Practising The Way (Prayer)

The podcast is starting a new series called Practicing the Way of Jesus. The first topic is prayer, as it is a crucial part of our Christian walk. The disciples observed how Jesus prayed and wanted to learn from Him. Jesus teaches them a short and effective prayer, emphasizing the importance of putting God's will first and humbly asking for our needs to be met. It also highlights the need for forgiveness and the importance of forgiving others. Prayer is a daily practice that helps us align with God's will and become more like Christ. Welcome to the Avenue podcast where we're passionate about unleashing your God-given potential through the life-transforming power of the gospel. I'm Josh. I'm Henry. And today we are excited to announce that we are actually beginning a new five-week series titled Practicing the Way of Jesus. In this five-week series, we will be covering a practice each week that Jesus demonstrated and lived out in his own life and how that practice can help you in arranging your everyday life around being with and becoming more like Jesus. Yeah, I'm super excited for this new lesson plan. It's been great doing the previous one of who is Jesus, and yeah, I'm excited to learn how to practice the ways of Jesus. Awesome. I don't know if I've ever recorded a podcast with you, Henry, but... No, this is definitely a first. Yeah, I'm excited to be on with you. I am too. Yeah. Should we get into it? Yeah, definitely. The text that we'll be reading from today is found in Luke chapter 11, and Henry, did you want to read that for us? Yeah, sure thing. So I'll be reading Luke chapter 11, verses 1 to 13 from the New Living Translation. Then teaching them more about prayer, he used the story. He will get up and give you whatever you need because of your shameless persistence. And so I tell you, keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find. Keep on knocking and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks, receive. Everyone who seeks, find. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be open. You fathers, if your children ask for a fish, do you give them a snake instead? Or if they ask for an egg, do you give them a scorpion? Of course not. So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask? Awesome. Thanks for reading that. No worries. Yeah, I think it's really, I guess, significant that we kick off this series with prayer. Because prayer is obviously, as we know, the medium in which we communicate with Jesus. And it makes up, or it should make up at least, a huge part of our Christian walk and our Christian life. And yeah, just to kick things off, what are your general thoughts about this passage? Yeah, I really love this passage because it gives us a lot of insight into prayer. And like you said, it's such an important part of our faith experience. I like it because it not only gives us a lot of practical ways of how we should pray, what we should be praying for, and stuff like that. But it also gives us deeper insight into our relationship with God and into His generosity. So we get both the practical and the big picture here. Yeah, I think it's really significant that, as far as I'm aware, the disciples never asked Jesus how to perform miracles. They never asked Him how to preach. They never asked Him even how to heal the sick or cast out demons. But here, they ask Him how to pray. And it's clear to us that the disciples observed something about the way that Jesus prayed that was special, that it was significant about the way He approached His Father. And they wanted to emulate that. And I think it's important to note that you can never master prayer. Prayer is not something that you, I guess, do a course on or complete over a period of time in your life. And you suddenly hit this age where you're really, really good at prayer and that you've mastered it. Yeah, I like it. I like viewing it as something that we practice and we are constantly looking to improve. And yeah, when I read this, I see a scene where the disciples are observing Jesus in this really close connection with God and that they want to also have that connection. And that's sort of possibly prompted why they're asking to be taught how to pray. And Jesus answers their request and does teach them. So Jesus gives the disciples, I guess, a sample of a prayer. And this is arguably the most famous, or it definitely is the most famous prayer that we know of because it comes from Jesus to the disciples. And I think it's really valuable if we go line by line through it and actually dissect what it means and a little bit of the background behind it. The first thing that I noticed from this is that it's actually relatively short. It only covers a couple of verses. And this is significant to me because in the days of Jesus, rabbis used to pray really, really long prayers. Their prayers would be long-winded. They would contain a lot of words and they would go on for a long period of time. In fact, rabbis had this saying that said, whoever is long in prayer is heard. And Jesus meets that with a really, really short prayer. And how many times do we think that we have to pray really long to be heard? How many times do we feel like we have to almost butter or smoothen God up before we can actually approach Him with something? And Ecclesiastes says that God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few. Yeah, I think it really comes, boils down to the Old Covenant and New Covenant. In this New Covenant, you're not saved by works or how long you're praying for. You're saved by your faith. And so, yeah, I like that. This is a short prayer, but it's an effective prayer. Yeah, I love that. I love that. So the first line starts off with, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. What does this sort of tell you about God and how we should approach Him? Yeah, so I love the connection to the Father. It sets up a relationship of love, of nurturing, of care, of generosity. It's personifying God. It's just creating a really close connection. And so, yeah, we should approach God in prayer, like we would approach our earthly Father in a natural way. Yeah, and I like this because it