Amen. Please be seated. We turn now to Luke chapter 11, verses 1 through 13. Again, here we find the Lord Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray. We're gonna hopefully take some very practical applications for ourselves from this teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ on how it is that we ought to pray. So again, Luke 11, verses 1 through 13. And it came to pass that as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as Sean also taught his disciples. And he said unto them, when ye pray, say, our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. give us day by day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil and he said unto them which of you shall have a friend and shall go unto him at midnight and say unto him friend lend me three loaves For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. And he from within shall answer and say, trouble me not. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. And I say unto you, ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth. And to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?" Oh, this is God's Word as we turn to consider it together this afternoon. We talked this morning again about what it means to pray without ceasing, what it is to live in this attitude of keeping God ever before us, of rejoicing and praying to Him and to giving thanks to Him in all circumstances. Again, this afternoon we consider what it means and how we ought to have focused and intentional times of prayer as we see our Lord Himself doing in this text. and as he teaches his disciples to do." Isn't it a wonderful statement that one of his disciples speaks up and says, Lord, teach us to do that. As he sees his master praying, he says, Lord, would you teach us to pray, even as John also taught his disciples? And oughtn't it not to be the very cry of our own hearts, Lord, teach us to pray. I wonder if anyone in the room would say they have this thing called prayer figured out. I wonder if anybody in the room would say that we don't have space to grow in prayer. I wonder if I asked you, could you do a class on prayer for some young believers? Or even maybe better, if I just said to you, hey, this young believer just came to faith in Christ, wants to know how to pray. I'd like for you to go in and work with him or her on what it is to pray. I wonder what your true gut response would be to me making that request of you. I wonder if your heart wouldn't start racing and your gut start clenching and you start saying, how can I get out of this conversation? Because I don't have anything to offer. And perhaps you would have something to offer, but certainly we all can grow in our prayer life. Certainly we all can learn better how to pray, how we ought to go about this practice of prayer. And so we say with this disciple here, Lord, teach us to pray. And isn't it wonderful? Sometimes we think, well, prayer is such a simple and base-level thing about the Christian life that if I were to ask Jesus, teach me to pray, he might say, what? Do you not yet know how to pray? He might disregard us. He might say, haven't you already picked that up? But he doesn't to his disciple here. He doesn't disregard him. He doesn't. He doesn't shame him or embarrass him, but instead what does he do? He he then teaches the disciples how to pray and he does the same to us right as we come and say Lord teach us to pray. He teaches us in his word how we ought to pray. There's four things that I want to see. Hear us to see this afternoon here about prayer that the Lord Jesus teaches us. He teaches us to be intentional to pray. And then he teaches us to be intentional about how we pray. And then he teaches us to be bold in our prayer. And he teaches us to be persistent in our prayer. So first, we see here that Jesus teaches us to be intentional to pray, right? The first thing that we ought to notice in this text is that Luke tells us in verse one, that Jesus was praying in a certain place. It came to pass that as he was praying in a certain place, we might be tempted to run right over those words and think they're just giving us context for the story. Jesus was praying, he was praying somewhere, keep moving past that. But I don't think that is what the Spirit intends for us here. Those words are there on purpose, and I think they're very intentional to say, Jesus prayed in a certain place. All right, now we know that Jesus traveled around. He had itinerant ministry. He was always moving around, and yet it would seem that as he's moving around, he found certain places to pray. He chose certain places that he would pray. A little later, much later toward the end of this gospel of Luke in chapter 22, just after Christ has celebrated the Passover with his disciples and instituted the Lord's Supper, they go out from that upper room and it says in Luke 22, 39, and he came out as he was want, to the Mount of Olives as disciples followed Him there. As He was want, as was His custom, as was His normal practice, they went to the Mount of Olives. And I don't think that it's saying this was just kind of one of His favorite places to go for an evening stroll, right? Because