Jesus and the Prayer of Our Father

A father took his son to fish. Sitting on the boat with the hook in the water, the child began to think about the world around him. He started asking his dad questions. He said, "Dad, how is it that the ship floats and does not sink?" His dad thought for a moment, and then he replied: "Well, to tell you the truth, I do not know, son."

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The boy continued contemplating the world, but soon another question occurred to him: "Dad, how do fish breathe under water?" His father again replied: "I do not know, son." A little while passed, and the boy again asked his dad a question: "Why is the sky blue?" His father said again: "I do not know, son."

The boy began to worry, thinking that his dad was going to lose patience with him. He said: "Dad, does not it bother you that I ask you so many questions?" His father replied: "Of course not, son! How else are you going to learn?" Well, I think the father's intention was good, although I do not know how much the son learned that day.

Actually, if we want to know something, we have to ask someone who knows. If we ask for information from someone who does not have it, it will be of no use to us. If we ask someone to teach us to do something, but he himself does not know how to do it, we can not learn to do it well.

Who can teach us to pray? Only a person who knows how to do it well. Last week we saw some moments in the prayer life of the Lord Jesus. More than any other person, He maintained a direct and living communication with His heavenly Father. It should not surprise us, then, that his disciples asked him to teach them to pray. (See Prayer)

How beautiful it would have been for them to hear from Jesus how to pray! is not true? Happily, the Holy Spirit inspired Matthew and Luke to record for us what Jesus taught his disciples about prayer. Today we are going to read the record that we find in Luke, so we can learn about the prayer directly from the Teacher.

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Let's open the Bible in Luke 11, and read verses 1 through 4:

11: 1 Now it happened that Jesus was praying in one place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples."
11: 2 And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Your kingdom come Thy will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth.
11: 3 Give us this day our daily bread.
11: 4 And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive all those who owe us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Luke does not tell us which of Jesus' disciples asked him to teach them to pray. Therefore, each one of us can be put in his place. Do you want Jesus to teach you how to pray? If He were here, would you ask him the same question? If so, listen to his response.

The prayer that Jesus gave them immediately is an example or model. It is not a sentence designed simply to be repeated over and over again mechanically. If we compare this version with the version found in Matthew, there are some slight differences. They do not change the meaning, but it is obvious that they recognized that this sentence is an example that could be summarized, not a formula that has to be said exactly as it is.

It is good to memorize this sentence, but not to simply repeat it over and over again. Rather, we should use it as an example of the things we can say to God in prayer. It's like a pattern to make a dress. When a tailor makes a garment using a pattern, he strives to adjust each cut and each measure to the pattern he has, but using his own fabric. In the same way, we should adjust our prayers to the example that Jesus gives us, but using our own words and thoughts.

What does Jesus teach us, then, in this teacher's prayer? First, it teaches us to whom we should pray. We must pray to our heavenly Father. If we are followers of Jesus, if we are committed to him, we can pray to God with the same confidence that a child talks to his father to ask for something.

Because of our sin, we may feel unworthy of approaching God. We can feel that He is so great, and we are so small, that we do not have the right to speak with Him. But if we have repented of sin and accepted by faith the forgiveness that Jesus bought us on the cross, He gives us the right. to speak directly with his Father. (See My Prayer to God)

We do not have to find another person to take our message. We can talk directly with God, as a loving Father. In fact, He wants us to talk to Him. When you pray, speak confidently with your heavenly Father. Do not be embarrassed to speak directly with Him.

Then we discover four kinds of things that we should ask of God. In general, we usually begin our prayers by asking for our needs. Jesus, on the other hand, teaches us to pray first for the will of God. He says: "Hallowed be your name, let your kingdom come."

What do these phrases mean? We can express it like this: may God be honored and respected, and may his kingdom be fully established. By saying, "Hallowed be your name," we are praying that the name of God will be treated with the respect and honor it deserves. By praying, "Thy kingdom come," we are asking that his kingdom be established on earth.

Jesus leaves us these general categories, but in our own prayers, we must focus our request. For example, when we pray for the salvation of a particular person, or when we pray for the ministry of a missionary, they are ways of asking for the Kingdom of God to be established on earth.

When we pray for the rulers, asking that justice prevail and good be honored, we are praying that the name of God may be glorified. It is a great privilege for us to know that our prayers are part of God's plan to establish his kingdom and bring glory to his name here on earth. Let's not lose this great opportunity, nor ignore this great honor.

The second thing that Jesus teaches us to remember in prayer is about our daily needs. "Give us daily our daily bread". Bread represents the most basic need, the need for food. Jesus teaches us to pray for anything we may need, even the simplest.

But we should note that Jesus teaches us to pray every day. In general, God does not give us everything we need for the rest of our life at once. He wants us to learn to trust Him. We must ask for what we need now, for what concerns us now. Worrying about the distant future has no case.

That said, there is nothing too insignificant to take to God in prayer. Sometimes the prayers of children seem funny to us, like a child who began to pray like that. "Dear God, please take care of my dad and my mom and my little brothers and the dog and the kitten and take care of me too, and also, God, take care of yourself - because if something happens to you, we're going to get fried."

Surely we laugh, but God does not laugh. He loves that we bring to Him all the things that concern us, and that we leave them in His hands. We must ask for whatever we need, however insignificant it may seem, and then trust that He will respond.

The third thing that Jesus teaches us to ask in prayer is forgiveness for our sins. As believers, our life is different from the life of the world. But all, at some point, we fall. When we realize that we have sinned - whether we have said a bad word, we have lost patience, we have had a bad thought or something else, we must immediately ask forgiveness from God.

Sin brings a separation in our relationship with God. We are separated. But God tells us that He is not spiteful. If we heartily ask forgiveness, confessing our sin, He will forgive us. If we have failed another person, we also have the responsibility to do what is in our power to remedy the situation.
But Jesus tells us that God's forgiveness carries an obligation. If we want God to forgive us, we also have to forgive others who offend us. If we hold a grudge, if we speak ill of others, if we want to avenge ourselves or see the other person suffer, we hinder God's forgiveness in our own lives.

Finally, Jesus teaches us to seek help in temptation. As we saw last week, Jesus prayed before his most tempting moments. When Satan wanted to tempt Job, he had to ask permission from God first. We must ask God to protect us from temptation, and also to protect us in temptation.

But this means we want to avoid temptation. Many of us prefer to play with temptation, trying to see how far we can go without falling too far. We are like the young man in the story who found a small rattlesnake almost dead with cold. He was about to kill her, when the viper spoke to him. "If you give me heat inside your coat, I promise not to sting you."

At first, the young man did not want to. He knew that rattlesnakes are poisonous. But the snake spoke to him with very nice words, so the young man picked it up and put it inside his coat. Little by little the heat penetrated the viper, until it was already well. The young man took it to release it, but just before leaving, the viper spiked the young man in his hand.

The young man complained: "You promised not to bite me!" Before scurrying on the ground, the snake replied: "You knew what it was when you picked me up." If we know what sin is, let's not play with temptation! Rather, let us ask the Lord to free us from temptation. Learn to recognize what tempts you, and begin to pray that the Lord will free you from that temptation.

This morning we learned from the teacher's prayer. Jesus teaches us to pray to our Father, seeking his glory and his kingdom. It teaches us to pray for our needs, to ask for forgiveness and to seek help for temptation. Now we have to put into practice what we have learned.