Romans 8:26 ESV “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”
James 5:16 ESV “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
Philippians 4:6 ESV “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
Matthew 6:6 ESV “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
1 Thessalonians 5:17 ESV “Pray without ceasing”
The 4th reality of Experiencing God is: “God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways.[i]
During this next quarter, we’re going to be focusing on prayer, the importance of prayer, how to pray, and experiencing God through prayer.
Most, if not all of us, are familiar with The Lord’s Prayer. We can say it from memory and, quite honestly, many of us have been in church services where that’s exactly what we’ve done. We’ve recited it much like we have the Pledge of Allegiance. The Lord’s Prayer can end up sounding like a string of words that may be considered a “canned” prayer in which there is no emotion, worship, or effort. It’s a lot like our “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food” and “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayers.
Are those meaningful and effective prayers? Truthfully, probably not.
Jesus teaches The Lord’s Prayer twice in scripture. The first is found in Matthew 6, the Sermon on the Mount.
Matthew 6:9-13 ESV
“9 Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.”
Let me guess what you’re thinking. “Diane, you left off the last line!” Actually, I didn’t. We’ll get to that shortly.
The second time The Lord’s Prayer is found in Luke 11. Jesus is with His disciples who asks for help in praying. Notice that Jesus doesn’t reprimand the disciple or roll His eyes because the disciple doesn’t know how to pray.
“Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 And he said to them, “When you pray, say:
“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread,
4 and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.” (Luke 11:1 ESV)
Here are a few things you may or may not know about these two pieces of Scripture.
They’re different. I purposefully used the ESV translation for both so that the comparison would be fair. Some of the differences are “Our Father in Heaven” versus simply “Father”. In the Sermon on the Mount, the phrase “Your kingdom comes” continues with “Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” That second phrase was not used in Jesus’ response to His disciples.
Forgive us our “debts” versus Forgive us our “sins”.
The next line is also different. “As we also have forgiven our debtors” versus “for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us”.
The phrase “deliver us from evil” is only found in Matthew.
So let’s talk about that mysteriously missing last line. “For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever” is not found in the earliest Greek transcripts which may indicate that it was not originally included in the Sermon on the Mount, but rather, added later as a doxology. The King James Version does include it and whenever I doubt a translation, I lean towards the KJV. This is one of those issues that there’s no easy answer. The phrase is certainly scripturally sound and whether or not it was originally said shouldn’t be an issue.
The prayer, in both scriptures begins with addressing God. They both contain petitions. The first few petitions focus on God’s glory, while the remaining are more focused on our basic needs.
This pattern, if you will, is not random. Jesus gives us the template with which we base our prayers. We acknowledge God and His authority, His power, and His glory before we lift up our requests.
It’s worship before wants.
Worship
before
wants
Another interesting thing to consider is that The Lord’s Prayer is somewhat of a universal prayer that many different denominations use in their worship. Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and other Protestants recite it as do Catholics and Lutherans.[ii] There are slight variations, but The Lord’s Prayer being widely used provides a bridge for diverse worship services. If you’ve ever been to a Catholic ceremony, you would have experienced different rituals than what we are accustomed to in the Baptist church. But the Lord’s Prayer is a part of their service that would be familiar.
Take a look at the pronouns used in the Lord’s Prayer. Words such as “our”, “us”, and “we” are used instead of “me” or “I”. The usage of plural pronouns rather than singular pronouns would seem to be a nuance to corporate worship or a community of believers. Why is that significant? We are to pray for one another and not just focus on what we want as individuals. We are to pray as part of the body of Christ.
The structure of the Lord’s Prayer is recognizing God as our Father, acknowledging His sovereignty, our dependence on Him, the importance of forgiveness, and the reality of spiritual warfare.
So, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.
Why do you pray?
-communication with God
-asking for forgiveness
-making requests for ourselves/others
-asking for guidance
-worshipping
-thanking Him
A survey was conducted in 2020 about prayer. “In a typical week, two out of three American adults (66%) pray at least once. Another one out of ten adults (10%) prays at least once a month. Only one out of seven (15%) said they never pray, making prayer the nation’s most widely practiced religious activity.”
