Luke 11. 1-13 with Matthew 7. 14-21; PRAYER

1. Struggling?
How many of us can say that we find prayer really easy? We never have any problems with it? We feel we are really good at it?  Note my hand is firmly down! 

Difficulties include simply things like concentration, time, staying awake; finding the right words, what to ask for. Am I being selfish? How do I know what is God's will?  How long should I keep on praying for something?  Will everyone listening think I am stupid? Will God think I am stupid?   Deeper questions include these... Can I change God's will when I pray?  Should I pray for someone's conversion or healing against their will? If God knows what we need, what is the point of praying?

And, to be honest, that all reflects in what happens when we announce there is a time of prayer. Very few of us are there.  Very few of us feel really positive about taking part.
   
The good news is that Jesus in God's word answers some if not all of these questions, or at least points us in the right direction...So let's look closer at Luke 11...

We're in good company if we feel we need to ask for help. Even the twelve, when they saw Jesus engage in prayer, realised that he hadn't chosen them because they were good at prayer: they came to ask him "Jesus, teach us how to pray..."  

2. Structure
Jesus gives a pattern and, as in so many areas of life, a simple plan is helpful. This is the shorter version of the Lord's Prayer; we don't use it often, although it's used in the Anglican and Catholic churches. This shorter version gives us the absolute basics:
a. Begin with praise: "Father, your name is and should be kept holy."
b. Others: "Your Kingdom come" - so what does God's kingdom look like in the lives of people in our world; in the lives of people in your family?

c. Pray for your own physical needs: "Give us today our daily bread."  Just the basics; the things we really need.
d. Confession: "Forgive us our sins as we forgive."  Confession means admitting something; it's about open-ness.  Confession is about facing up to the wrong things in our lives, and as we do that we need to face up to the people around us, including those who have hurt us. It's a pretty dangerous thing to say to God "Forgive me the same way I forgive ..." and then not forgive. We might not want that prayer answered!  (Forgiving does not mean we say that the wrong things others have done to us don't matter: quite the opposite. Knowing that we have been hurt, we give up our right to get even.) We need to bring our own sin to God in prayer. As we confess forgive, and ask, God forgives us. 
e. Protection: "Lead us not into temptation"
Do you notice that three of these points are about ourselves? We often think we can only  pray for other people; but it's OK to tell God about your own needs, physically and spiritually.

3. Shamelessness.
Then there's a simple, almost silly story.  A man is asleep in bed; around him in the one-roomed house are the cots and mats his children sleep on.  Suddenly the silence is broken by someone knocking the door and shouting, "Got any food? A visitor has arrived and I have nothing to give them."  The man indoors answers, "Go away, it's midnight! Don't you have any consideration? And be quiet, you'll wake the kids."  And, says Jesus, the man who asks will get what he needs, not because the he's a friends of the other man, but because of his sheer shamelessness.  It's OK to ask God for things we need. It's fine to make a disturbance. Remember blind Bartimaeus, who created a disturbance when Jesus came to Jericho, and everyone was telling him to be quiet? (Mark 10. 46-52) God doesn't mind being disturbed by our prayers.  The Greek word that's translated "boldness" in the NIV (and "importunity" in the AV) means "shamelessness"; literally a "lack of looking at the floor." 

Our prayer life suffers by turns from a lack of respect, awe and wonder -  a failure to be aware of the majesty and greatness and authority of the God to whom we pray.  Sometimes we pray a bit like the man who came to the disciples seeking healing for his wee boy in Mark 9. 22, who eventually says to Jesus "help us if you possibly can."  True reverence says, "Father in Heaven, you are who you are, sovereign and awesome in your power. Can you fix this? Yes you can!"  But there's a false reverence that says, "Lord, I'm not going to ask you do anything for me; you've got enough to do looking after the rest of the universe.  Who am I to tell you what to do about this lost person, this illness, this threat to your Church?" Actually, when we are shameless scroungers, prepared to admit we're completely stuck, and ask God to help us out, he delights to answer. 

There's one proviso here though: the man who asks so shamelessly, wants to get to give.  He isn't looking for bread for himself; he is looking for bread for his visitor.  Eastern hospitality is even more outgoing than Scottish hospitality.  Think of the first time you were offered a cup of tea on the opposite side of the border.  If you went from Scotland to England, and someone offered you a cup of tea, you were kind of surprised when you were handed exactly that: a cup of tea; maybe accompanied by a rich tea biscuit. On the other hand, if you crossed the border in the opposite direction, and accepted the offer of a cup of tea, especially a wee cup of tea, you better not be in a diet.    But Eastern hospitality was even more extreme. It wasn't uncommon for guests to show up in the middle of the night (they would start a journey just before sundown to travel in the cool). And when they did show up you'd give them a place to sleep, and something to eat and drink. It was a necessity and an expression of generosity.  To be caught out and be unable to provide for a friend on a journey was a terrible shame and disgrace.  Jesus wants us to ask. Especially when we want to get so we can give.  

4. Simplicity.

Ask and you will receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened. We ask for what we don't have. We seek - look for - what we have lost; we knock when we are shut out .  And when we ask, seek knock, we receive, we find, the door opens.  Now the normal preacher's ploy at this point is to get out the old traffic lights illustration and say how God sometimes answers "yes", sometimes answers, "Wait" and sometimes answers "no!"  And there is a truth there. But that is not the truth to draw out of these words.  The truth to draw out of these words is that we should ask expecting to be given, seek expecting to find, and to knock, expecting the door to open. Jesus wants us to raise, not lower our expectancy of answered prayer.  We have no business taking the words of Jesus and directly contradicting them with our theology. We can begin to wrestle with the problem of unanswered prayer, when we have lived under the authority of these words, and not before. Jesus has promised. We accept with simplicity that come with....

5. Sonship:

Fathers would not give their children nasty surprises, like a snake instead of a fish, or an egg instead of a scorpion. How much more, he says, will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit - "the best gift of all" according to the Fisherfolk song - to those who call on him?  The key word is "Father".  If we can get that truth into our thick skulls, maybe we can begin to deal with our struggles around this prayer thing.  Prayer can be simple, because God is our heavenly father.  Prayer is an expression of trust as we ask our heavenly father.  It's good to be unashamed in asking for what we need, because we come to our heavenly father.  Does prayer change God's mind?  Can our prayer change the free will of another human being?  Actually it's not the point.  Our Father wants us to pray.  And as we pray, we participate in the work of God, rather than getting God to participate in our work.  As we pray, in the simple, shameless cries of his bairns, a subtle change in the spiritual atmosphere begins to happen, and God is at work, the kingdom comes, his will is done.   That's the mustard seed of faith, that can move our Scottish mountains. In Matthew, the parable of the mustard seed comes at the end of the story of the epileptic boy. When we pray we can set people free; and we can move mountains.

© Gilmour Lilly October 2010