here in that text in Luke 22, He's going to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. And so it was his want, it was his practice, it was his custom, when he was in that region, to go to the Garden of Gethsemane, to the Mount of Olives, to pray. That was a place that he went to pray. And here in Luke 11, we see again, as he is in the region of Bethany, seemingly, because he's just been at Mary and Martha's house, that he's going to a certain place to pray. And I point this out to say that we see here Jesus intentionally finding a special place that he can pray. And then in Mark 1.35, we read of Jesus, in the morning, rising up a great while before the day, he went out and departed into a solitary place and there prayed. Again, we see him going to a place where he can focus upon prayer and not be distracted by the cares of his ministry and the cares of life, a place where he can go and be alone before the Lord. But also we see that he did so great while before day that he rose up in the morning to go out and pray." And here we see, I don't think, again, that Mark's point is to say, well, Jesus happened to get up early that morning and so he went out to pray. I think he's showing us what Christ's pattern was, which was to have a time for prayer. And he chose to get up early and to go out and to pray, right? You begin to see the picture of what we are learning by Christ's own example is that he is very intentional, even about the practical matters of prayer. that he intentionally chooses a place to go and pray. He intentionally has a time that is set apart for prayer. And I can't help noticing, I've already mentioned it, that Luke places this and telling us the story of Christ just after he tells the story about Mary and Martha. Now we're familiar with this story, I think many of us. If not, just look up a few verses at chapter 10, verse 38, and it says this, now it came to pass as they went that he entered into a certain village and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her. Martha is cumbered with her serving. She's distracted with her serving. She is so busy with the hospitality side of making sure everything's going okay within the household that she's missing out on the guest who is Christ. And her sister Mary is sitting at his feet and being taught. And Jesus says, Mary hath chosen the good part, the needful thing. And then just after those words, Jesus is praying in a certain place. What is Jesus doing in the certain place? He's sitting at the feet of his father, just as Mary sat at his feet. He is finding a place where he can get away from the distractions, where he can get away from the things that would call his attention away, and he can sit in communion with his Father, pouring out his heart before his Father, pleading for strength for the task that is set before him, making known his desires before the Father, giving praise and thanksgiving to the Father, right? Jesus is taking a place that he can go out and plead with the Father. Jesus, I believe by His example, teaches us to be intentional to pray. And we can begin very simply on that front. If you find yourself living a prayerless life, if you find yourself never going before the Lord for prayer, I would encourage you to consider that the very Son of God The God-man, both divine and human, needs to have these times of going to be with his Father and to pray for strength, to pray that he would sustain him in his ministry task. And if the very Son of God needs to pray, certainly you and I, beloved, need to come before the Father and pour out our hearts and plead with him that he would strengthen us to live the life that he has called us to live and to guide us through it. And so certainly we can begin by simply saying, if you find yourself not praying, the Lord Jesus would show you by example, it must be a part of your life. But he teaches us more than simply that we need to pray. He teaches us that we need to think about when and where we pray. All right, again, we talked this morning about pray without ceasing. We're living in a constant attitude of prayer, and yet we must set apart, I believe, certain times for prayer. Jesus says that we ought to be intentional to think about where should I go to pray? Where can I go to get away from the distractions of this life? And when should I pray? When can I get away from the distractions of life? Where and when can I go that I am least likely to be interrupted so that I can commune with God? and pour out my heart before him. That's a reference to Psalm 62a, yeah, we haven't sung it, we're going to later, but God there says, trust in the Lord and pour out your heart before him. He beckons us to do that. That's not something that we do in the course of our normal day at work or with kids or whatever, right? Pour out your heart is not pray without ceasing. We need these moments. of communing with God and pouring out our heart before Him. If we are going to do that, we must be intentional about praying, right? We need to be intentional about praying. And so we first think, when will I pray? For most of us, Jesus' example in Mark 1.35 is very helpful. To rise early