Our scripture reading and our text are Luke 11, verses 1 through 13. Luke 11, 1 through 13, we'll read that portion now. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you pray, Say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation. And he said to them, which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer from within, do not bother me. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Let's pray a moment. Lord, it is our prayer, even as the disciples said to Thee when You and Jesus ministered on this earth, we say now, Lord, teach us to pray. Help us to begin to understand some of the principles of prayer and encourage us Encourage us to pray to you. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. It has been said for prayer, prayer for a child of God is like breathing, the breathing of his soul. Prayer could be called that, the breathing of the Christian's soul. If listening and reading to the word is like eating, or physical eating, then prayer can be likened to breathing. And by prayer, by that we mean really, really talking to God. Really talking to Him. Coming into harmony with Him and opening up to Him and sharing our life with Him and making our concerns His. Not just reciting holy words at the sky, but really talking to Him. It's the breath of our soul. Have you been holding your breath? We know what happens physically if we hold our breath or try to hold our breath for too long. The same thing is true with regard to prayer, the breath of our soul. Martin Luther once said that prayer is so much part of being a Christian that the one who feels no need to pray ought not consider himself a Christian. And when we hear that, maybe our heart jumps a little, as mine did when I read it. Ought not consider himself a Christian, but notice Martin Luther says, not the one who has a weak prayer life, not the one who has faults in his prayer life, but the one who finds no need at all to pray. He ought not consider himself a Christian. From another point of view, our prayer life is indicative of our spiritual health. If our prayer is frequent and fervent, then our spiritual health is good. And if our prayer life is infrequent and not very fervent, then Our spiritual life is rather weak. According to this, how would you analyze your spiritual health? We need to ask ourselves those kinds of hard questions sometimes. How is our prayer life? And then from that, we can judge how is our spiritual life in general? What's your analysis? Or more to the point, more to, The point, what is God's analysis of your prayer life? Uncomfortable thoughts like these move me to say, Lord, teach me to pray. And I trust it does, they do for you as well. That's part of the reason I chose to preach on this tonight, to hopefully strengthen and trust that it will strengthen my own personal prayer life, but in that also to strengthen yours and ours as a body. Let's look at this passage then. And we're not going to look in detail at the verses here. Today, right now, look in detail at them. That's not the goal. We're only trying to take away the main thought of what the Lord indicates here, what the Lord teaches us here in this passage, both through the question presented to him, there's instruction there, and the Lord is is behind that and revealed that question to us in the Holy Scriptures, so we need to consider that question, but also by His answer. The Lord teaches us by both of them, and so we consider this under the theme, Lord, teach us to pray. A needy request, first of all, a perfect response, Jesus' perfect response, and then, finally, a guaranteed answer, Jesus had been praying, as he often did, but when he finished praying, we're told, one of his disciples came over to him and asked him, Lord, teach us to pray as John also taught his disciples. Now, we're not told anything about John's instruction of his disciples regarding prayer. We're only told that John's disciples did pray. And that we find in Luke chapter 5, verse 33, Luke 5, 33. And they said to him, these were the people, the Pharisees. They said to him, the disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink. That was really an accusation of Jesus, but in that we see The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers. The disciples of John prayed. We are told here of the disciple Jesus' disciples' request. It is noteworthy that this is the only recorded thing that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to do. It's not recorded in the scripture. If it happened, it's not recorded in the scripture that the disciples asked Jesus, watching him heal people, they said, Lord, teach us how to do that. They would do that, wouldn't they? When they were sent out as apostles, they would be engaged in miracles of healing for a time as the Spirit was poured out upon them and began to to strengthen the church before the Word of God was complete. They were given that power, but they didn't ask Him about that. They didn't ask Jesus, Lord, we see you casting out demons, but teach us how to cast out those demons. They didn't teach Him, they didn't say to Him, Lord, teach us evangelism, because after all, that's going to be the thing we're going to be doing. When Jesus would would leave them and equip them with the