Prayer
Prayer buoys our lives especially when we are faced with troubles. So it is something that we want to know more about. Teaching about prayer is challenging. On one hand, prayer is very simple, but on the other, we can never reach the depth and breadth of prayer.
The more we learn and understand, the more we realize that we need to know and grow more in prayer. Prayer is tempered by the truth that we see in Scripture, especially as we see Jesus in his practice of prayer.
Prayer, as we learn, is not a “genie” in a bottle. No matter how righteous our prayers may be, God is working on His own timeline. Sometimes his answer may be “no” or “not yet” and He does say “yes” if it accords with His will.
The gospels tells us about how important prayer was to Jesus. That must have impressed His disciples as they asked Him to teach them to pray. Now they were all raised in faith and believed in God. They learned to pray as they grew up. But something that they saw in Jesus made them desire to learn more.
Jesus gave them a “model” prayer. It was not meant to be simply repeated, although we may. It was meant to serve as a basic outline for their prayers—as well as ours.
Jesus told them to recognize God, to submit to Him, and know that He is holy. Then he wants us to desire that God’s kingdom be in our lives and to carry out God’s will in all our lives. But He asks us to be accountable for our sins. As we seek to maintain a relationship with God, we must seek forgiveness and extend forgiveness to others.
This model prayer places our lives in our God’s hands, submitting to Him in trust, being accountable to him, and seeking His help in delivering us from temptation.
After Jesus gave this model, He continued His teaching about prayer. He expands the model prayer by teaching on persistence and boldness (Luke 11:5–8). As a child asks his or her parents for the desires, we should also let our desires be known to God. In this story the neighbor is bold and is persistent, but this is not to wear God down, it is more of a test for us!
Then Jesus teaches about how good God is (Luke 11:11-13). If earthly parent know how to treat ...