in the morning is the most likely time to be undistracted by the cares of this world. To rise early before the day gets started, before the emails start coming in, the calls start coming in. If you're a parent, to rise before your children, if possible, before they begin to call you away. to rise early in the morning to pray. But others may be at different stages of life, and maybe early morning is not the best time, or it's not as necessary. And so I won't say that's a hard and fast rule, though I think it tends to be helpful for most of us. The point is, think about it. Right? That's the starting point. Think about it. When am I most likely to be able to carve out time to sit before the Lord? To read his word, to hear him speak to me in it, and then to respond to him in prayer. When can I do this? Perhaps we might even, as we read about Daniel this morning in Daniel 6, consider setting aside multiple times a day. I will pray morning, noon, and night. I will carve out time where I'm going to go before the Lord. It's certainly a worthy aspiration for us. Just to consider doing that, but at least that we would say I'm going to have one time of prayer, one time of the day that I carve out for prayer to make a plan and to stick to it. Because the reality is, beloved, if we do not plan to pray, we will not pray. All right, if we do not plan to pray, we think we will. That's the problem. We think we will. We think we'll be drawn to it, we think we'll naturally do it, but we will not. If we do not plan to pray, we will not pray. But a second, though, I actually think it's very helpful to consider, where will I pray? Where will I do this? Where can I find a place where I am least likely to be distracted, where I can most helpfully be cut off from the distractions in this life. Our forefathers, our fathers in the faith would talk often about going to their prayer closet, right? Having a place where you can be closeted away with the Lord. I do pray in my closet. That's where I go in the mornings to pray. We have a walk-in closet, so it's very helpful. I'm surrounded on three sides by clothing, and I have a little table and a little folding chair. And this is the place where I can go in there in the morning and I can be closed off from the distractions of whatever might come. I tend to try to be up early before everyone else anyway. But just being up without people distracting me doesn't mean my mind won't be distracted. There's plenty of things in the world that can distract. But where is it? I have a very good friend. who walks to a park bench so that he can pray as he walks and sit on the bench and pray. That works better for him, a place where he can be undistracted and sit before the Lord. But where will you pray? Having a set time and place for prayer will help protect us against the distractions of this life. But the other thing it does is it can help us to form a habit of prayer. Because we human beings are creatures of habit. We tend to do the things we tend to do, right? We are creatures of habit. And so if we can say, I'm going to pray at this time, in this place, every day, we will be much more likely to pray every day, right? We'll be much more likely to go before the Lord because if it's sporadic, again, we will be less likely to do it. And so if we don't plan to pray, we will not pray. Jesus teaches us to be intentional to pray. But then, second here, we see that Jesus teaches us to be intentional about how we pray. And so as He begins to teach them, He gives them this pattern for prayer that we're all familiar with. We often refer to it as the Lord's Prayer. We may be more familiar with the version He gives in Matthew 6 in the Sermon on the Mount, where the words are just a little bit different than they are here. But here he does, he lays out how to pray, beginning in verse two. He said unto them, when ye pray, say, our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, right? He just lays out this prayer for his disciples. I think the question that we have to ask ourselves is, what's Jesus' purpose in giving these words to his disciples? He says, when you pray, say. And so is he simply saying, this is our rote prayer, that if we memorize this prayer and go before the Father, these are the exact words that we are supposed to pray before our God. I think certainly this is, of course, a wonderful prayer. It is Jesus' own words that we can pray back to the Father, and yet I don't think His ultimate purpose is to say, simply go find your place to pray and say these words and be done. If you look on, even on your order of worship, I printed for us, or had, I didn't print it, actually, sorry, I'm taking credit that I don't deserve. I asked to be printed in here, Larger Catechism, number 187. It says, how is the Lord's Prayer to be used? The Lord's Prayer is not only for direction as a pattern according to which we are to make other prayers, but may also be used as a prayer so that it be done with understanding, faith, reverence, and other graces necessary to the right performance of the duty of prayer. All right, so what are we saying there? We're saying it's not only for direction, but the