Spirit. They didn't ask him that. They didn't ask him even, Lord, teach us how to preach like you do. Teach us how to instruct and comfort your people just as you do. They only said, Lord, teach us to pray. And I think there's various reasons for that. There may be various reasons for that, but I think among Other reasons was that they felt strongly their own inadequacy in this area of their spiritual life. They felt their own need, especially poignant, in regard to prayer. They must have felt like I feel sometimes and I'm sure you do. as well, especially with regard to our private prayers, perhaps. When no one's listening, no one's around us, and we pray to the Lord. And no sooner have we gotten started, addressed God, come into his presence, and our mind wanders off. Do you have that? Sometimes I do. It's frustrating. It's disappointing. And it seems sometimes it's so hard to focus on what we want to bring before God. Or we bring the things that we feel most urgently in our life, but to simply dwell with God and talk to him about the things that matter to him. We don't have any time or interest. for that. Speaking of time, we need to make time for prayer. If we say, well, I'll pray when I have time. I just don't have time right now. I find that the tendency is we never have time to pray. We need to make time for prayer. Charles Spurgeon says, Indirect quote from him, I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do. Amen, we would say to that, I think. But let that dissatisfaction with our prayers move us to say with the disciples, Lord, teach us. to pray. Teach us to pray. Let that dissatisfaction be all of ours. Let all of us have that kind of dissatisfaction with our prayer life. I would dare say that the man who fancies himself very excellent at praying is really very poor at praying. Or the one who believes even that his prayers are adequate. Perhaps his judgment is not so accurate. There's no end, beloved. There's no end to learning how to pray. There's no end to becoming better at prayer, especially from the point of view of prayer from the heart and prayer in faith, which is really the only true prayer that God hears. There's no end to our learning to pray. It's a lifelong quest. It's a lifelong learning. And the more you learn how to pray, the more you'll see your need to learn how to pray. That's the way the Lord works with us, and that's the way the Lord humbles us and makes us accurately know our need for Him and His teaching and His Holy Spirit. But with this kind of humility and need, we ask, Lord, teach us to pray. And the disciples, too, teach us who to ask. teach us to pray. They came to the Lord himself to learn how to pray. They asked him. They did not ask the Pharisees. We've got some idea of how the Pharisees loved to pray. Jesus exposes that very sharply. He speaks against the Pharisees kind of prayer. But they did not ask the Pharisees. They did not even ask John the Baptist. They asked Jesus. Jesus, they said, knows how to pray. He'd shown them by His example how often He was in prayer, how fervent He was in prayer. They could see that. They could witness that. And they said, He knows how to pray. His heart is in tune with God the Father, and He can teach us. He can teach us. And that's good for us, too, to do the same thing, to ask the Lord to pray about prayer, to ask the Lord, teach me how to pray. Come before Him and tell Him how inadequate you feel you are at prayer, how dissatisfied you are with your prayers, how weak your prayers are, he knows it all already, right? Come to him and confess, unburden yourself with trying to present a good thing to God, present to God that we're really good at this. Come to him and tell him, I really don't know so much how to pray. I really don't know what I'm doing. I feel that way anyways. Teach me, Lord. You teach me, Lord. And then listen to Him. Listen to Him, and He will answer you. If you expect Him to answer you, He will answer you. He answered the disciples, didn't He? They came to him and they said, Lord, teach us to pray. And he said, pray this way. And and he began to teach them how to pray. He'll do the same thing for us. They weren't they weren't a special beloved people over and above us. We, too, are loved by him in Jesus Christ. And he will teach us to. Luke, listen carefully. to Jesus' instruction and recorded this for us and set it before us tonight. You know, you imagine if the disciples had come to Jesus and they said, Lord, teach us to pray, and he began to speak, he began to teach them, and then one of them began talking with another one of those, the disciples, and a couple other disciples began arguing, and one stared off into the sky at something he had seen over there. Another one plugged his ears. What a shame that would be. Lord, teach us to pray, and then show they really had no interest in learning. Sometimes we do that, don't we? Lord, teach us to pray, we say, but only half-heartedly, and we don't really expect him to answer. But listen, listen to the Lord's instruction. He speaks to us through His Word. That's important to emphasize, maybe especially today, but that's important to emphasize. Don't listen to your heart. Sometimes Christians talk that way. They say, I listened to my heart