also recognizes God's majesty and His dominion. It acknowledges, I guess, His power and His sovereignty as well. And hallowed means to be set apart. So I guess we're approaching God with a certain amount of respect and the respect that He deserves. Yeah. So, and then it goes on to say, Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I think to me, this really speaks that we put God's name first and we put His kingdom and what He wants first. And that even though there is sometimes a mismatch between our free will and God's will, this is, I guess, us putting our hand up and saying, we want God's will to be our will. We want there to be alignment. And it also begins the prayer with a certain amount of humility and it respects the Father for who He is. Yeah, I think this is especially important because so often we go into prayer with our own desires or our own ideas and ambitions. And it's just good to humble ourselves to be used by God and to make sure our prayers are in line with His will. So the next line goes on to say, Give us each day the food we need and forgive us our sins. Now, I think this clearly represents petition. It's probably the part of prayer that we are all best at and that we're all familiar with because we love asking God for things. And petition is, in this case, a really, really big part of Jesus' sample prayer that He gives us. And I think this aspect of petition represents us having this ability and this freedom to actually bring our needs to God and for God to have the opportunity to provide forgiveness, strength. And this can also represent material items as well. Yeah, I think it's also saying it is okay to pray for your needs to be met, your physical needs, and God wants to hear those needs. So I think sometimes people overlook because they feel selfish or they feel guilty for asking for that. But yeah, God does want us to come to Him with even the basic needs of bread, of food, of nourishment. I find the symbolism of bread important because in those times, some versions actually say daily bread. And it says daily bread, not lots of bread or not storehouses of bread. And in those days, workers were often paid by the day. I don't know how much health and you get paid. I know that I get paid fortnightly. You know, we don't get paid, it's not like you go to work and then your boss hands you an envelope of money at the end of the day, or he may, depending on the place that you work at, but generally not. And I think this represents that prayer is supposed to reflect our need rather than our greed for material items. It represents our actual need each day rather than our greed of stocking up bread and stocking up our material items. And I guess being paid daily also meant that you needed to trust God a lot more for you because there was less financial security. Yeah, yeah. I think as well, it's something that we've got to go every day and ask. We can't just ask once a week, once a month, this prayer, this connection with God. It's got to be a daily occurrence. So I think it goes to show the importance of constant connection. And yeah, I guess the bread, or in some versions, give us each day the food that we need. This represents the needs of our physical needs, the needs that we have in the physical realm. Then the next line goes on to say, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. And I think in some ways, this is also petition. It's also asking God for things. And maybe this represents a need for the soul, the needs of replenishment for our spirit and the needs for renewal of our soul. And I guess it's a different type of petition that we see previously where we see food representing things like material items and healing. But maybe, yeah, this next line represents the needs of, I guess, the spiritual realm. Yeah, and also, I love the, not only just forgive our sins, but also help us to forgive those who sin against us. And we're asking for help to be like Christ, in a sense, to be able to forgive. So yeah, we're praying, in a sense, to take on a Christly form, which also links into our new series. So yeah, I really like that. We should pray for this. Yeah, that's awesome. What's significant about the order of the prayer, do you think? Yeah, there's definitely a prayer priority here. I see it as we should, first of all, establish reverence for God. After this, we should look to align with God's will. We then ask for our daily sort of strength, our daily nourishment. And then we ask to be forgiven of our sins and finally to be delivered from evil. And I think that this priority, it sort of like sets up the importance of each of these. Yeah, I think, like I mentioned earlier, prayer is not something that you get good at overnight. And it's not something that you master at all in your life. It's just something that you practice, just like any other skill. You need to do it over and over again. And there needs to be a certain amount of discipline involved in it in order for you to get good at it. And it's interesting because I guess a lot of the times people have asked me, and I'm sure people have asked you in the past, you know, how do I pray? How do I start off my relationship with God? How do I approach God? And for people who haven't grown up praying and grown up in the church, this is often a really foreign and really weird concept to them of praying and speaking to someone that you can't physically see. And I think a mistake that we've often made in the past is that I feel like when people ask me this question, my response is generally just tell God what's on your heart. And this advice to just tell God what's on your heart, it may be useful for someone who has been praying for a long time and perhaps just is going through a dry period and just needs some encouragement to pray. But maybe new believers actually need some guidance. And maybe they actually need some sort of sample prayer or pre-written prayer in order to harness what it is that they want to pray for. And it's interesting that when the disciples asked for this, Jesus actually provides this for them. Jesus gives them a pre-written prayer. And I guess this brings up the whole debate of, should we pray