All of us have skills or abilities we wish we had. This includes the disciples of Jesus. We see all over the Gospels the disciples coming to Jesus and asking specifically for him to teach them something. The one we will talk about for the next month and a half throughout this Lent season is when they asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1)
The disciples wanted to pray better. They’ve seen Jesus go away to pray often and have witnessed many signs, wonders, and miracles. This has prompted them to say they want to pray like him. They say, teach us how to pray.
Prayer is a core practice for followers of Jesus. And yet, it’s something that many of us struggle to do regularly. We want to pray more, so why don’t we? It could be because you don’t know where to start. How do we know if we’re doing it? We’re distracted. We can be encouraged today by the disciples’ questions because they also knew what it was like to be busy.
Jesus responds to their question in Matthew 6:9-13, “Pray like this: Our heavenly Father, may your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come soon, and may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us the food we need today, and forgive our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us. Don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.”
This prayer, known as the Lord’s Prayer, is mighty. During this new series, we will present the idea that prayer is like a toolbox. Within the toolbox are different tools. Some projects in our lives require different tools, and yet, most of us grew up only being armed with one tool, one way to pray.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Perhaps you don’t pray more often because you only have one tool, and it’s not equipped for the projects, the situation, and the circumstances in your life. We need to begin to see that prayer is a toolbox.
Right from the start, we learn something fundamental about the nature of prayer. This word for “father” is exceptional. When Jesus teaches us to pray to our “Father,” he shows us an entirely different picture of God. He says we can come to God as though he’s our parent.
Our image of God is critical. Pete Greig wrote a book called “How To Pray,” and wrote in it, “How we view God affects everything about everything.”
The next part of the line is: “may your name be kept holy.” We
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