and God told me, God laid it on my heart, and God does sometimes work that way, but that's not the chief way the Lord speaks to us, speaks to His people. He speaks to us from his word. Don't listen for him to speak to you from heaven, apart from the word, but he speaks in the word. Listen to his word. That's how he speaks to us. Ask him and then read the word with that question still on your heart, that question still laying before you and before the Lord. Read his word and look for Him to give you answers, how to pray, to teach you how to pray. Let's begin to do that now with the passage before us. Just begin to take some principles from what Jesus taught His disciples here. Jesus could have taken this instruction in any direction. It was a very general question, an open question. Lord, teach us to pray. Jesus could have launched into the techniques of prayer, the postures of prayer, the places that are best for prayer. But Jesus focused on especially, as I see it, especially two principles. two truths that will help us to pray, and both are captured in that very first word that he began his instruction with. And he said to them, when you pray, say, Father, Father, Father, in Jesus Christ, my Father, My God, my friend, my Father. Such depth, beloved, in that word. Such profound, profound meaning and depth. I could imagine a whole prayer in just that one word. I'm sure sometimes that has been the whole prayer of a child of God. unable to pray more but simply to turn and to say, Father, the Lord knows, the Lord cares. But calling God Father means in the first place that we are spiritual, fundamentally, primarily the spiritual children of God. God is spirit. And so if God is our Father, we are also spiritual. God has made us to be that. God has adopted us. Adopted us to be his children. All of salvation can be viewed as a grand adoption process. Did you ever think of that? Romans 8 verse 30 really presents it that way. God elects us. Well, let's read Romans 8, verse 30, first of all. Romans 8, verse 30 says, and those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. And that in the context of verse 15, for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father, or Dear Father. All of salvation can be viewed as a great, beautiful adoption process. God goes, as it were, to the orphanage of humanity, and he says, I'll take that one and that one. He elects us. He chooses us to be his children, not because of anything in us, but simply because he saw us in Jesus Christ and predestinated us and elected us to be his children. And then he calls us. You can imagine a father at the orphanage, maybe in a third world country or something. Imagine it that way. And he calls out to the one he just chose. He says, child, come here. You can be my child. And God calls to us in the preaching. And in his word, he calls us out. And he says, come to me. Come live with me. Come be my child. signs the adoption papers to make it all legal. He signs those in the blood of Jesus Christ. Those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. And then God takes the child home to live with him and to begin to learn the ways of Father and to learn the ways of the family. Beautiful, if you view it that way. He gave us life. There's a new life put in us, a spiritual life. Now, we were just carnal. We were just earthly. We belonged to this earth. We were happy with this earth. Really miserable, but content with this earth. Said this is the best and this is all there is. And God broke through and brought us to our senses and gave us a spiritual life. And he gave us a place, an identity, where his children, spiritual children, then our prayers too are to be spiritual. That means primarily concerned with our spiritual life as father's children in this present world. Not spiritual in the sense that They're apart from our life. Our prayers are apart from our life in this present world. That's not spiritual. That's just strange. Prayer is always apart from our life here and what's going on here and what's going on in our life here. But spiritual in the sense that I give priority. I give priority to the life, the heavenly life that's in me rather than the earthly. That comes out in the passage. It comes out especially in verse 13 of the passage. where God says, if you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly father, again, spiritual heavenly father, give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. The Holy Spirit is what Jesus assumes we're asking for. In all of our prayers, in all of the Lord's prayer, Because this comes after he gave us the Lord's Prayer. Then he says, the Holy Spirit will be given even as you ask. So let that be our prayer. Hallowed be your name, we say. That means in our heart. Make us heavenly, make us spiritual, make us concerned with your name and recognizing your name as distinct from all other names. Let us figuratively at least fall on our face before you and adore your holy name. So then, when somebody takes the Lord's name in vain, Maybe that happens only occasionally in your life, maybe very often. Pray, hallowed be your name, Lord. Don't let that affect my heart. Don't let that take away from my hallowing of your name. Keep your name holy in my heart, Lord. Your