“Among the seven out of ten American adults who consider themselves to be Christian, three out of four (76%) believe that God hears prayers. However, there is a range of ideas concerning how God responds to the prayers He hears.
A plurality of self-identified Christians (39%) believe that He hears all prayers and answers each one, although sometimes the answer is “no”
One out of five self-identified Christians (20%) argue that He hears all prayers but carries out His will, regardless of those prayers
One out of every nine self-identified Christians (11%) says God hears all prayers but only answers those from people who are truly committed to Him
Just 6% of self-identified Christians contend that God only answers a prayer if many people pray it, or it has been prayed consistently for a long time
A surprisingly large share of people who pray (14%) admitted that they don’t know if God responds to peoples’ prayers or, if He does, how He responds”[iii]
You may or may not have paid much attention to the statistics listed above and that’s okay. But take a moment and come up with your own statistics.
How much of your prayers are spent in:
Praising Him? ______%
Repenting? ______%
Asking of Him? ______%
Yielding to Him? (Listening) ______%
When I started considering how much of my prayer time was spent asking of Him, I was ashamed. I’ve tried to become more aware of what my prayers consist of and making them much more proportional to what they should be.
I used to spend time with my Granny. I wasn’t there to ask for anything. She didn’t have much to give other than her time, her love, and tiny nuggets of wisdom when I asked her for it. I truly cherished those times with her and those visits strengthened our relationship. When she passed away on Christmas Eve of 1995, I was sad, but I had no regrets. I had the privilege of not just being related to her, but actually knowing her. That came from spending time with her, sometimes talking, sometimes listening, but mostly just being in her presence. How much deeper would my relationship with God be if I did the same with Him?
Do you believe God hears our prayers?
Jeremiah 29:12 “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.”
Do you believe that our prayers have any impact?
Remember when Moses was with God and Aaron was with the Israelites who were growing impatient waiting on Moses to return? Aaron had the people gather up their gold and he melted it down and carved the golden calf for them to worship in the meantime. God tells Moses he had better get back down to the people and He tells Moses, “10 Now leave me alone, so that my anger can burn against them and I can destroy them.” (Exodus 32:10a CSB)
Moses seeks God’s favor on behalf of the Israelites and reminds God of His covenant with Abraham and Isaac. In just 4 short verses we are told “14 So the Lord relented concerning the disaster he had said he would bring on his people.” (Exodus 32:14 CSB)
Do you believe there is power in prayer?
Mark 11:24ESV “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
Do you pray as if you believe there is power in prayer?
“The one concern of the devil is to keep the saints from prayer. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.” Samuel Chadwick
We are called to pray, we are equipped to pray, we are empowered when we pray, and God reveals Himself when we pray. No wonder the devil trembles when we pray!
Do you ever have doubts or questions about prayer? Things you wonder about such as:
“Is prayer really necessary? If God is all-powerful, that means He accomplishes what He wants, when He wants, right? So why does He need me to ask?”
“Why doesn’t God answer my prayers for lost friends and family? I mean, He wants to redeem the world, right? He wants a relationship with every person. He wants to answer prayer. So if every box is checked, why isn’t it happening?”
“Do my prayers actually matter? Do they matter to God and do they matter in real life in the real world?”[iv]
My hope is that we can build off of what we learned from our Experiencing God study and take our prayer life from the shallow end to the deep end.
“Prayer is a supernatural phenomenon, a direct communication between man and God, and must be approached as such.
Without question prayer is the greatest untapped source of power in the world, for through it the power and resources of God are released.
That He should have placed this privilege in our hands is an evidence of his love and concern. That we neglect or disregard this blessing is an evidence of the ignorance and perversity of human nature.”[v]
As Christians, we often don’t understand people who don’t accept the gift of salvation. It’s given to us; why wouldn’t someone take it and use it? And yet, God gave us prayer, a way to communicate with Him and so many of us neglect to utilize as we should.
Until next week…..
[i][i] Experiencing God by Henry, Richard, and Mike Blackaby and Claude King
[ii] Why is The Catholic Lord’s Prayer Different? | Christian Pure
[iii] Most Americans Pray But Disagree about How Prayer Works
[iv] Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Staton
Beacons of Light 