The Fulness of Prayer Maylands-Mt Lawley Parish 27/7/95 Luke 11:1-13 []= omitted from Maylands
Introduction https://youtube.com/watch?v=IkebgRWjZgw&si=ux2ejw9kRui9dSwh
Prayer is simultaneously one of the most natural of all human activities, [even many atheists under extreme pressure pray,] and one of its most difficult of all spiritual disciplines. [There is no single form of prayer stipulated in scripture. ]Over the decades I have been challenged deeply by the Spirit of God about my personal prayer life,[ my prayers with my wife, now of over 50 years], and corporate prayer in the Church. [Luke 11 opens some of the mysteries and glories of prayer.] Prayer is a favourite topic of Luke, in his teaching ministry e.g. Luke 18 remarks “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not lose heart.”, but also with Jesus at prayer at his baptism, before choosing the 12 apostles, on the Mount of Transfiguration, in Gethsemane on the cross and so on. As he was praying that his disciples asked him to teach them to pray. [(I don’t know about you, whilst I have had people comments, sometimes negatively, about my prayers, say they wished they could record them, no one has ever asked me to teach them how to pray.)] In ancient times prayer was more a public than private event performed by standing and praying aloud (cf. 1 Tim 2:8). [As John’s disciples learnt prayer through their master’s example, so we learn how to pray by listening to others pray.] It is my long-established habit to commence and end all meetings in prayer [e.g. Fresh Start Board last Friday.] I had a meeting with a young local pastor earlier in the week, whom I had never met before, listening to him pray I subsequently asked, “To whom, [with one notable exception (Mark 15:34),] did Jesus always pray?” Since Christ said, “out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45), all men, women, children pray from their hearts. How you pray [infallibly] exposes your heart condition, where in Scripture, “heart” stands for the centre of personal life (Prov 4:23). [Due to limited time I will highlight some significant aspects of prayer.]
Exposition
Whereas Evangelical Protestants like to refer to “The Lord’s Prayer”, Catholics helpfully call it the “Our Father.” [Jesus is forming a new family whose head is God as our common Father.] Only on the cross bearing the darkness of our sin did Jesus ever pray “My God” (Mark 15:34). It is a minor scandal that the Sunday School religion of “Dear God” is projected onto children rather than the blessings of knowing God as Jesus’, “Abba! Father!” (Mark 14:36; Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6). [Throughout Scripture we are taught to address God in the language Jesus used.] [Whereas the [generic] “God” could be equivalent to “Allah” or “Brahman” or “Jehovah”,] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the deity the New Testament teaches us to pray to (Rom 15:6; 2 Cor 1:3; Eph 1:3; 1 Pet 1:3)! As Paul puts it, “ For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.” (1 Cor 8:5-6) Having briefly introduced the One to whom we pray, let me drop down to Christ’s teaching on the character of prayer. [Jesus above all else encourages us to pray.]
[The parable of the friend at midnight is often misunderstood.]
5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed (only one bed per peasant family). I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
What does verse 8 mean? “8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.” Many alternative [other] translations, have something like, “at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” The theme of persistence is entirely lacking as a necessary component of prayer in the immediate context. Jesus is encouraging a shameless approach to prayer. The peasant society of Jesus’ time would never refuse help to a friend of a friend in the middle of the night. If the man with bread had refused to help the whole village would have been clothed with shame. [This situation is strange only to anyone from a socially threadbare society like ours where some people have never met their neighbours! Cf # JY’s childhood in the 50’s] [A genuine Christian society is one in which we never become embarrassed about our prayer lives no matter what strangers may think.] I am used to praying with folk wherever I find them, in the streets [e.g. Glenys Godfrey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenys_Godfrey, for whom I became a mentor after meeting her walking the local street] in cafes and restaurants, supermarkets e.g. the person I ran into in Coles last Monday, and so on. I have no sense of shame in doing this and neither do those whom I pray for/with. If shame is a sense of the lack of the glory of God (Rom 3:23), [the state into which the Adamic race fell in Eden,] shamelessness is the opposite. In Hebrews 2:11 we read, “For he who makes holy and those who are made holy all have one source/one origin/one Father. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters”. [Shamelessness as a characteristic of Spirit-led Christ-centred prayer leads us to think of how the Bible describes the prayer life of our crucified Lord.] The multiple prayers of Jesus in his Passion “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they are doing….I thirst…Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit….It is finished” encompass the revelation of the Reality of the Incarnation; that the eternal Word in sovereign mercy for our salvation embraced our weak mortal flesh and blood (John 1:14). [Whilst it is fully natural/human to thirst, only the God of unconditional love could forgive fully those who were mercifully crucifying his innocent Son.]