inference there is that it can be for direction and for a pattern for our prayer. We can also use this specific prayer as long as it's done with reverence and faith and the other graces, as long as we're thinking about what we are saying. As long as we're considering what we're saying, we're praying these words from the heart, they can be. But I want to point out the fact that I believe Jesus is giving us a pattern for prayer. He's giving us categories for our own prayer life when he gives us these words here in Luke chapter 11. And so we can in our own prayer times, and I believe should in our own prayer times, work through the petitions that Christ gives us here in this prayer he teaches his disciples. And so just think about it with me for just a moment. When you pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven. Jesus would have us begin by remembering the gospel. Isn't that wonderful? He has us begin by calling God Father. How can we call the God of all creation? the glorious and holy and high and exalted One. How can we call Him Father, especially as sinners, especially as those who have rebelled against Him? The only way that we go to God and say, Our Father, is because Christ's blood has been shed for us. because Christ has offered himself as a sacrifice for our sins so that we can be forgiven, so that we can have peace with God, so that we can be called the beloved children of God, right? And so Jesus would have us to remember at the very front of our prayers, consider God's mercy and grace to you that he beckons you to come and call him Father because of what Christ, because of what I have done for you, Christ would say. We remember the gospel, we remember who it is that we are coming before, but we also remember that He is high and exalted, for He is our Father in heaven. And we pray, hallowed be Thy name. And so we pray in adoration, we pray and give praise to God for who He is, the glory and wonder of who He is, the wonder of all that He has done, His mighty works and His great power. We pray to God and praise Him for His attributes and the character of who He is. We begin by remembering that it is by God's grace that we can come before Him, and then we praise Him, we adore Him. And of course, if you, I think I'll pause there and just say, in order to be able to do that, you have to get to know who God is, right? If you're actually going to adore Him, you have to understand what is adorable about God. And the way we learn that is by seeing Him in His Word as He has revealed Himself to us, right? It is by getting to know Him in His Word. And so even in order to do this, we know that we must be living in God's Word and letting it, Hiding it away in our heart so that we will know who he is so that we might even be able to adore him properly. And so we begin with the gospel that we come to him as a father. We cry out to him in adoration, and then we pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. And so then we begin, we've adored him as the great, high and holy God, the glorious one. And we now say, Lord, make my life conformed to your will. Because I think when we pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, we begin by praying, thy kingdom come and thy will be done in my own heart, in my own life. May my life reflect your kingship, Lord. May my life reflect the fact that you rule over it. May it show that that is true and the way that it shows that that is true is that your will would be done in my life as it is in heaven. And that's not the ascent to God's sovereign will and His providence. That's the, may my life be according to your revealed will, to your commands in your scripture. And of course, even as we pray, Lord, make it true in my life, we're also praying, Lord, make it true in the world. And so this is a place where we lament the fact that we live in a fallen world. And it is full of evil, and it is full of sin, and it's full of oppression and mistreatment. And we cry out, God, bring your kingdom here. Make it evident throughout the earth. Make your rule evident in all of the earth. May your will be done throughout the earth. This is where we're praying. This is where we're praying for not only our own lives, but for the world around us. to exist according to what God has revealed in his word. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth, and then give us day by day our daily bread, right? We ask God, provide all that we need. Provide all that we need. We know that everything comes from your hand. Provide all that we need and then forgive us our sins. For we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us. And so we pray confession. We confess our sins before the Lord. We ask for his forgiveness. We ask for His grace and strength to seek repentance, to turn away from our sin, and to turn to holiness in His power and by His grace. Forgive us our sins. And then we pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Lord, this world is full of temptations. Please put a hedge around me. Leave me not into temptation. Protect me against temptation. And then when I find myself in it, Lord, deliver me from it. Deliver me from evil. And we