Lord, Teach Us to Pray

Wouldn’t it have been amazing to pray out loud with Jesus?  How would you pray?  What would you ask for?  The disciples got to do that at certain times when they were within earshot.  We get to do it all the time since the God-head actually lives in us.

Maybe feeling a little inadequate and certainly wanting to pray with greater power and effect, the disciples asked Jesus to teach them.

Luke 11:1 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

Jesus answered them by giving them a model/outline by which to shape their prayers, what we call the “Lord’s Prayer”.  And then He follows that with an illustration about a person who makes an urgent request of a friend.  While the person comes and asks because of their relationship, the friend gives him what he asks for, not because they’re friends or because of how he asks, but simply because of his persistence in asking.  (Luke 11:8)

The best way to learn and grow in prayer is simply to pray.

“The great people of the earth today are the people who pray.  I do not mean those who talk about prayer; nor those who say they believe in prayer; nor yet those who can explain about prayer; but I mean those people who take time and pray.  They have not time.  It must be taken from something else.  This something else is important.  Very important, and pressing, but still less important and less pressing than prayer.”  S. D. Gordon

Let’s just do it; pray – and don’t forget the listening part.