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The Disciple’s Prayer
 
Luke 11:1-4 and Matthew 6:9-13
February 25, 2007
*/Focus:/*/ When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he instructed them to start with “Father.”/
/ /
*Introduction: Prayer Is Crucial*
Pastor, Author, and Seminary Professor Haddon Robinson says that “there are times when I feel like Rodney Dangerfield.
I don’t get no respect.
I have a friend who likes to call me in the middle of a weekday morning, when I’m studying at home.
He’ll say, “I hope I didn’t get you out of bed.
I realize this isn’t a Sunday.”
I have another friend who likes to put in the old needle.
He says, “You ministers have it made.
If it’s a good day, you can get up and do a little studying and make a few calls.
If it’s a bad day, you can just turn over in bed and say your prayers.”
I’m a bit defensive about all of that.
I said to my friend, “You’ve told me two things by your comment.
First, you don’t know much about the ministry.
Second, you know even less about prayer.”
Over the years, my success in prayer has been more intermittent than persistent.
There have been times when I have gotten hold of the hem of the garment, but I have not always been able to sustain the grasp.
One thing I know for certain: you don’t turn over in bed and say your prayers.
To confess to you that I have had a life-long struggle sitting at the feet of Jesus is something I do with a great deal of embarrassment.
Because when I read the New Testament, I discover that in the ministry of our Lord, prayer was absolutely crucial.
For me, prayer is preparation for the battle.
For Jesus, it seemed to be the battle itself.
Where did he shed great drops of blood?
It was not at Pilate’s hall.
It was not as he staggered under the load of the cross up Golgotha’s hill.
It was in the Garden of Gethsemane.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us that with strong cryings and tears Jesus made his petitions to God.
 
Had I had been there in that hour of his agony and watched the way he suffered, I would have despaired of the future.
I think I would have said, “If he’s behaving this way when all he’s doing is praying, what in the world is he going to do when he faces a crisis?
It’s too bad he can’t be like his three sleeping friends.
They found a spiritual peace in the midst of the storm.”
But when the crisis came, Jesus went to the cross in triumph.
It was his three friends who fell back and fell away.
That’s why I think it’s significant to turn to Luke 11:1.
We are told that after Jesus completed a period of prayer, one of his disciples, evidently a spokesman for the group, came to him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”
Please follow along with me as I read this passage from the New Living Translation: /“Once when Jesus had been out praying, one of his disciples came to him as he finished and said, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples."
He said, "This is how you should pray: "Father, may your name be honored.
May your Kingdom come soon.
Give us our food day by day.
And forgive us our sins— just as we forgive those who have sinned against us.
And don't let us yield to temptation." /
Now let’s read it again, this time in Matthew.
Turn to Matthew  Chapter six and we’ll read verses 9 through 13: /“Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be honored.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done here on earth, just as it is in heaven.
Give us our food for today, and forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us.
And don't let us yield to temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”/
/ /Part of the purpose of this prayer, which we call “The Lord’s Prayer”, is the change it can produce in us.
As we pray—and, specifically, as we pray this prayer—we are changed.
The prolonged practice of praying this prayer begins to develop in us a certain profile – something we’ll look at more closely later in this message.
In that request, “teach us to pray”, I find at least two things.
One is that John, in his discipleship program, put a strong focus on prayer.
Second, it was what Jesus’ disciples asked him to do for them.
They had been with him almost two years.
They had a front seat when he stood to preach.
They had watched him minister.
As far as we know they never came to him and said, “Lord, teach us to preach.”
They did come and say, “Teach us to pray.”
We usually ask of someone else the best that person can give us.
We ask of a banker, “Teach me to invest.”
We ask of a professional golfer, “Teach me to putt.”
We ask of a scholar, “Teach me to do research.”
When Jesus’ disciples came to him, they said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
They recognized Jesus’ strength – this ability to communicate with God the Father.
Because prayer was crucial in Jesus’ ministry, He wanted it to be vital in the disciples lives.
In a way, this prayer is misnamed.
It is a prayer that Jesus himself could not have prayed.
One of its major petitions is “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
Jesus Christ, Son of God, without sin, could never with integrity have made that request.
Instead, I think we should call it “The Disciple’s Prayer.”
It is a model prayer.
It serves us in prayer in the same way that an outline serves a preacher as he prepares to preach.
It tells us what we are to pray for, and it gives us the order of the requests.
*Background*
Jesus was serious when he taught us to use the Lord's Prayer as a model for our prayers.
He wants this prayer to be prayed from our hearts rather than simply from our lips or to have it be appreciated on a kitchen plaque.
*I.**
“Father”*
Jesus says when you come to pray you are to say, “Father.”
That single word sums up the entire basic relationship of the Christian faith: When we say “Father,” we are affirming that the Creator of the universe is not only ultimate power, but  ultimate love.
Jesus assures us that there is a Father and that we can come to him as a child comes to a father in the family.
In the Old Testament, God is addressed as Father only seven times.
In every case, it is the entire nation of Israel speaking to God that way.
As far as we know, there was never a time when Abraham or Moses or David or Daniel went to the quietness of their room, fell on their knees, and dared to speak to God that way.
When you turn to the New Testament, however, 275 times or more we are told directly or indirectly that when we bow before the sovereign Majesty of the universe the word that should come easily to our lips is /Father/.
A few years ago, the world’s most complicated clock was displayed for the first time in the town hall in Copenhagen, Denmark.
It took forty years and a million dollars to build.
The clock was accurate to two-fifths of a second every three hundred years.
The ten faces of that clock told the time of the day, the day of the week, week of the month, the month of the year, the year of the century, and tracked the movements of planets and suns for 2,500 years.
There are parts in the clock that will not move for 2,500 years.
But there was something disturbing about the clock: it is not accurate.
It loses two-fifths of a second every three hundred years.
How do they know that?
That clock in the town hall in Copenhagen, Denmark was measured against the clock of the universe, with all of its myriad parts, from atoms to suns to planets to stars.
But that clock is so accurate that every clock on earth is measured against it.
Three hundred years ago the deists looked up at the universe and were overwhelmed by what they saw.
They were so in awe of the mechanism, they lost sight of the God who put it together.
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