could talk about, you know, we could have a sermon on each one of those petitions. We could build this out a lot. I commend to you the Westminster Larger Catechism as it goes through each one of these petitions and lays out what does it mean to pray these things. I commend it to your study. I commend it that you would use it even in your prayer time, that it could help guide you as a pattern. But the point that I want us to see today is that the Lord teaches us to be intentional about how we pray. that we would think about the pattern for our prayer, that when we go to sit down in prayer, that we would have a plan even for how it is that we are going to pray. The idea of prayer is not empty your mind and then say whatever happens to float into it. Sometimes we're taught that that's what prayer is, I think, in some kind of mystical way, that if I can just empty myself out, and then just whatever comes up, I will pray it. That's not the idea. In fact, it's just the opposite. The idea is fill your mind with God's Word, and then pray according to what it says, all right? And so fill your mind with what Jesus says about prayer, this pattern and then pray according to it in your own closet, at your own time, and at your own place that you have set apart for prayer, but to have a plan. Some people like to use the the ACTS acronym as well, right? Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. It's basically the exact same categories that Jesus lays out here, just a little bit differently worded and ordered. That's a wonderful pattern as well. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. The point that I want to bring out from here that the Lord is teaching us here, I believe, is to think about it. Plan for your prayers. Have a pattern for your prayers. We've already said if we don't plan to pray, we will not pray. I also believe that if we don't plan how we will pray, we will give up on prayer very quickly. because you will get bored in prayer. You will get distracted in prayer. You will falter in prayer and you will say, I guess I just said I'm not good at that and I'm just not going to do it. But I do. I honestly believe. That if we plan how we will pray, if we say I will take the Lord's pattern here and I will and I will lay it out and I will pray according to it. We will be more likely to remain faithful to pray. Again, we will have a pattern. We will not get bored. We will not be as easily distracted. I don't want to say we won't get distracted. We won't be as easily distracted. We'll be much less likely to get discouraged and to stop with our prayers. Again, if we consider that the Lord teaches us that we ought to live lives of prayer. By His own example, if He teaches us that we need to carve out time to intentionally pray, then we need to think about how we will do that. We need to think about when and where. We need to think about what the pattern of that prayer will be so that we might live our lives in these times of focused prayer. Before the Lord and so the Lord teaches us here that that we need to think about We need to be intentional to pray. We need to be intentional about how we will pray the third thing that the Lord teaches us here is that we need to be bold in prayer and In fact, he teaches us to be bold and persistent at the same time. We're gonna take those as separate ideas here, but that's the point of verses five through 13 in this text. Pick back up with me in verse five so you remember what he said. And he said unto them, which of you shall have a friend and shall go unto him at midnight and say unto him, friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine in his journey has come to me and I have nothing to set before him. And he from within shall answer and say, trouble me not, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. So get the picture here that Jesus is painting in this parable. You have a friend, or you are the friend, I guess, in this case. You are a friend, you are a person, and a friend has shown up on a journey and stopped at your house, but you don't have any food to give to your friend that has stopped. And so you go to another friend's house and knock on the door to ask for some bread that you can give to the friend who comes on a journey. And Jesus says, your friend is going to, at first, answer, leave me alone. It's midnight, it's the middle of the night, my kids are in bed, I don't want to be distracted by this. Go figure it out somewhere else. But Jesus says, listen, he eventually will give you the bread, not because he is your friend, but because of your importunity. I don't know about you, importunity is not a word I use every day in my common language. And so what does importunity mean? The idea of importunity is persistent to the point of annoyance, right? And so the idea is that this friend that comes to knock on the door, A, is persistent in knocking on the door, is bold in knocking on the door, right? The Greek word carries a connotation of shamelessness. It actually comes from the word for shame. It's a shamelessness. So it's the fact that you would come in the middle of the night and knock on the door and wake up my family