He Teaches Them to Pray

["Click here for Luke's account"]

The following 23 events are found mostly in the Gospel of Luke. The exact time and order of their occurrence is not certain but they appear to have occurred, according to Luke, between His visit at the home of Mary and Martha and Palm Sunday. They cover a variety of subjects, most of them told in the form of a parable.

This is the story of the giving of what has become known as The Lord's Prayer. The Disciples had seen Jesus pray many times. They, apparently, did not pray. Prayer was, for the most part, left up to the Priests. Most Jews did not feel that they had access to the Lord personally. So on the occasion of this event, seeing Jesus pray, when He had finished, they asked Him to teach them to pray as John the Baptist had taught his Disciples to pray.

Notice they wanted to learn to pray as John had taught his Disciples to pray, indicating there was something different or special about this. These men were accustomed to hearing "structured prayers" consisting of adorations, phrases and doxologies, but somewhere along the line, one or more of them had heard one of John's Disciples pray and their prayers were filled with petitions and requests and were "made by them", not structured or pre-written dissertations. They wanted to be able to pray like that so they asked Jesus to teach them.

So He did, saying, "When you pray, pray like this." Now notice the model. It was not meant to be the only prayer, nor was it meant to be the only way to pray. It was to be a guide to the things that we might want to include in our prayers. Lets look at each of the parts of this prayer. This event was recorded by Matthew and included in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:5-15). We will look at both accounts plus that which was added later, in an effort to put what seemed to be a logical end to the prayer. In Matthew's account, this model was given as a guide in order to eliminate hypocrisy in prayers.

Twelve suggestions are made:

  1. Pray to the Father, not to Jesus, not to the Holy Spirit, not to the Virgin Mary.
  2. Glorify the name of the Father.
  3. Pray that God will soon send His Kingdom.
  4. Seek after His will in all things.
  5. Ask for the necessities of life and thank Him for them.
  6. Continually ask for forgiveness, but only if we are willing to forgive others.
  7. Ask for strength to overcome temptation.
  8. Acknowledge what Paul calls God's Prerogative" in our life.
  9. Acknowledge our faith in His power and ability to do all that He had promised.
  10. Acknowledge Him as the one to whom we give all glory, phrase and obedience.
  11. Do this eternally, without end.
  12. Amen, so be it.

It is well to acknowledge that the last five of these, "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever, Amen", was something that was added later presumably by the compilers of the King James translation of the Bible, in an effort to make it a complete prayer as they saw it.

Then Jesus impressed upon them the necessity of prayer. Ask, and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it shall be opened to you. If you, who are evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.


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