kingdom come. May your kingdom be great in our heart. May your kingdom come in us, rule over us, Lord, as a king rules over his people in peace and prosperity. And give us this day our daily bread. Daily bread, that sounds earthly. Give us this day our daily bread. The key is in daily, that word. refers to our allotted portion. Give us each day the portion that you have determined we should have. And then implied in that is exactly, and make us content with that, Lord. Make us good with that. Make us to say, that's enough. It really is, that's enough. It's the Lord's choice. what I have, but give us what you have chosen to give us and forgive us our sins. Forgive us our debts as we forgive others their debt instead of help us not to go into earthly debt. Help us to avoid bankruptcy or whatever else. Lord, forgive us. That's our prayer, especially predominantly. and lead us not into temptation, instead of lead us not into disappointment or lead us not into hardship, but lead us not into temptation, which always accompanies that hardship, which is always present, waiting to take us down. Lead us not that way, Lord. Give us the Spirit in all the various ways that we need Him, Grant us the Spirit, or in other words, give us yourself, Father. We need you. Come to us in your Spirit. Send to us your Spirit in our need. Father means all of that. Our Father. means that we're heavenly people. We're bound for heaven. We have earthly problems, certainly, trials. We see fellow saints and even family members struggling with things in this life. But always remember, when you pray, when you pray for their health or their strength or whatever else, remember to pray especially, Lord, Help their body, if you will, if it be your will. But Lord, preserve their soul. Help them to stay strong. Help them to be ones who glorify you, even in the midst of their hardship. That's what it means to pray for the Spirit. And when we do that, the Lord says, He will answer us because, again, He's our Father. Father means also that He will answer and He will give what we asked for. We've asked for the Spirit, remember. We've asked predominantly, principally for the Spirit. That's the focus of Jesus' teaching here. Jesus doesn't get into the things that that we pray for that aren't necessarily promised in God's Word. We have a place, permission to pray for that too. But this, he's talking about the praying for the Spirit. And then he says, when you do that, it's guaranteed. You're guaranteed to receive an answer, to receive what you've prayed for. That's what the two parables in verses 5 through 13 are all about. We're not going to go into those in detail, but that's what those prayers are all about. Father, give us the Spirit, we may ask. And God says, I would give you nothing else. I would give you nothing else but Him, the gift of the Spirit through Jesus Christ on the basis of what Jesus has done, what He has earned for you, I give you Him. Just notice, what father among you, if his son asked for a fish, will instead of a fish give a serpent? What father would do that? Or if he asked for an egg, some food, will he give him a scorpion, a dangerous scorpion? with poison in his sting? If you then who are evil ought to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Spirit to those who ask?" Confidence. That's what Jesus recognizes is our great need in prayer. The disciples came to him and said, Lord, teach us to pray. And so he said, well, what you need then? If you're going to pray, and you're going to pray effectively, and you're going to pray really by faith, what you need is you need assurance. You need confidence. You need confidence that Father hears and will answer, and the answer is guaranteed. Believe in me. Jesus says, as it were, Believe in me, for I bring you to the Father. I make you the Father's children. I make so that you can call Father, Father. And I believe and I have faith in Jesus, believing that he, God, will give. That's my confidence. Jesus has been my representative. Jesus has been my righteousness. And I stand before God then in Jesus, praying for his sake, totally convinced that I'm perfectly approved of, accepted of before God. You know, you can't pray with confidence. You can't pray with faith that God hears you, that God answers you. unless you believe in Jesus Christ. Believe in Him. Believe in Him more and more. Pray, Lord, strengthen my faith to stand in Jesus Christ and to know You are my Father. Lord, teach me to pray. And then listen. as Jesus says, Father, Father, and teaches you to say it as well. Amen. Our Father, we thank you for your word, for reminding us of things we, many things we already know. but it's good to be in your house, it's good to meditate upon these things, it's good to be encouraged in our life of prayer. And we pray, Lord, even now as we close our worship in prayer, forgive us for all the things that we have prayed in vain or foolishly or without faith, forgive us. Cleanse us in Jesus Christ and assure us that he is also our advocate at your right hand, praying for us and has sent forth his spirit into our hearts to intercede for us as well. What a comfort that is and what an encouragement to actually pray ourselves. We ask Lord in Jesus' name, all these things, amen.