Luke 11:1-13:’…I tell you…'(please click here for todays passage)

I heard about a girl who attended a certain Sunday school. In their group they were praying for a missionary. She wrote to him on behalf of everyone else:’Dear Reverend Smith, we are praying for you. We are not expecting an answer!!!’

If verses 38-42 of chapter 10 balance out verses 25-37 in terms of its teaching about service (showing that although we are to serve, we can become ‘distracted’ by it) then I suggest to you that these verses in chapter 11 bring a balance to 10:38-42 in terms of prayer. Some people see prayer as all mystical. It’s about silence and solitude. Well that is an important and, let it be said, often neglected dimension. But there is more to it than that. It is also about speaking and asking/requesting…and getting answers.

The power of example (1). What you do for good (or ill,sadly) can have an impact on others that is greater than you expect. Seeing Jesus at prayer was the trigger for what happened here. How does the prayer life of Jesus affect you? Does it motivate you to want to pray?

This man was in fact praying when he brought his request to Jesus (2-4), as the passage subsequently shows. It was a prayer immediately answered. Jesus gave a pattern for prayer. It is generally agreed by Bible commentators that although we can say what we have come to call ‘the Lord’s prayer’ verbatim ( and it is surely potent to speak, from the heart, the very words spoken by Jesus) what Jesus has done here is to give us an outline around which to construct our own prayers. It’s a ‘pattern’ which puts God’s concerns first, and only then moves to our own (‘your’ before ‘us’).

But Jesus not only gave them an outline; He also supplied an encouragement in the illustration He went on to use (5-13). Someone said that you could take all the teaching of Jesus about prayer and boil it down to one word: ‘persistence’ (8). This word has also been translated as ‘impudence’ and ‘importunity.’ It points to a ‘never say die’ attitude in prayer. ‘There’s a hungry world out there. Naturally speaking I don’t have the bread it needs for its hunger. But I am not leaving this doorstep until I get what I need to play my part in feeding the starving.’ That’s the feel of it – not disrespectful but desperate. Unless God shows you that you are praying for the wrong thing, you will keep going because you need Him so much.

It is important to understand what the God we pray to is like. Consider the character of the One we pray to. A contrast is drawn here. God is not like the grumpy, unwilling friend in the night time. He is not reluctant to help and give and share. He is our generous Father who loves to give; indeed longs to give, the very best to His children. ”Just look at yourselves’, Jesus says in effect. ”You earthly fathers are ‘evil’. (That is, you each have a sinful nature.) But although you are sadly defective, you are big-hearted towards your own offspring. You ‘know how’ to give them ‘good gifts’. You didn’t need any training. It is instinctive. You just do it. Now ‘how much more’ is that the case with your Heavenly Father?”

Listen to what Jesus tells you about prayer (9). He means every word. ‘And I tell you…’ (9). Let what He says sink in, and knock on Heaven’s door until it happens. Remember Who lives behind it and what He is like.