Thine...not mine | An Intro


Imagine a time of prayer that was meaningful for you…

What was it about the time that made it meaningful?  What were the parts and pieces; perhaps even the people, which have held it near enough in your mind to recall it in a moment like this?  Now hold on to that.

Why pray?  Ever thought about that?  I mean, of all the options you have for how to use the minutes of your day, why choose to pray? 

                      Last resort? 
                        Needs? 
   Wants? 
                   Forgiveness?
                                         Worship?




What about this one:  Why prayer?  Why not…something else; some other means of communing with God? 

Hmmmm… 

Off the top of my head – and about as practical as it gets – because prayer is free.  You don’t have to raise money to pray.  I don’t care how much you have in your wallet right now, prayer can still happen if you wanted it to.  Another idea, because prayer can happen anywhere and anytime.  You don’t have to take days off work or cancel plans with friends or skip family vacations for prayer to happen. 

Further still, and perhaps more meaninful, because with prayer, somewhere between the thought and the word, there is enough belief churned up in you to initiate an expression of your very own heart to the God of the universe, which requires more from you than anything else in the entire world.  And in that, God is well pleased.




Take a minute; a full 60 seconds, to list every instance you can think of from the Bible on praying or prayer.  List passages or ideas or characters or paraphrases, whatev.  Ready?  GO!

For me, King David’s prayer in 2 Samuel 7 has always meant a lot.  As well, you’ll remember at the end of Matthew 9, when Jesus tells the guys to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers.  Also, Romans 8, where Paul tells us the Holy Spirit helps us pray when we don’t know what to say.  Of course the list could go on.  Take a few minutes here to reflect on your list.  What do you know about the instances you listed out?  What lessons are there to learn or principles to glean?   

Now check this out…  Of the countless things Jesus taught his disciples – you can imagine the wealth of insight Jesus transferred to these guys – there was but one thing the disciples sought out specifically.  Luke 11:1…

“Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of the his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John [the Baptist] taught his disciples.’”

The setting?  Any old day in some certain place.  Doesn’t matter really.  Luke doesn’t recall or doesn’t care. 

The subject?  Jesus…praying!  In the temple, wilderness, closet?  On his knees, standing up, sitting down?  Out loud, quiet, silent?  We don’t know these.  We know he was praying.  Don’t get hung up on the details.

The statement?  Teach us to pray…not like John prayed, but like he taught his disciples.  Jesus, John taught his disciples to pray.  Now you teach us.  Notice, no question mark.  They weren’t inquiring.  They were requiring.  And I suppose if you’re going to thrust a request before Jesus, this is a pretty noble one.

Jesus begins:  “When you pray, say…”  And he goes on to recite a short but deep prayer, which we’ll come back to later.  In fact we’ll jump to the book of Matthew because he fills in some blanks for us.  In the mean time, skip to verse 5 through 8 in Luke 11.

“And he said to them, ‘Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and [the friend] will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed.  I cannot get up and give you anything’?  I tell you, though [the friend] will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs.”

A curious story.  It sounds a lot like a parable, and it acts a lot like a parable.  We try to match characters with real life players.  We try to assign elements in the story with real life situations.  We try to mine out principles.  And at the end we walk away from it with more questions and concerns than answers. 

Well, on the surface, what is happening here?  Cutting to the chase, what ultimately compelled the friend to open his door?  Impudence!  I bet you haven’t used that word this week.  It means shameless persistence.  It isn’t so much an issue of repetition or consistency, as it is an issue of boldness or confidence or absolute knowledge/belief.  A similar issue is raised in Luke 18 with the persistent widow and the unjust judge.

Back to Luke 11 though, the guy – presumably you or I – he had a boldness or confidence born in him…toward what?  That his friend is home.  That his friend has what he needs.  That his friend will open the door.  That his friend will give him AS MUCH AS HE NEEDS

Are you hearing in this little story answers to our earlier questions?  Why pray?  Why prayer?

Now of course God is not like the friend next door.  He is God.  Ahead in the text a bit, verses 11-13 indicate he is not even like our earthly father’s.  But think this through…

What did the guy have to start with?  NOTHING

What did his friend have to start with?  EVERYTHING

And here is where prayer begins

Jesus tells us what to say in verse 2, 3, and 4, and we’ll look into those phrases throughout this study in weeks to come.  But here is a little parable of sorts on what we must mean at the outset of prayer; where our heart posture must be before we entreat our Great God.


As a kid growing up in a bit more formal church setting, we used to recite the old King James version of the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday morning.  We’d say things like “which art in heaven” and “thy will be done.”  But besides the cool Elizabethan era lingo, the King James version of this prayer also includes a closing declaration that has been relegated to a foot note in most modern Bible translations.  (While there are good scholarly reasons to move this final declaration from the inline text to a footnote, my personal feeling is there are better practical reasons to keep it where it was.)

Look up Matthew 6:13 in your Bible.  Are you there?  After the part about delivering us from evil, see the footnote indicator?  Down at the bottom of the page it reads…

                “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever.  Amen.”

I like it because it puts a final stamp on the prayer.  The “Amen” to be sure, but as well the declaration made to God, about God.  Back in the day we used “thine” instead of “yours.”  Everything is Thine.  The kingdom, the power, the glory; it all belongs to God alone.  He is God and I am not.  He is rich and I am poor.  He has three loaves and I have none.

Everything is Thine…and nothing is mine. 

We need to get that at the deepest part of who we are.  And from that “deepest part of who we are” is then born the confidence or shameless persistence or impudence to pray to the God who is poised to give us as much as we need.



Now try this:  Take this prayer card.  Pray through this prayer every day for the next two weeks, at least once a day.  As you pray it over and again, slow down and live into it a bit.  Become familiar with it; the meter and the rhythm of it.  Add your own personality to it so it becomes your own prayer.  Then we’ll come back to this in a couple weeks.  (By the way, the numbers on the card correspond to something we’ll do together later in this study.)

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