to ask me for bread. The idea that you would come, that you would knock, that you would continue to knock shamelessly upon my door makes the friend say, this must be important. I will take him some bread. And so what is Jesus teaching us about prayer when he tells this story about an unfortunate friend who comes and bangs on the door shamelessly at midnight? What is Jesus teaching us? He is teaching us that we need to come boldly to the throne of grace. That we come before the Lord with a shameless boldness. right, crying out to the Lord, pouring out our hearts before Him, praying for the desires of our heart. Of course, we pray in Jesus' name, and so we must remember that. As I say, desires of our hearts, we pray for desires that are aligned with Jesus' name, things that we can pray in Jesus' name. But if we can pray them in Jesus' name, Jesus says, bring them boldly. knock shamelessly upon the door of heaven, calling the Lord to help in your need, right? Praying for mercy, for help, for provision, for guidance, for forgiveness, for everything. And I think this is very instructive for us in our day. A, we live in an age of immediate gratification. We think we need to get what we want immediately. We're not given to a persistence in seeking anything. And so when we pray to the Lord, often we pray once and we are done. We pray once and we give it up and we don't pray anymore for the things that we need, for the mercy that we are crying out for, for the help that we are crying out for, the desire that we had before the Lord. And sometimes the reason that we don't want to continue is because we feel this shame. I must be wrong, right? Or I must be bothering the Lord. I don't want to be an annoyance to the Lord. I don't want to keep coming before Him. And Jesus here says, no, come boldly before the throne. Come shamelessly before the throne. Make your requests known before God. Sometimes we might think, well, this is too much for me to ask of God. But Jesus would teach us, again, as long as you could pray it in Jesus' name, as long as it's not out of accord with the revealed will of God, come and pray boldly. Pray big prayers. Ask God for big things, because He, of course, is the God of all creation. Nothing is impossible with God. Nothing is too big. God and so don't come shamefully before him but come boldly before him and then Jesus goes on he says I say verse 9 I say unto you ask and it shall be given you seek and you shall find knock and it shall be open to you right Jesus says come and ask Come and seek. Come and not come boldly before the Lord and lay out your requests before him. Lay out your desires before him. Lay out your needs before him. Do not be ashamed to come before him. Do not be embarrassed to come before him. But boldly become come before the Lord. And ask for his help. Lay your petitions before him. But then he also teaches us here why it is. that we come boldly before God doesn't he in verse 11 if a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father will he give him a stone or if he asked a fish will for a fish I will for a fish give him a serpent Or if he shall ask for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? What does Jesus teach us there? He teaches us that when we come before the Lord to lay out our petitions and lay out our desires before him, we come before a loving father. We come before a perfectly wise and loving and merciful father. He says, which of you fathers does not give his children the things that they need when they come and ask for them? Which of you sinful fathers? does not give his children the things that they need. And why do you doubt that your Father in heaven would give you the things that you need, right? And so he says, you're coming to a loving heavenly father, a father, in fact, who gave his own son as a sacrifice for your sins to show the depth of his love for you, right? Paul says in Romans chapter eight, he who did not spare his own son, how will he not give us all thing? Jesus upon the cross is the proof to us that God loves us and that He will provide everything that we need because He's gone to the extent of giving His only begotten Son as a sacrifice so that we might be forgiven, so that we might be called His beloved children. We come before this all-powerful, all-knowing Father who knows exactly what we need. Right, and Jesus is saying, because we know that's who we're coming before, we need not fear to come boldly to him and make our request, to ask for the things that we need, and even the things that we desire, that we know are not out of accord with his will. And isn't it wonderful, even here he speaks to the Father, directly speaks to the Father, providing the need that they have at the moment, All right, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? We don't expect Jesus to be that specific right there, do we? We expect Him to say, how much more will your Heavenly Father give you the things that you need? But He specifically says, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask? Well, what did they ask? Right, if you think about this whole thing in context, what did they ask? They asked, Lord, teach