Luke 11:1-2 - The Heart of Prayer

Prayer is not a performance but the natural breath of a child of God which is made possible through Christ's person and work, empowered by the Spirit, and expressing our identity as beloved sons and daughters who live in grace-filled communion with the Father.

I haven’t met very many Christians who would say, “Boy, I sure wish I could pray less.” In fact, the majority of committed Christians struggle with prayer.

This becomes clear for us when we think about our own prayer lives. Have you ever, like me and so many others, been praying and just completely went blank? Have you ever asked yourself the question, “Why can’t I pray more than a few minutes?” Or, “Why do I run out of things to pray for so quickly?” Or even, “Why do I keep praying the same things over and over again? Why do my prayers seems so lifeless?”

As people, we often wonder if we are praying properly,  wonder if we are praying for the wrong things, or struggle to even pray at all.

The context of Luke 11 is within Jesus’ journey toward Jerusalem. Jesus and His disciples have been stopping at various town and proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom of God. His disciples have seen Him regularly spending hours in prayer with the Father, not out of duty, but delight. And now, being in a certain place, more than likely after Jesus has just finished a prolonged period of prayer, the disciples come up to Him and ask Him to teach them how to pray like He does. Why? Well, if Gethsemane was any indication of their prayer lives (falling asleep while praying), they probably were already struggling with prayer. Like them, many of us struggle to pray even for a few minutes at a time. This dissonance between Jesus’ prayer life and theirs causes both them (and us) to see their (and our) need for help and inadequacy to do it on our own.

But why do we feel this way? It is probably because we know that Jesus died to make us children of God, and kids with a good relationship with their father communicate. The underlying unspoken or unprocessed thought is that when we don’t pray (or pray wrongly), we are living as independent adults who don’t think we need our Father. That’s not just unhealthy, it’s a denial of our true identity.

Can you imagine if you couldn’t wait for either concentrated or spontaneous times of prayer, and God met you there with His presence? Imagine praying to Him like He is real and knowing Him as your loving and caring Father.

So, if this idea of living out your life as a dependent child of God who lives in delightful and constant communion with God in prayer excites you, then you’ll want to listen closely as we focus in on Luke 11:1–2.

Luke 11:1–13 ESV

Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” And he said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.” And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Verses 1-2 teach us that…

Prayer is the posture of dependent discipleship (learning to pray is learning to live by grace)

We see this in verse 2 when Jesus tells His disciples to say, “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.” Jesus is calling us to approach God as a child to a Father, in full dependence, reverencing His name, and longing for His kingdom. Let’s briefly look at each one of these.

First, we approach God as a child to a Father. We know Him and address Him as a beloved and loving Father. God is what a father should be. He is a good Father, one who we would all want to have and be loved by. We also know that we are true children of God. By means of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, we have been forgiven of our sins and given Christ’s righteousness. But, we have also been adopted. In Galatians 4 and Romans 8 we see that in the Spirit we can cry “Abba, Father”, beloved or dearest Father. Only children can say this.

We cannot imagine how great of a privilege it is to call God “our Father”. Because we are forgetful people, Jesus reminds us of “whose” we are. When we use the word “Father” for God, it is and should be a reminder of our status before God. We stand in Christ at the very core of our prayer.

Because we forget this so often, Martin Luther said that before we start praying we should ask God to, “implant in our hearts a comforting trust in your fatherly love.” Through calling God “Father”, all distrust and fear is melted away.

Second, we pray for His name to be reverenced. Because God is our Father, our Creator, and our God, we want God’s name to be made holy by our lives honoring him. We desire to see Him reverenced and set apart as holy. That is to say that our Father would be looked up to. Why? Because he is the best, the greatest of all, our dearest and most wonderful Father. Our prayer is that His name and His person are treated with the unique reverence that His character and nature as our Father and our Creator requires.

Jesus demonstrated love and reverence for God in his life…all the time. Jesus went into the temple and threw out all those buying and selling. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. He said to them, “It is written, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves!” (Matt. 21:13) and his disciples remembered that it is written: Zeal for your house will consume me (John 2:17).

We pray for our God to be known as the Father of all and in such a way that He is reverenced among all people both now and at the end of time, for all eternity! We pray that God be tangibly and visibly known in our lives and the lives of our family and friends.

So, we also pray against ingratitude, ungratefulness, and indifference in our hearts toward God. We pray for a grateful and joyful heart toward God to know and delight in his beauty more and more.

Third, we pray with longing for His rule to to be visibly manifested in the world and in us. St. Augustine said that even though God is reigning now, just as light is absent for those who refuse to open their eyes, it is possible to refuse God’s rule.