The Lord usually humbles me when he wants me to pray more deeply. In the last couple of years I have had several traumatic medical diagnoses,[a major cardiac illness (https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/23985-left-anterior-descending-artery ) then an adverse MRI report on the brain (https://www.americanbrainfoundation.org/julies-story/)] both diagnoses were allowed by the Father to increase my prayerful dependence on the Spirit of prayer (e.g. Eph 6:18). In the midst of aggravating pain recently I was moved to kneel by the bed in the middle of the night since and cry out to the Lord for mercy. [I joked with my wife that when I die no one will want either my heart nor my brain.] Paul, the great sufferer and great pray-er in the likeness of Christ, (cf. 1 Cor 11:1) exclaims: “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted/magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.” (Phil 1:20)
[Things are best summed up by the exhortation in Hebrews,] “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, despising its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”(Heb 12:1-3) [There is an old Roman saying, “Let the very word ‘cross,’ be far removed from not only the bodies of Roman citizens, but even from their thoughts, their eyes, and their ears.” (Cicero).] Whatever shame from our past may hinder our praying, especially in public or church prayer meetings, it has been dissolved away by the blood of the cross (Jude 1:24).
[Jesus continues his encouragement for prayer:] 9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Literally, [for Greek is a bit more sophisticated than English (https://greekforall.com/learn-biblical-greek-grammar/present-active-indicative-verbs/)] “everyone who keeps on asking asks receives; the one who keeps on seeking finds; and to the one who keeps on knocking, the door will be opened” [George Muller was a famous prayer warrior of the 19th century, a founder of orphanages and an evangelist, (https://www.georgemuller.org/devotional/george-muller-persistent-prayer-for-5-individuals), he prayed daily for the salvation of 5 people by name, 4 came to Christ, the last was converted at George’s funeral, such is the power of prevailing faith. (James 5:17 on Elijah’s faith [cf. 1 Cor 12:9 “faith by the same Spirit”).]
Jesus sums it all up, 11 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
The word used here (πατέρα) is the same Jesus used earlier in the “Our Father”. The contrast between a mere mortal father giving something useless or dangerous to their child and the heavenly Father giving us the Spirit is very potent. At his baptism Jesus received two great gifts, “And as he was praying, heaven was opened 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”” (Luke 3:21-22). [The first recorded is the gift of the Spirit, though sinless as a limited mortal human being, Jesus himself was petitioning the Father for an outpouring of the Spirit as he moved forward towards the climax of the cross. Even more significant is the sealing presence of the intense pleasure of the Father.]
Many years ago, I was feeling that something was missing in my life. I had been converted for some time but sensed that something was still missing in my experience, I needed to be filled, or, as some would say, “baptised in the holy Spirit”. Desperate for more of God I came home from church one night and knelt at the foot of my bed telling the Lord than I would not arise until he poured out his Spirit upon me (Isa 44:4). After a little while the Spirit came with such power that I was overwhelmed with “joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Pet 1:8) and great peace, I was weeping with joy until around 1 am in the morning when the thought came that needed to be functional to go to uni that day so I sensibly went off to bed.
Conclusion
[The brother of Jesus, who necessarily was very familiar with his prayer habits] James challenges us all, “You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (James 4:2-3). If we are praying to the Father in the name of Jesus by the power of the shared Holy Spirit our many prayers will be answered. If we pray from the heart the Lord will always/infallibly give us the heart of our prayers, PTL. This necessarily so (JY’s vision of 24/7 incessant unfailing prayer in Perth.) simply because according to Jesus the supremacy of the Fatherhood of God over all limited human authorities] flows out into the seniority of his gifting us with his own Holy Spirit. “13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”” This is a firm promise to all who believe in Jesus. I know nothing about the prayer life of your community, but having challenged the people of Guildford last week about their failure to attend a pre-service prayer gathering I assume the same is true of you as a local Anglican Church. Through Eucharistic and preaching grace the one undivided Word will today impart grace to all who desire it to ignite a chain reaction of unfailing prayer until the Lord Returns (Luke 18:1; Heb 12:3). Let us ask the Lord for nothing less. Glory to God alone. (“Soli Deo Gloria”) Amen and Amen.