226 How To Pray

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text “How To Pray”, originally shared on July 20, 2022. It was the 226^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   Do you know how you ought to pray? I guarantee that you don’t. Do you know how to breathe? Yes and No. Today, we’re going to learn how.

   Jesus tells us about prayer and how it is connected to breathing in Luke 11:1-13. He was teaching his disciples on his way to Jerusalem to die. Jesus had been praying when they make what seems to us a strange request, in verse 1.

11He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

   OK, we learn from this that his disciples, who had been with him for almost three years, seeing him pray, worshiping in synagogues and in the Temple, didn’t know how to pray themselves, or at least they believed that Jesus could teach them something about how to pray.

   We also know that John the Baptist had his own disciples, separate from Jesus’ disciples. We know that he taught them how to pray, and we know that Jesus’s disciples wanted the same curriculum.

   And Jesus answers them in what seems to us to be an odd way. He doesn’t give them a class on how to pray. He gives them a format. He might as well have said, “Just do it!” He says, “When you pray,” in verse 2,

 ²He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.

   He doesn’t offer a manual or a seminar. He offers us a model.

   I used to run for fitness and competed in 5k and 10k road races from time to time. I ran a couple of marathons in the 1970’s, though I think that I only ran the second one because I had forgotten how bad I felt after the first one.

   One of the first magazines specializing in running was Runners World, and I subscribed.

   Dr. George Sheehan, one of the first sports doctors and himself a runner, wrote a column answering runner’s questions. One of them had to do with how to breathe.

   In the mid-1970’s, there was some controversy over whether it was better for a runner to breathe through their mouth or to breathe through their nose.

   Someone sent the question to Dr. Sheehan and his answer was something like, “Breathe through your nose. Breathe through your mouth. Suck it in through your ears if you can. Just get it in there!”

   Jesus offers a similar answer to the question of how to pray. His answer begins, “When you pray.”

   He continues with what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, going on with verse 3,

 ³Give us each day our daily bread.

 ⁴And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

   Can we only pray for bread? On what basis can we ask God to forgive our sins, big and little, and the separation from God that they produce? Does God lead us to the time of trial, or “into temptation”?

   I’m glad you asked, and I’m not going to answer these questions myself. 😊

   I’m going to recommend that you buy a copy of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, a pamphlet-sized book in which he provides answers to the basic questions of the Christian faith. Kind of a “What Every Christian Needs to Know” book.

   You can buy a copy online or download one for free from the Google Play store or from the Apple App Store. Concordia Publishing has one online now and I’ve heard that Augsburg Fortress is planning to bring theirs back.

   The Christian life is not just knowing the answers, though. It’s living them.

   We are sinners and deserve to experience the just consequences of our Sin. But God is merciful. We see how, beginning with verse 5,

 ⁵And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; ⁶for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’

 ⁷And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ ⁸I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

   So, is prayer wearing God down to get what we want, like a child begs to go to the beach, “Pleeease….pleeeease….pleeease….? Until parents relent because they are so annoying? Jesus encourages us to pray with confidence in God’s power and goodness, starting with verse 9,

 ⁹“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 

   So is prayer a magic formula? Is it like in Harry Potter, where you just have to wave a wand and say something in Latin and it happens?

   Some people say so. At least that’s the way they act. They think that God is like their personal cosmic bell boy. Their servant. And they are grossly disappointed when God doesn’t come through. They say, “God didn’t answer my prayer!”

   The thing is though, that “No” is an answer, too. “Wait until the time is right” is an answer. “Yes” is an answer, and for some it is the only answer. “Entitlement” can be the attitude of some Christians, too.

   Ruth Graham, Billy Graham’s wife, once said, “God has not always answered my prayers. If He had, I would have married the wrong man -- several times!”

   How does God answer our prayers? Jesus answers in verse 11.

¹¹Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?

   Maybe a filet-o-fish sandwich or some fish and chips would be more appetizing, but you get the idea. He continues in verse 12,

 ¹²Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? 

   No parent would do that. What does that tell us about prayer? He answers in verse 13.

¹³If 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!”

   What? I was hoping for something more practical. Is that what people pray for? Is that what you pray for? The Holy Spirit?

   The thing is that we are all God’s saints, but we are also sinners, separated from God by our Sin. We don’t know how to pray as we ought As Paul writes to the church at Rome in Romans 8:26-27,

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

   We don’t know how to pray, but the Spirit helps us in our weakness. And how does the Spirit pray? “According to the will of God.”

   God knows what we need before we ask. We aren’t telling God something that God doesn’t already know when we pray. We only ask for God’s will to be done.

   Praying is talking with God. With God.

   I once heard of the South Korean pastor of what was then the largest church in the world, Rev. Dr. Paul Yonggi Cho saying that he routinely got up before dawn and prayed for several hours a day. (He required his assistant pastors to pray for three hours a day.) An interviewer commented that he wouldn’t know what to say for three hours. Pastor Cho said that he wouldn’t either. At some point he said he needs to stop and listen.

   What do we say when we talk with people? We don’t talk all the time.

   What we say and what we hear depends upon our relationship with them. How close we are. Do we trust them? Do we have a past together? How familiar are we with one another?

   People pray based on how they believe God to be. Some believe God to be a stern judge, a punisher, displeased, angry, and strict.

   Jesus portrays God as a Father. A good father. A father who knows how to give the best gift, the Holy Spirit, the key to everything good, to his children.

   You may have seen the bumper sticker or the bracelet or the slogan that says, “Prayer changes things.” I don’t believe that.

   I don’t believe that prayer changes things. I believe that God changes things. God changes us. In fact, we are so changed it is like we are born again! We made new! We are a new creation!

   It makes us long not for what we want, but for God’s will to be done.

   Prayer is life in a relationship with God. It is speaking and listening for the will of God in the Holy Spirit.

   Have you ever talked with someone and then come to silence when everything that needs to be said has been said and you are content just to be with them?

   Likewise, prayer doesn’t even require words, heard or spoken. Sometimes it is just being with God.

   In both Hebrew and in Greek, the languages of the Old and New Testaments respectively, one word, “pneuma” in Greek and “ruach” in Hebrew have the same three meanings: wind, breath, and spirit”. We breathe to live. The Holy Spirit is the new life of God at work within us, not something we have earned but something we receive as a gift of God’s grace. It is all we need to live as the Body of Christ, and all that is necessary to be the people of God, the Church.

   The world scoffs at “thoughts and prayers” in answer to life’s catastrophes.

   We do it ourselves when we say things like, “Well, all we can do now is pray.”

   For us, prayer is life, it is listening as well as speaking, it leads us to doing God’s will which is God’s justice. It is as necessary for the life of the Church as is breathing.

   It is the breath of the Holy Spirit.

   Think about all the things that the disciples had seen Jesus accomplish over the three years that they were with him in his public ministry. What is the one thing that they asked Him to teach them how to do? Pray.

   Do you know how you ought to pray? We have His answer.