Luke 11:1-13

Jesus’ disciples ask him to teach them to pray as John the Baptizer taught his disciples. Jesus accepts the challenge, and begins, “When you pray …” Not if you pray, but when. So, the first part of the lesson is that praying is what Jesus’ disciples do.

He then teaches them a model prayer, Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew’s version, imbedded in the Sermon on the Mount, is slightly different (Matthew 6:9-13). Jesus doesn’t say this is the only prayer we should pray, but the Lord’s Prayer does teach us about prayer in general.

We are to begin prayer, says Jesus, by noticing that God is like a loving parent and we, each of us, all of us, are part of God’s family (“Our Father”). Yet God is also a Holy Mystery that can’t be limited to one image and is deserving of our reverence (“hallowed be thy name”).

Then, we are to orient ourselves to what God wills for God’s Creation, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” But just what is God’s will? That question is worth an entire sermon series, but for now, I’ll note that Jesus doesn’t confuse God’s will with fate or destiny. Rather, when Jesus says, “thy will,” he means God’s desires for God’s world. He describes this with the metaphor, “the kingdom of God;” thus, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth …” The simplest way for Christians to determine what “God’s will” means is to look at Jesus himself. If we do this, we’ll see in Jesus’ life and teachings that God’s will is that we love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves. We’ll see that we are to welcome outcasts, forgive others and accept forgiveness, and be reconciled with our enemies. We’ll see that we are to help those in need regardless of who they are, and that all manner of healing is more important than almost anything else we can do. When we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth,” we pray that we will adjust, adapt, and transform our lives, desires, and hopes to these desires of God for all of God’s world.

Next, Jesus teaches that we are to bring our needs to God: our need for survival and sustenance (our “daily bread”), and our need for forgiveness and reconciliation (“forgive us …, as we forgive others …”). On the one hand, every pronoun is in the plural – our daily bread, not my daily bread. We are praying for the welfare of all. On the other hand, being open and honest with God about our personal, individual fears, needs, and vulnerabilities helps us recognize them and put them in the context of God’s love. Praying is how we form and maintain a relationship with God, and honest communication is always better for relationships.

Finally, we are to remember that, in many ways, the world in which we live does not reflect God’s will, and we pray to be spared those temptations, those “trials,” that might throw us off track.

Jesus follows his model prayer with some especially challenging verses: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” Does Jesus really mean we’ll get whatever we pray for as though God were a giant vending machine in the sky? No. Careful reading shows that Jesus makes only one promise: When we pray, God will give us God’s Spirit.

But what does that mean? When what you really want is for your loved one to survive cancer or for your child to stay off drugs or for people to be treated justly or for the bombs to stop falling, God’s Spirit may not sound like enough of an answer to prayer. I know many people who pray and wonder, “Is anybody listening?”

Søren Kierkegaard said, “The function of prayer is not to influence God but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” That is certainly my own experience. Debie Thomas writes, “…[O]ften … I want God to sweep in and fix everything much more than I want God’s Spirit to fill and accompany me so that I can do my part to heal the world. Resting in God’s yes [to give us the Spirit] requires vulnerability, patience, courage, discipline, and trust — traits I can only cultivate in prayer.”

God’s Spirit is the source of those traits. God’s Spirit is exactly what we need to participate with God in healing the world. Perhaps the precise way prayer changes us is as individual as each one of us, as complex as our complex lives, but the goal is always healing: healing ourselves, healing God’s world.

The old hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” includes these lines:
Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged,
Take it to the Lord in prayer.

I won’t tell anyone that they should never be discouraged. However, I agree with the hymn that we should bring everything to God in prayer. Everything. Not because God will fix everything, but because it means we’re showing up. We’re maintaining the relationship. Nothing we bring to God will surprise God. I realize prayer is in many ways mysterious; how it “works” or changes us is hard to measure or prove but Jesus said “when.” “When you pray…” Not “if.” So we pray, with and without words, on our knees and in real and metaphorical bunkers, in desperation and in gratitude, and we count on the promise that God’s Spirit will change us, heal us, and change and heal the world through us.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Debie Thomas, “When You Pray,” in Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories: Reflections on the Life of Christ (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022).
Brian D. McLaren, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbl6hPBA5rU.