Our prayers reflect our desire for God’s kingdom to become realized in a new and unique way in our lives, our family’s lives, our friends’ lives, and in the lives of all the people in the world right now…in our time and in our space. We desire the beauty and wonder of the garden of Eden when all people knew him, loved him, obeyed him, and walked and talked with him to become real again. In this garden, when humanity’s desires matched God’s, they loved him, each other, and took care of his world.

We pray for our everyday spaces to be transformed into gardens of hope and love by God's presence. We long for His Kingdom to visibly bring beauty where there's brokenness, joy instead of sorrow, and His loving peace to reign in our world now.

This is a Lordship request. It asks God to extend his reign and power into every part of our lives: emotions, desires, thoughts, and commitments. We are asking for God to fully rule in us so that we want and love to obey him with all our hearts with true joy.

What is all of this but praying for our lives to be lived before God as dependent disciples of Jesus.

This principle of dependence is seen throughout Jesus’ teaching. At numerous times Jesus told His disciples and others that only those who are like children belong to the kingdom. He demonstrated this in His own life, for He constantly prayed, at His baptism, in ministry, at the transfiguration, in Gethsemane, and even on the cross. He lived in utter dependence on the Father because that’s what it means to be truly human. He was our perfect, praying Temple.

The original language reinforces this: πρoσεύχεσθαι (to pray) is about addressing God with requests, not with merit, but dependence. Πάτερ (Father) reminds us that this is a relationship. And ἁγιασθήτω (be holy) calls us to reverence God's name through how we live.

Jesus models this type of prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane). He reverenced the Father’s name and will even when it meant bearing the cross.

We often have underlying thoughts that prevent us from praying like this. Thoughts like:

• "If I prayed about it, it would have happened anyway."
• "God doesn’t care about the little things in my life."
• "How can I live in full dependence; it seems impossible?"
• “God's kingdom will come no matter what. Why pray about it?"
• "I never hear or feel anything when I pray."

These thoughts keep us from embracing the posture of dependent discipleship. But why do we have these thoughts? It is because…

We often approach prayer as a performance rather than dependence or we avoid it entirely because we feel unworthy or unsure

Many Christians struggle to pray in a posture of dependent discipleship because:

• We want control. Prayer is a very practical way of saying, “I’m not in control.”
• We’re ashamed because of our repeated sins, or we think that God is too important to listen to us.
• We fear being like others who we have seen abuse prayer just to get what they want.
• We’ve prayed and felt unanswered, which causes us to fear disappointment or even losing our faith.

The Pharisee and tax collector in Luke 18 show the contrast between independent and fully dependent prayer. The Pharisee approached prayer as performance, listing his spiritual resume and condemning others, approaching God in his own merit. The tax collector simply asked for mercy, aware that he could approach God only by grace, and God needed to give him his merit.

Our resistance to living a life of full dependence upon God is implied in Luke 11:4. Jesus teaches us that we should confess our sin, the reality of being tempted, and relational brokenness. This petition, which we will cover next week, shows us how we naturally life in self-sufficiency and rebellion against God.

But what is the underlying problem. I think we struggle with prayer because it reminds us we’re not God. We saw last week from Psalm 90 that we should pray that God remind us of our finiteness, to be satisfied in Christ, and to commit our work to Him. But we avoid this, preferring autonomy and comfort.

Underneath all this are idols of control, self-righteousness, performance, and comfort. These blind us to our desperate need for God. Seeing this causes us to be faced with the startling discrepancy between how we should live, in full dependence and communion with God, with how we do live, independently and in our own strength.

Without help, we are in serious trouble. But, the good news is that…

Through the cross, Jesus welcomes us into His own prayer life with the Father

Jesus, the Word of God, the eternal Son of God, came to earth, took on flesh, and lived the life that we were required to live...Depending on God Alone. He did not live by bread alone, but by every word from God's mouth. He constantly prayed to the Father. At all the critical points in His ministry we see Him praying, and as this text shows, He prayed so much that the disciples knew that He had something to teach them on how to pray.

Jesus prayed at his baptism, prayed as He healed, prayed as He raised the dead, prayed at His transfiguration, prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, prayed on the cross, and prayed with his last breath. And now, He ever lives to make intercession for us! Jesus truly is the ultimate prayerful One.

We see this most clearly in Luke 22, where Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, knowing the suffering to come prays, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” In that moment, He reverenced God’s name, submitted to His will, and longed for His kingdom, even as it would come through the cross. Jesus lived out the very prayer He teaches us.

