Teach us...

I visited my place of birth not long ago. People who knew me growing up asked a lot of questions about how I’ve been, what I’ve been up to, how good I look and all that, but an old friend asked me a question not like every other asked – “how's your prayer life?" I realized that this old friend had a real desire to know how my prayer life was, so I was hemming and hawing because no one had asked me that in years, and I was not sure what the answer was. If you are like me, you might be tempted to tell the truth and answer that question with a word or phrase like one of these: shallow, empty, quick, boring, struggling, rare, confusing, or sometimes I pray and sometimes I do not, but when I do it's always, "God, help!”

If any of the above words or phrases seem to describe your life of prayer, I want to remind you that as you grow in a relationship with Jesus Christ, you hunger more and more to understand what it means to pray. The disciples of the Lord Jesus had that hunger. They saw the need to pray to God, but after watching the life of Jesus, they became aware that there was something very seriously missing in their own concept of prayer. Luke 11:1-4:

“…when you pray, say:
'Father, hallowed be Thy name.
'Thy kingdom come.
'Give us each day our daily bread.
'And forgive us our sins,
For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.'"

Almost all of our prayers begin by rushing into a series of request in which we pour out to God our problems, our needs, our irritations. This only tends to reinforce the focus of our attention on what our troubles are and in our inability to remedy it. It could be that is at least part of the problem of why we are more depressed and frustrated after we pray than before. When we have finished praying, we can scarcely bring ourselves to believe that our feeble words could have been heard, or that they could have made a difference in the things concerning which we have been praying. We have said our prayers but we have not prayed.

The disciples had grown up under the teaching of the Pharisees. They watched them pray three times a day after the model of Daniel (6:10) but they were also reminded by the Lord: "When you pray, you are not to be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, in order to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full." (Matt 6:5.) Some of the disciples had been with John the Baptist, and he had taught them to pray before he sent them to follow Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. They had seen the Pharisees and John the Baptist pray, and now they saw Jesus praying. That is why one the disciples on behalf of all of them said to Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray." It was not so much that the disciples wanted to learn a method of praying as that they wanted to understand the secret of the Lord's life and why he was always praying. For as they watched the life of Jesus, they became aware that He spent much time in prayer, and as a result he gained strength, courage, wisdom and power to overcome the evil one and to bring new life to many around him.

"True prayer is an awareness of our own helpless need and an acknowledgment of divine adequacy. For Jesus, prayer was as necessary as breathing, the very breath of life itself." The effective prayer is not measured by how loud you pray, or how long you pray, or even if you say the words of the Lord’s Prayer again and again in a repetitious fashion. Your prayer life will be effective it you are sincere (your approach) and if you ask for the right things (what you say).

The Lord offered his disciples a model of prayer rather than a model prayer. There is a big difference; one is a framework in which to approach God, and the other is a prayer we pray over and over as on a Tibetan prayer wheel. In the latter case, you lose heart in it; you just spin the wheel and pray automatically. However, within this model of prayer our Lord gave the disciples five spiritual insights into the secret of prayer in their daily lives. These insights will also help us in our daily prayer lives with our heavenly Father.

Are you willing to say, "Lord, teach me to pray?" If so, then...