Reading… and Thinking

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." He said to them, "When you pray, say:
'Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.' "

– Luke 11:1-4 (NIV)

It struck me again when reading this passage this time: we have to be taught how to pray.

There is a hint here of how much the Bible leaves unsaid. Nowhere do we have any record of John the Baptist teaching his disciples how to pray. In fact, we have no record of him teaching them much of anything. The records we have are of his public preaching, not of his private teaching.

But apparently John did teach how to pray. All of the twelve were originally John's disciples, so they received this instruction. Yet they still needed to be taught more about how to pray. Which I think is a very important revelation. We keep needing to learn how to pray, as we grow and mature in our faith and in our relationship to God. What was suitable when we were spiritually young is no longer appropriate, or at least is no longer enough.

Whenever I've talked to anyone about praying, I've found that we all have similar difficulties. Our minds wander. We get repetitive. We go through the motions with our minds barely engaged. We fall asleep. We don't feel "connected". But there is an up-side here: we only realize these are problems because sometimes it’s much better – we feel completely engaged, powerfully connected to the Lord. And we wonder why it isn't always like that.

I don't have any magic answers to offer. Just the fact that we all struggle to some degree with prayer, and apparently the disciples did too. I have a feeling that Jesus did NOT struggle, and I think the disciples could tell, which is why they asked him to teach them how to do better.

The answer to their important and very relevant question was “the Lord's prayer” (as we now call it). So it would probably be of great benefit to us to dig into this prayer more deeply. Prayer is very personal, so you need to do your own digging. Sorry, no pat answers!

Take a look at it again. What do YOU find in the Lord's prayer, that will help make your prayers better today than they were yesterday?