Teach us to pray! (Wednesday's readings)

 Luke 11:1-4

1 Once Jesus was in a certain place praying. As he finished, one of his disciples came to him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” 2 Jesus said, “This is how you should pray: “Father, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. 3 Give us each day the food we need, 4 and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. And don’t let us yield to temptation. ”

This is Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer. It is shorter than Matthew's, but it will teach us all we need to know about how to pray and what to pray for. First, how to pray:

(i) It begins by calling God Father. The very first word tells us that in prayer we are not coming to someone out of whom gifts have to be unwillingly extracted, but to a Father who delights to supply his children's needs. Psalm 9:10 says, "Those who know thy name put their trust in thee." That means that those who really know God as Father, and treat Him as such, will gladly put their trust in him, when they pray.

(ii) We must note particularly the order of the Lord's Prayer. Before anything is asked for ourselves, Father and his glory, and the reverence due to him, come first. Only when we give God his place will other things take their proper place. It means that we first think of Him before we think of ourselves; first the Father, then we.

Secondly, what to pray for. We pray for all of life and all in life. Prayer covers all life.

(a) It covers present need. When we pray, Give us our daily bread! we pray for our daily bread; but it is bread for the day for which we pray. We are not to worry about the unknown future, but to live a day at a time. We focus on today first.

(b) It covers past. When we pray, Forgive us our sins! we remember our past deeds and ask the Father to correct them; we pray for forgiveness, for the best of us is a sinful man or woman coming before the Holy Father.

(c) It covers future trials. When we pray, Lead us not into temptation! We mean any testing situation. It includes far more than the mere seduction to sin; it covers every situation which is a challenge to and a test of a person's wo/manhood and integrity and fidelity. We cannot escape it, but we can meet it with God. We tell the Father to help us not to yield to the temptations.

As you can see, in prayer we bring before our Father our present, past and future concerns. There's nothing we live out in prayer. In other words, there's a lot we can pray for.

Someone has said that the Lord's Prayer has two great uses in our private prayers. If we use it at the beginning of our devotions and activities, it awakens all kinds of holy desires which lead us on into the right pathways of prayer. If we use it at the end of our devotions and activities, it sums up all we ought to pray for in the presence of God.