Jesus’ Teaching On Prayer
In Luke 11, we read Jesus’ teaching on Prayer. Jesus begins by teaching his disciples a ritual prayer (The Lord’s Prayer) and then talks about what prayer tries to achieve. Prayer, as Jesus teaches it, moves our hearts away from an obsession with ourselves. Instead, it directs our attention towards what God is doing in and through us.
The Lord’s prayer focuses on different facets of God’s kingdom: A concern for God’s holiness, Dependence on God, Contagious Forgiveness and Holiness. The community the prayer marks out should be people who embrace these values. With that in mind, Jesus tells us to shamelessly pray for…What? Often these verses lead us to expect God to give in to our every demand. In context, though, they show that God desires for us to pray for his spirit. God wants us to want the Spirit’s work done in our hearts.
It’s just that it doesn’t happen right away. God wants us to pray for the thing he wants to do anyway. Why is that? Sot hat we become invested in the coming of his kingdom. Our prayers then align our hearts with his agenda, freeing us from being aligned to our own (short-sited and self-focused) agendas.
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