He Taught Us to Pray (Luke 11:1–4) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

How would you describe prayer? ‘Well,’ you might say, ‘it all depends on what you mean. Do you mean just praying or really praying?’ It’s not all that difficult to mutter under our breath some heavenward wish, like, ‘Get me out of this traffic jam,’ or ‘Help me pass this test.’ One need not have much religion to offer those kinds of prayers.

But to really pray, to pray with clarity, effectiveness, joy, consistency for things that matter and last, then that’s a different thing. Yet should it be a different matter for any of us who know the living God through Christ?

Paul Miller, in his excellent book, A Praying Life, explains the struggle with praying. “Our natural desire to pray comes from Creation. We are made in the image of God. Our inability to pray comes from the fall. Evil has marred the image. We want to talk to God but can’t. The friction of our desire to pray, combined with our badly damaged prayer antennae, leads to constant frustration. It’s as if we’ve had a stroke” [A Praying Life, 15].

Enter Jesus, the Savior of sinners, and the consummate man of prayer who was asked by His disciples, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.” Why did they ask? Because, like us, they could just pray but they wanted to learn to really pray. Jesus didn’t chide them for their inability in prayer or their ignorance of what to pray. Rather He gave them a framework for their praying. It’s often called “The Lord’s Prayer,” but that should be reserved for the high priestly prayer of John 17. Jesus designed this model to help us as His followers to really pray.

Jesus teaches us how to really pray. So let’s not be satisfied with just uttering a few words here or there and calling it our prayer life. Let’s really pray as Jesus taught us. But what does that look like? Let’s consider the Model Prayer for help.

1. Immediate observations

A few things need our attention up front if we’re to understand the model prayer. To begin with, we really pray when we feel the weight of our neediness. The disciples had observed Jesus praying as a regular part of His life (e.g. 3:21; 5:16; 6:12; 9:18, 28; 10:21). He prayed so they needed to as well. The neediness is brought out by the use of the imperative, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Unless we recognize that we’re needy people we’ll never get far in praying.

Second, the model prayer is a framework not an exhaustive book on praying. With this framework, Jesus explains categories for prayer. We can divide them into two focal points: the God-centeredness of prayer (v. 2) and the God-dependence through prayer (vv.3–4).

Third, the model prayer, while very useful in private praying, emphasizes corporate prayer. We see this by the repeated use of plural pronouns by Jesus: ‘give us, forgive us, we ourselves, lead us not.’ John Onwuchekwa, in his new book, Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church, confesses, “I can just completely skip over the tension of praying first-person plural pronouns and believe that my relationship with my brother has absolutely nothing to do with God” [63]. Jesus, instead, taught us to pray together with the body of Christ in view.

Fourth, Jesus establishes priorities for prayer. It’s not that it’s wrong to pray about other things. This is an outline, as we’ve noted, not comprehensive. Yet what Jesus does is to point out what’s most important for us to pray about when we’re corporately seeking the Lord’s face. John O is right, “It’s possible to pray for things that are good and acceptable, while still effectively asking God to fund our idolatry. Our self-centeredness is like gravity; it pulls us down. Jesus is teaching us to aim higher. He wants our prayers to soar” (50). So we need these God-centered and God-dependent priorities.

Before we look at details of praying, let’s see how this model reveals details about us.

2. How you pray reveals the way that you see and depend upon God

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