Luke 11:1-113 - A sermon preached at St. Columba's Parish Church Knock
Heavenly father, take my words and speak through them, take our minds and think through them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. In jesus Name we pray – Amen.
The Lord's Prayer
In tonight's gospel reading we have heard how Jesus went about teaching by his example as well as by his words. His life modelled his prayer. Take a look at the scene from where we get the Lords prayer. The disciples saw jesus praying and they said teach us to pray.
These men were Jews, they knew the Jewish customs but what Jesus was doing was sufficently different that they wanted to be a part of it, they desired to know more about what prayer was and how to pray more effectively. Jesus was praying more intimately, doing things differently than they had ever heard or seen before.
A praying people.
The topic of prayer … I wonder what you think of prayer …
Is it something you do only in church, only when the minister comes round, is it grace at meal times , as you pray for a parking space, or in a difficult time. Or maybe you are an avid prayer-er.
As we look at the topic of prayer questions may well arise in us
Natural questions – issues around Unanswered prayer, does God really listen to prayer?, how do I know if prayer really works?
I'm not sure if you have ever seen Bruce Almighty, it is a comedy movie staring Jim Carey whose character gets empowered with the powers of God and has to do what God does. He one evening begins to hear the voices of people praying and decides to put them onto postit notes which fills the room, then decides to get all the prayers delivered as email messages to his inbox with millions of requests coming in he decides to answer all the requests yes.- millions of people win the lottery, the place goes to pieces.
Does God really hear us when we pray … the simple answer is Yes. We believe in God who is a personal and relational God who created us all uniquely and who wants a relationship with you and me. The way this relationship is built up is through prayer, through Bible study and through living out what he commands us to do.
In this passage we see Jesus teaching on prayer – The disciples were learners they were ready to ask Jesus the questions which might sound a bit crazy to us. How often have we seen someone doing something but afraid to ask them what they were doing and why? The disciples did not have this reservation – they were open to asking why and how?
The disciple comes up and asks Jesus to teach them how to pray.
Jesus gives them an outlined structure: which we have become familiar with as the Lord's prayer
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.’
Within those 6 lines you have everything you need as an outline for what to pray
Addressed to the father, The prayer is not mere empty words but always active
Hallowed be your name – Honoring and glorifying God's name
Your kingdom come ... do we really mean that? That's a really really big statement which is praying that God's rule, his laws, his ways would be the norm – revolutionary.
Our daily bread – Praying for our needs day in, day out. Asking for this afresh every morning.
Forgive us our sins ... we pray for this every sunday and recieve assurance of us that our sins are forgiven.
But then we are also called not to be forgiven but also to be the forgivers. This might be a difficulty in certain circumstances but it is a gospel imperitive that we should be forgiving each other
and lead us from the time of trial.
The Lords prayer as we have it today is an extremely challenging prayer. We do learn it off rote and many can say it without really thinking about it – It is our example prayer. But we must remember the context that it was taught in. Lord Teach us to pray.
One author has described the Lord's prayer extremely comprehensively as
Whether we want to begin to learn to pray or to go deeper in prayer, there is no greater resource than this. In its simplicity, it is a truly universal prayer, capable of being understood by the youngest. In its profundity, it is a prayer, capable of inexhaustible depths. In its sparse poetry, it is a prayer of great beauty, without a single word or phrase that is superficial or surplus to requirements. The prayer of the master is the unsurpassabble prayer of prayers, the everest of Christian spirituality... It is the prayer of all times and every person. From the towering heights of Manhattan to the mud huts of a primitive tribe, from the youngest children with the power of speech to the great grandparents on their death bed, the timeless words of Jesus express more richly than any others the longings, hopes and fears of men and women before the living God
What do we believe about prayer
Firstly Prayer is fundalmental to Christian Life
Over the centuries many have written much about prayer but as we look at what Jesus said about prayer.
It is personal – In Matthew's gospel we are called to not to worry but to pray, to go into our rooms, shut the door and pray to God in private. Being Fundalmental to our personal Christian life – If we are not praying, it is very difficult to Grow as a christian.
It is corporate – At each church service we have various prayers, each of which have a purpose. As you look through the various prayers in our prayer book we typically have
Prayer of confession – This is an individual prayer which each makes for themselves – saying that we have sinned and we turn from those sins.
Prayer of praise – We pray through the psalms – which are ancient prayers of all types.
Prayers of intercession – We pray for a wealth of different people / issues at each of our services.
As Christians – prayer is fundalmental to our christian life both individually and corporately as a church.
Secondly Prayer changes things
This we need to believe – if we don't it will be very difficult to pray.
Sometimes it can be very difficult when we pray for a sick person to be made well and then their condition worsens or even the person dies. We pray for good exam results but then we fail. Situations like this do make us question whether God is there or not.
Around the world at the moment there is a movement which is aiming to have prayer twenty- four hours a day and 7 days a week. This movement has seen some absolutely amazing answers to prayer over the last number of years – it is dependant upon people committed to coming into church for an hour and praying. Simply praying.
Places I have seen prayer change things have been in schools, workplaces, churches when groups as small as 2-3 get together and pray & read the Bible together, pray for each other and for the needs of that place. People who pray together share their faith with others.
When we pray we can simply sitdown and pray in silence, speak our prayers out. One way I have found very effective is to write my prayers out in a notebook. Especially at times of big things . If we enjoy art, painting is another way I know friends find helpful when praying.
We are quite good at praying out prayers but also it is important to encourage each other when prayers are answered to praise God. Praying for someone to be healed, to come through surgery when they do let's praise God that he is a faithful God and does answer that prayer.
Finally prayer needs worked at.
Prayer is not easy, it is not natural to us.
As we grow up, we are taught that we need to do things in our own strength. In our modern world we are materialistic in our outlook, we are very good at getting things done ourselves. Prayer is probably the last thing many of us would turn to except in extreme conditions. Holding our hands up and saying O God, help me is usually a cry of surrender at the end of our thether. But I wonder if we were to dream for a moment and surrender everything to God at the start of the day, how would our outlook be changed.
I know I don't know everything there is to know about prayer, I don't know why God answers one prayer with a yes and another seems to be a no except to say that he is soverign and has a plan for each of us but from experiences I have had I know God does answer prayer in the most amazing way.
It is not natural in our understanding of the world but on the other hand we are created to have a relationship with God and therefore paradoxically prayer should be the most natural of actions we do. As natural as breathing.
So to recap –
prayer is fundalmental to our Christian life
Prayer does changes things
Prayer needs worked on.
The challenge this evening to us is to allow our prayer life to grow.
Where can we fit prayer into our weekly routine?,
what could we ask for prayer for?
What do we find difficult about prayer?
We are called to be a praying people – a daily praying people. Are we expectant that God will aswer our prayers?
If we are looking to grow as Christians we need to feed our minds on Scripture daily, we need to be a praying people.
Prayer is one of the areas of the Christian faith I am passionate about as I have seen it change so many people's relationship with God. From being stale to being vibrant, I know I don't have all the answers but I do know that as we take our issues to God in prayer he is faithful and does answer.
It is my prayer that we would explore the riches of the prayer and integrate it into our daily lives. I am still learning and hopefully will never stop learning what it means to be a praying person and as we become praying people I pray that we would continue to grow as praying congregation.
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