us to pray. Right and doesn't the Holy Spirit teach us to pray by giving us the word of God doesn't the Holy Spirit direct us in our prayer doesn't the Holy Spirit even pray for us. when we don't know what to pray. So even here, Jesus says, ask your father and he will give. And specifically, even to your current need, he will give you the spirit who will teach you to pray, who will guide you in your prayer, who even will pray for you. your time of not knowing how to pray in your time of need right Jesus says come boldly to the throne of grace because you come before a loving father who knows your frame he knows you are but dust and he has compassion on you he will give you what you need And then the fourth thing Jesus teaches us here is that we must be persistent in prayer. I noted already that that word, importunity, the idea of that parable of the friend knocking on the door, a part of it is a boldness and a shamelessness, but a part of it is also a persistence. It's a persistence to the point of shamelessness. persistence to the point of annoyance, we said, to the continual knocking and let me in and help me out with this need that I have. And then Jesus, as he commands us to ask and to seek and to knock, even those verbs there, are in a tense that implies a continuing action. And so he says, keep on asking, keep on knocking, keep on seeking, right? Jesus is teaching us here to be persistent in our prayers, to not give up on our prayers, but to continue asking. We heard it in the parable that we read from Luke chapter 18 as well, didn't we? In the story about the unjust judge, this widow who is pleading her case before the judge, and he refuses to help her, but she keeps coming back, and she keeps coming back, and she keeps coming back, and he finally says, okay, I'm done, and you can have your judgment because you wouldn't give up. And the implication of Jesus here is, right, if the unjust judge will give, based on this woman's persistence in coming to Him, how much more will your loving and just Father give you what you need as you continue to ask Him? In Isaiah 62, verses six and seven, the Lord says, I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace, day or night. Ye that make mention of the Lord keep not silence and give Him no rest. till he establisheth, until he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth." I love that statement there, give the Lord no rest from the mouth of the Lord himself. Give me no rest. continue to come before me, continue to plead my promises, continue to plead my word to me, continue to ask, continue to not, continue to seek, do not give up in prayer, right? The Lord beckons us to come before Him and to come before Him persistently. And the question that may come into our mind, especially as I've just talked about the fact that this God is such a loving and kind and benevolent Father, why is it then that God doesn't just answer our prayers immediately? Why must we persist in prayer? If God holds all things in His hands, if God is merciful and kind, why doesn't He just answer our prayers the first time that we ask? Why does He say that we are going to have to be persistent in prayer, and in fact call us and beckon us to be persistent in prayer? I don't claim to be able to tell you all the reasons why God does the things that He does. Clearly that would be foolish of me, but I can point to, I think, some reasons that God requires us to be persistent in prayer. One is that God is sovereign over all things. God has ordained whatsoever comes to pass. God rules and reigns over all things. Everything is held together in His hands, and God is perfect in His wisdom. He knows everything, and He knows what is best in every situation. That's kind of the idea of wisdom, to know what is best in any situation. His wisdom is perfect. Right? There is no lack in it. And so what we can take from that is that God's timing is perfect. One reason that God makes us persist sometimes in prayer is that it's not time for the answer yet. It's not time for the thing to be granted yet. There's a better time for the thing to be granted yet. And so we persist in prayer because we trust that God will give his answer in his appropriate time. Whether that answer is yes or no, he will give the answer in his appropriate time. I think, though, another reason that God would require us and beckon us to be persistent in prayer is that it teaches us our dependence upon God. It reinforces for us our dependence upon God. When we persist in prayer, we're remembering, Lord, I need you in this. I need you in this. I need you in this. Please help me in this. We remember our dependence upon the Lord as we persist in asking for the things that we need and the things that we desire. And there's a very real reality in this persistence in prayer where we are drawn nearer to the Lord. We said even this morning that prayer is one of the gifts that God has given us that helps us to set our affections above, to set our hearts and our minds upon Him. And so the more we pray, the more we are drawn toward the Lord who answers prayer, the Lord who hears prayer, And so when He withholds His answer, He's