sick, to give wisdom for decisions, to help us accomplish our goals, to make life easier, etc.?

Jesus doesn’t say a lot about results in prayer (though he does say a little).  He does say a lot about endurance.

The requests Jesus teaches us to make are not of the kind that would EVER, in this life, cross off your prayer list and say, “God answered that one.  Praise the Lord.  I can stop praying for that.”

Father, hallowed be your name.  The way I read it, this is not really an act of adoration and praise.  It is a request.  But it’s not a request for God to do anything for me.  It’s a request for God to do something for God.  “Let your name be holy, set apart, reverenced, held in awe.  Father, let the whole world know your uniqueness.”

Your kingdom come.  This is an extension of the first petition.  It is a request that God extend his own rule over all the earth.  The implication seems to imply a sense of urgency, but that’s not stated.  It is an expressed longing that God would take charge of the world.

Give us each day our daily bread.  Few of us have to pray literally for just a little something to eat every day, so most of the time this becomes for us a thank-you prayer (that I do have daily bread) or an intercessory prayer for those who have no bread.  But perhaps Jesus is wanting to model for us that it is all right to bring our daily needs to God.

And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.  There is a humility expressed in both parts of this petition – an awareness of our own sins as well as the humility to extend grace to others.  Jesus also teaches us that every request for our own forgiveness should remind us of our need to forgive others.

And lead us not into temptation.  This request is for spiritual protection and help.  It doesn’t seem that God would deliberately lead us to temptation.  On the other hand, great men and women of the Bible were tested by God, including Jesus himself.

Jesus teaches us to pray the kinds of prayers that never get answered.  Why?  Let me come back to that in a moment.

Where is the rest?

If you are used to saying the Lord’s Prayer in a church service or in your private devotions, you may be asking, “Where is the rest of it?”

There are two versions of the Lord’s Prayer in the gospels – this one in Luke and a longer one in Matthew.  Perhaps different followers of Jesus simply remembered and recorded his words in a slightly different way.  More likely, in my view, Jesus taught the “model prayer” on many occasions.  The point is not that God only hears us when we pray certain words.  It is more like one of my Bible study groups termed a “pilot’s checklist” – reminders of key areas to pray.

But even Matthew’s version is a little different than what we say most commonly in church.  And some churches use “trespasses” instead of “debts.”  The reason for this is that very early the church  began to make use of this model prayer in corporate worship.  When they did, it seemed to need a little closure, so they added, “Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever.  Amen.”  That ending even made its way into some early copies of the New Testament.  A scribe thought, “Wait, something’s missing from the prayer I usually say in church,” and inserted the phrase into the text.

Whichever version you use, there are some important lessons that emerge from the Lord’s Prayer.  One is the KISS principle – keep it simple.  A second is that learning and repeating the Lord’s Prayer is helpful to get the pattern into our heads.  Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t concentrate on every word, if it becomes rote.  There is still value in repeating the Lord’s prayer because of the imprint into your mind and heart about what prayer is.

Keep on

Let’s return to that earlier point that Jesus is teaching us to pray the prayers that never get crossed off the list.  All will not hallow God’s name.  His kingdom will still be future as long as we’re praying.  Even if he provides for this day’s needs (bread), you will have more needs tomorrow.  You will again need forgiveness.  You will again need protection in times of testing.

This fact is why Jesus follows his model prayer with a teaching about persistence.  His illustration is of a man bedded down with his family.  William Barclay says the typical peasant home in Jesus’ time would have been a small, one-room structure with a single door and window.  The floor was packed dirt, with a low platform on one end where the family slept.  On that platform might be a charcoal fire to keep the family warm.  They slept on mats close together for warmth, and often their livestock, chickens, and goats were inside as well.

In Jesus’ story (vv. 5-8), a man has his family down for the night and at midnight his friend shows up and calls in through the window, “I have an unexpected guest and I don’t have enough bread.  Do you have some extra?”

The first response is what?  “Shhhh!  You’ll wake the kids.  I can’t get up.  The chickens will crow, the goats will bleat, the baby will cry.  Leave us alone.”  But if his friend is persistent, the man will get up because the conversation itself will have the same effect.

Why does Jesus tell this story?  Not to make the point that God is reluctant to answer our prayers, but to reinforce the need for persistent prayer.

The point is reinforced in the next section (vv. 9-10), where the Amplified Bible probably has the best translation of the present tense verbs –

So I say to you, Ask and keep on asking and it shall be given you; seek and keep on seeking and you shall find; knock and keep on knocking and the door shall be opened to you.

For everyone who asks and keeps on asking receives; and he who seeks and keeps on seeking finds; and to him who knocks and keeps on knocking, the door shall be opened.

There is your promise of results.  But the results are not guaranteed in any time frame, and you may need to keep on praying until you die.  “Lord, let your kingdom come.  Forgive my sins.  Keep me from temptation.”

Dependence and trust

Then why pray?  That’s the final section of Jesus’ teaching.  It’s about your relationship with the Father.  That’s why Jesus prayed.  That is why Jesus begins this prayer with the simple address, “Father….”  No sermon on prayer can – or should – tell you how to make your prayers “work” – in the sense of getting clearer, faster, better answers.  Prayer works when it reinforces dependence and trust.

Jesus says,

If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing—you’re at least decent to your own children. And don’t you think the Father who conceived you in love will give the Holy Spirit when you ask him? (vv. 11-13, The Message)

The main reason you pray is because you need God.  The primary attitude to bring into prayer is trust:  “Father, I don’t know what to do, I can’t solve the world’s problems, I can’t take care of my own.  But you are God, and you are love, and I am yours.  I don’t come to give you instructions on what needs to happen.  I come saying, ‘Daddy, I need you.’”

How long?

So how long should you pray?  How long do you keep asking God to change the world, to meet your needs?

Let me ask you this.  How long will you need to keep exercising?  Until you die.  Whether you see change or whether you don’t.  Whether you feel like it or you don’t.  Whether it works for you or it doesn’t.

Don’t quit.  Never give up.  Keep asking. Keep trusting.  Amen.

(© 2009 by Robert M. Thompson.  Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures quoted are from The Holy Bible,
New International Version, Copyright 1978 by New York International Bible Society.)