spontaneously? Should we pray from the heart? Or should we pray our prayers that are written and pre-prepared? And I think the answer to that depends heavily on where you are spiritually, where you are in your journey with God. And I think through the Psalms and what David wrote is clear evidence that God does want us to pray through other people's prayers and that God does want us to use pre-written prayers and that we can harness that. And there's nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, there's also something beautiful and genuine about prayers that come from us and prayers that are not beautiful, that don't sound good, that don't make a whole lot of sense. But I think God delights in both of them. Yeah. I also think, you know, there's some people out there that they feel guilty asking God for something too often to be sort of nagging and stuff like that. But I love that these verses tell us that that's okay to be persistent, to continue asking. You know, God wants to answer our prayers. He wants us to be prosperous. He wants us to be fruitful. And He wants to be involved in our lives. So, for instance, if you keep knocking long enough, He will give up and give you whatever you need because of your shameless persistence. So, I think we should pray constantly and persistently. We should never give up. Even if prayers haven't been answered, we should continue praying. And God wants to answer these prayers. And He actually admires our shameless persistence. Yeah. I like what you mentioned there about community and the aspect of praying together as well. If we look at the Lord's Prayer, there are lines that say, give us each day the food we need and forgive us our sins and we forgive those who sin against us. It's not I, it's not me, it's not my, it's our, it's us. And this clearly shows me that prayer is supposed to be done with other people. That prayer, we are supposed to pray together, that we're supposed to pray in a community and that prayer was designed in order to be done with other people. Yeah, there's definitely a sense of power whenever I've prayed in a group. There's, you feel extra connection to God. And yeah, I think it comes back to where, you know, if you are gathered, the Holy Spirit will be there. I feel like that's the power of the Holy Spirit moving through prayer. Yeah. Another thing that I'd like to discuss is the symbolism of the fish and the snake. So yeah, Jesus compares gifts and requests and answers, gifts from fathers to their children and he compares that to God. So you fathers, if your children ask for a fish, do give them a snake instead. I think this has a lot of significance. So the crowd that Jesus was speaking to would have, a lot of people would have been fishermen. So the idea of receiving fishes is a great thing. I mean, this is directly contrast to a snake, which has biblical connotations of deception, of evilness, of pain. You know, we see this in Genesis with the deception from the serpent. So I think it's sort of coming back to the fact that God wants to give us good things in our life. He wants to answer our prayers. He doesn't want to give us deception or pain. He wants the best for us. And in many ways, we can also think of it like, if we could reverse it, if a child asked for a snake, would their father give them a snake? Probably not. And so, you know, maybe if we're praying for prayers that aren't fully aligned with God's will, we shouldn't get resentful towards God, because God knows everything. He knows what's best for us. And so maybe it's a sign that we should be praying for something different. Yeah, I think often God waits for desperation in prayer. And like you said, God's not reluctant or unable or unwilling to answer our prayers. And I think He just values persistence and desire sometimes. And some people may ask, you know, why does He keep us waiting? And why does He, you know, why does He value that? And I think the answer in that lies in the fact that prayer is about changing us more than it's about changing God. The process of prayer and the process that you take on when you are desperate and when you are praying repeatedly over and over for something in desperate petition, that changes you and that changes your heart. And like you said, very often that changes your perspective on things. And maybe later on you realize that you were actually praying for the wrong thing or that, you know, the thing that you wanted and the thing that you desperately thought was good for you maybe actually wasn't. And I think, yeah, like I said, prayer is more about changing us than about changing God. Yeah, I think you're spot on with that, especially at the end of these verses, it says, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? So this, we should be praying for the Holy Spirit, which will lead us and will actually in turn help us to pray the right prayers. And so, yeah, I think we should all be actively praying for the Holy Spirit. We should be doing it persistently. We should never stop doing this. And yeah, we should really believe that God is listening, that God is there and that God wants to answer our prayers. Yeah, and I think in closing, I'm sure there are people listening to this that think that maybe they're not good at praying, that maybe they don't like praying. How do I get better at prayer? And I think I would say to those people, you can't be good or bad at prayer. It's not a skill. It's not something that you master. It's not something that you ever complete. The only important thing is that you keep doing it and you keep coming back to this heavenly, sacred place where you are able to convene with God and you're able to speak to Him in a direct basis. And it's a two-way street as well. I think often we forget that prayer is, it's not us simply talking at God. It's us talking to God and God talks back to us if we give Him the chance and if we listen. Yeah, I think that's a beautiful way to wrap up. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the podcast and we hope this adds value and insight into the discussion that you will have with your partner groups. Join us next week as Matt and Jeremy talk about the context of the past.