On the cross, Jesus cried out, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do." Jesus could pray this prayer for our forgiveness because He was bearing our sin of rebellion and autonomy in that moment on the cross. At the cross, Jesus cries out in prayer, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", bearing our sin, and then, when the penalty for our sin was completed by Him, He prayed, "Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit." The cross shows us that our independence and rebellion are paid for, so we don't have to live like that. Christ lived in full dependence until the very end and as we see what He did for us in the cross, we can live our lives in full dependence and prayerfulness as we are empowered by the Spirit.

Every cry from the cross was not only a fulfillment of Scripture but a model of dependent prayer, even as Jesus bore our failure to pray. Because Jesus was forsaken, we can be heard. Jesus’ prayer to let the cup of wrath pass went unanswered so that our every prayer can be heard by God.

While the world tells us that God doesn’t hear us, the Good News of Jesus tells us that Jesus’ prayer in the Garden was denied so that we could be called beloved children of God who are heard by our Father.

Because Jesus defeated death and gives us His own record of perfection, and at His resurrection received the gift of the Holy Spirit, pouring Him out upon us, this means we no longer have to try to perform in prayer…

By the Spirit we come to the Father as beloved children, depending on Him in every moment

As we abide in Jesus through the power of the Spirit, not trying to earn our way to God, or make our prayers good enough to be heard, we find ourselves having the same mind as Jesus Christ, a dependent child who loves and needs to talk to his or her daddy (Abba). This enables us to take our problems, concerns, desires, joys, failures, and anything else to Him in dependence and helplessness, the posture of children of the kingdom. Abiding in Jesus reorients us from performance to presence. Prayer is no longer about impressing God, but about enjoying Him as our Father!

The Spirit enables this heart attitude in us. Romans 8 and Galatians 4 say that the Spirit cries “Abba, Father” in us. He reminds us that we’re kids, and we get to pray with childlike honesty and joy. So, instead of pretending that we are grownups that have everything together, not bringing the real us to God, missing real relationship with Him, the Spirit enables us to desire to pray to our Father and ask for help even to pray without pretense, like a child.

Rather than pretending to be self-sufficient, we now want to live as dependent children. This leads us first to pray as Moses did in Psalm 90, asking God to help us remember our mortality and enable us to commit our lives to God. Second, to seek God’s help to give us the desire and power to build habits of worship and gratitude that will enable us to satisfy our hearts in His love and want to speak with Him. Third, to dedicate our daily work to God, asking Him to use us for His kingdom purposes in all of life.

The very nature of the Gospel shows us that we are dependent upon God. The One who is the Gospel, Jesus, lived in dependence and taught us that this is how we must live to have a part of Him and His kingdom. Christ's death and resurrection, and His gifting us with His Spirit, and our own regeneration show that it has nothing to do with us, it is all God.

Prayer is not about performance, it’s the Spirit-given breath of God’s children, flowing from our identity in Christ and our dependence on the Father. And so, prayer is not duty...it is our very breath. It is a picture of the Gospel. We pray the same way we received the Gospel, in full dependence upon God. This then allows us to see that prayer is not a duty to be done, but a reality of who we are...children of God.

Prayer is not about you or me. Prayer is not about our performance in it. Prayer is breath that comes from having the Spirit of Jesus living in us. Since He was a praying temple, He makes us into praying temples. And we, together, as His church, become a house of prayer for the nations.

If you don't know God as your loving Father through Christ, and you don't know or have never prayed to Him as a child, today, Jesus invites You to come to Him. He says, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Turn from your independent spirit. Turn to Jesus and give Him your life, for He gave His life for you. Confess with your mouth that He is Lord, and believe in your heart that He was raised from the dead and now gives His Spirit to you to make you a child who lives in prayerful dependence upon Him.

Many, many years ago, a newborn was placed in my arms. He was just minutes old, his little chest rising and falling, his tiny fingers curling around mine. He had no words, no strength, no self-sufficiency. But he had one thing: breath. And that breath, quiet and unnoticed, was the sign that he was alive and connected to life.

Prayer is to the Christian what breathing is to a newborn baby. We may not always know what to say. Our prayers may be short, jumbled, even silent. But if the Spirit of Christ is in us, we breathe. We cry, “Abba, Father.” We reach out, even in weakness, because He has made us alive.

Don’t wait to feel worthy. Don’t wait to have the right words. Just breathe. Just pray. Because you are His child. And He hears you. And as you pray in the Spirit through the work of Christ, you will glorify your Father in heaven.