Watch the Devotion

Based on 1 Timothy 2:6,7; Luke 11:1-13

The mission of WELS Ministry to the Military is to make God’s Word and sacraments available to our actively serving military members and their families. Oftentimes, we can’t be in all the places our warfighters are serving. When they are underway or deployed, we train men and women to serve as Distinctive Religious Group Leaders or Religious Lay Leaders. We train them how to prepare and lead Bible study, how to prepare and lead worship, and even to administer the Lord’s Supper.

Before we go through all of that training, we start with developing a personal devotional habit and personal prayer habit. What I’ve found is that many of our sailors, soldiers, Marines, Coasties, and airmen and airwomen who have gone through this training have shared, “We really have not been taught how to pray.”

They’re not alone. Even Jesus’ disciples had to ask their teacher, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Before we get into how to pray, it is good to pause and thank our Father in heaven for the blessing of prayer, and the fact that we can pray in the first place. Paul in his letter to Timothy writes, “There is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people” (1 Timothy 2:5,6a). If Christ had not paid our ransom with his lifeblood, we would still be separated from a holy God by our sins—there would be no communication with him. Since Christ paid that ransom, he set us free from our sins. He made us to be holy and righteous. We are able to stand before the throne of the Almighty God with our petitions and prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving!

The second reason we can come before God in prayer is because we have a child-Father relationship. At your baptism God the Father adopted you as his child. While earthly fathers do their best to listen and do what is best for their children, the Father always listens, always hears, always answers in a way that is best for you, his child. This is why Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father in heaven.” He tenderly invites us to approach him as children approach their fathers.

Next, Jesus teaches us to pray for those things that God the Father has already promised us. Did you know that when Jesus teaches us to pray the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11, all the petitions are imperatives in the original language? That’s right! Jesus teaches us to tell our Father to give us what he’s already promised us. Take the Seventh Petition, for example: “Father, deliver us from evil.” Martin Luther teaches us in his catechism that when we pray this petition, we’re telling our Father in heaven to keep all evil away from us—anything that would harm our bodies or souls, our property or reputation.

But for you whose vocation is warfighter, you have seen and experienced evil descend on you, your battle buddies, and those under your command—in training accidents, in combat, in sickness of body and mind. How do we pray when evil comes? Luther teaches us that when we pray, “Deliver us from evil,” we are saying, “Father, if you in your wisdom allow evil to come into my life or the lives of those around me, then do as you promise: make this evil to work out for our eternal good. I may not see it now, but you promise it, so do it!” And what if someone faces death? Then we pray, “Father, deliver us from evil. In your good, eternal timing, bring us safely out of this valley of tears into the light and joy of your presence in heaven through death —deliver us from evil once and for all.”

The wonderful blessing and joy in prayer comes when you add prayer to your daily devotional habit. When you read the Scriptures, God speaks to you. He tells you exactly what his will is. He tells you exactly what he promises to give you. As you read those promises from your Father, pause and pray, “Father, you have promised me this, that, and the other thing, for you have said it here in your words to me. Give me what you have promised so that I may be blessed through it!”

I have found that the Psalms have really helped me pray God’s will in my prayers. David and the other psalm writers teach us how to pray and to tell God, “Do what you have promised me! Be the God you reveal yourself to be for me, so that I may receive what you have promised me!”

Prayer:

Written and recorded by Rev. Paul Horn, WELS National Civilian Chaplain to the Military, San Diego, California.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. Note: Scripture reading footnotes are clickable only in the web version.