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.
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