beckoning us closer to Himself. As He withholds His answer and requires that we persist in prayer and that we keep coming before Him in prayer, He's beckoning us to Himself. He's drawing us to Himself. Come to me in prayer. Come to me in prayer. Come to me in prayer. And the reality is, too, we must remember, sometimes God's answer is no. Our problem is that sometimes we take no too quickly, or we assume no too quickly, I should say. We shouldn't say tech no, but we assume no too quickly. But as long as whatever we are praying for, again, is not out of accord with God's revealed will, with what he says in his word, we may persist in that prayer until he says yes or no evidently in our circumstances and whatever it is that we are beckoning for. We continue to persist in that prayer until He gives us the answer, whether it's granting the desire, whether it's granting the petition or not granting the petition very clearly, right? We should not assume no from the Lord too quickly. We should persist in our prayer. Beloved, as we consider this teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ on prayer, as He teaches us by His example, as He lays it out specifically for us, I wonder if these words could be used to describe your prayer life. I wonder if intentional is a word that could be used to describe your prayer life, that you intentionally pray. That you intentionally carve out time to come before the Lord. That you are intentionally following Jesus' example in finding a place and a time to pray. Or I wonder if sporadic would be a better word. Or even lackadaisical would be a better word. I wonder if the word bold can be used to describe your prayer life. that you are truly banging upon the door of heaven, praying that the Lord would do mighty things, wondrous things, persistent. I wonder if persistent can be used to describe your prayer life. And that you are not quick to give up, but are coming ever more and more before the Lord. Right? Here's the thing. I think we ought to be stopped in our tracks by the fact that the God of all creation, the high and holy one who rules over all things, the God who has created all that exists, the God who is holy, holy, holy, righteous and just in His character, beckons us to come into His presence. The one true and living God, this greatest of all beings, says, come unto Me and pray. Come unto Me and pour out your heart. Come unto me and make your desires known. Right? I wonder if it ever just stops you in your tracks that this is the reality when we say the word prayer. Or if it's just something that you do. Or just something that you assume. But that no God in heaven says come. God who knows all things, God who sees all things, God who can do all things says, come and ask me and you will receive. Come and knock on my door and I will answer. Seek me and you will find me and all the benefits that are available to you, all the benefits that you need, I will give to you. What a privilege we have to come before the Lord in prayer. The reason that we should want to be intentional to pray is because God gives us this great privilege. He says, you can come into my presence. The reason we should be intentional about how we go about our prayer is because we are coming before the High and Holy One, so we should be careful to pray in the way that He wants us to pray, but also so that we, again, might not get discouraged in it, but that we might continue in prayer, continue to come before Him. The reason that we are bold in prayer is, again, because God has said, come boldly before my throne, because the God of all creation, the God in heaven says, come to me. And the reason that we're persistent is because he says, keep coming to me. Please keep coming to me. It is truly mind boggling that God says these things to us, isn't it? May it stir our hearts to pray. Let's go to the Lord now and pray. Would you please stand with me? Lord, our great God, as we consider the wonder of the truth that you call us into your presence, we are truly humbled by it. We are truly, it is truly mind boggling that you, the one true and living God, the great high and holy one, would call us creatures. Us sinners, even, to come before your throne of grace, to come before you in prayer, to seek you in prayer, to know you in prayer, to lay out our hearts before you in prayer, O Lord. I pray, O God, that the great privilege of prayer would not be lost upon us. that it would not become a drab thing, it would not become a ho-hum thing, but that it would always be for us a great privilege and a great wonder that we get to come before you, and come before you confident that you hear us, and that even that you desire to hear us, that you desire to give us. the things that we need. And even as your word would say to us that you desire to give them to us in answer to prayer, Lord, make us a praying people. Give us wisdom and thinking about how we ought to pray, when we ought to pray, where we ought to pray. Give us boldness in coming before you. Give us persistence in coming before you, O Lord, our God. Help us, Father, to live in this great privilege that you have given us. We ask it in Christ's name.