“At a Loss for Words”
Luke 11:1-10
July 29, 2007
I want you to take a little trip with me this
morning. You will have to use your
imagination. You will have to go there
in your mind’s eye. The place I would
like for you to go is to the house of my growing up years, the house in
The
time is 1972 or so. In 1972 I was four
years old and my sister, Emily, was five.
My brother, David, was six and seven years older than us. In 1972, Emily and I shared a bedroom. The room was the corner room of the house and
it was located next to my mother and father’s bedroom. I guess it was easier to keep an eye on their
two youngest. Emily eventually graduated
to another bed room and then stole an upstairs bedroom. My room always was next to mom and dad’s.
In
that first bedroom of our’s,
there were two twin beds, situated close to one another. Have I painted a good enough picture? Are you with me in that room? Good.
Yes, I know it is a little crowded.
We will only be here for a minute or two.
It’s
bedtime for me and my sister. We have
done all of things we are supposed to do before we go to bed. We have had a last sip of water. We have been to the bathroom one last
time. Our teeth are clean and we have
placed ourselves under the covers. That is when my mother walks into the
room. She situates herself between
us. She makes sure that we are tucked in
properly. It was our ritual. Every night she did this for as long as I can
remember. My mother helped my sister and
I to say our prayers.
Our prayers started as a way of asking God to bless everyone important
to us including our dogs Sweet Georgia Brown and Happy, and our prayers ended
with the prayer I am sure you have prayed.
It went like this, “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake. I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.”
By the way they have changed the words to that prayer. Those in charge of children’s prayers were
troubled that the words, “If I should die before I wake” might scare children
and so they changed the words. Now you
pray, “Now I lay me down to sleep. I
pray the Lord my soul to keep. Angels
watch me through the night and wake me with the morning light. Amen.”
I guess that prayer is not as frightening!
And
so it began, lo these many years ago, my prayer life. It is something that I have been doing for
what seems like forever. Every night,
before I go to sleep, I say my prayers.
I ask God for some of the same things that I have been asking for years
and years. I ask God to bless my family,
to bless my life, to bless your lives, and to bless this church. I ask God to keep our church on His
mind. I give God praise and glory. I pray for the places and the times I have
fallen short and sinner.
Yes,
I’ve been praying for years. You might
not want your preacher to admit this, but there are a lot of things about
prayer I just understand. It seems to me
that when I pray, I am telling God things God already knows. How about this prayer, “Dear God, please be
with Aunt Julie who is in the hospital.”
Up there in heaven, is God surprised with the news? Does God say, “What? Aunt Julie is in the hospital? I’ve got to send someone down there!” Why are some prayers
answered and some seem to be unanswered.
It’s Garth Brooks who thanks his God for unanswered prayers. And how to do you pray? Do you kneel?
Can you pray in the car on the way to the office? Should you hold your hands
a certain way?
In
a Peanuts cartoon, Charlie Brown is
kneeling beside his bed for his nightly prayer time. Suddenly he stops and says to Lucy, “I think I’ve made a new theological
discovery, a real breakthrough. If you
hold your hands upside down, you get the opposite of what you pray for!” Poor old Charlie Brown.
He’s the world’s worst pitcher.
He never get to kick the football Lucy
holds. His kite always ends up in a tree
and the little red headed girl pays him no attention. And
to top it off, now he has trouble with his prayer life!
How
do you pray? Why do you pray? When do you pray? Is there a secret language that we should
use? We are not the first ones to ask this question.
Let’s
look at our scripture lesson for this morning taken from the eleventh chapter
of Luke’s Gospel. Luke tells us that
Jesus was praying in a certain place.
When he was finished one of the disciples came up to him and said,
“Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” The John, of course, is John the Baptizer,
Jesus’ cousin. John, too, had
followers. Evidently he had given them a
prayer to memorize and one to recite that would help them in their ministry.
When
Susie and I first married, I wrote out a prayer for her. She kept it with her, usually in her purse, just
in case she was ever asked to lead a prayer at the church. The thought of praying in public terrified
her. It probably still does. So I wrote out a prayer for her.
Teach
us to pray, this disciple asks. Give us
a prayer that will help us in our spiritual lives. Give us a prayer that will make a real
difference.
I
want you to notice something here.
Notice when the disciple approaches Jesus. It isn’t after Jesus has taught the
multitudes about the power of prayer.
The disciple doesn’t ask Jesus to give him a prayer after Jesus has led
a seminary on the power of a disciplined prayer life. Luke puts it this way, “Jesus was praying in
a certain place. When he was finished,
the disciple said, ‘Lord, teach us to
pray…” Luke’s gospel is the one that
tells us that Jesus went away to pray.
This is the gospel that tells us that at every major turn, with every
major decision in front of him, Jesus prayed.
He prayed before he chose the disciples.
He prayed before he began his trip to
Now the disciples, by and large, are slow to get
things. They often miss the point of
what Jesus is trying to show them. They
repeatedly do not understand important things.
But here they get it. They
understand that prayer is important to Jesus.
They saw in him the power of prayer.
They surmised that if Jesus needed to pray then surely they, too, needed
to pray.
And in response to their request Jesus gave them
what we have come to call the Lord’s
Prayer. Well, at least part of it. Luke’s version is the shortest of the gospel
writers. In this version, Jesus offers
four things. First, he says that they
should speak to God as they would a member of their own family. Then he says they should pray for three
things. First, they should pray for
their daily needs. Second, they should
pray for forgiveness. And finally, they
should pray for deliverance.
Now
I have a problem here. Maybe you do,
too. We run through this prayer so
quickly on Sunday mornings. It is easy
for us to miss the power of what we are praying for. How should we pray? What should we ask for? We’ve memorized these words, but do you know
what you are praying for.
Let’s
look a little closer. Before we look at the three petitions of this
prayer, I want to say something to you about prayer. First and foremost, in my opinion, what
prayer does is to establish a relationship between us and God. I think God likes nothing more than to
talk with us, for us to share our feelings, our hopes and our dreams. I think God wants to know what we think we
need. If we don’t voice our needs, we
might not be clear on what it is we are asking for.
I
tried an experiment a year or so ago. I
may have told you about this. I came
home from the church one afternoon.
Susie and Annie Grace were home.
Julie hadn’t been born yet. I
walked in the house and didn’t say a word to Susie or little Annie Grace. For thirty minutes, I sat in the same room
with them, but didn’t say a word. After
a while Susie looked up at me and asked, “What is wrong with you?” I told her that I was doing a prayer
experiment. She told me I would see God
sooner rather than later if I didn’t shape up.
What I did with Susie is what most of us do with God. God so much wants to hear from us and yet we
are silent. If we believe in the power
of prayer, if we believe that it has the power to change our situations and if
we believe that it has the power to change us, then we ought just to spend most
of our time praying. Praying
just once a week is hardly a rousing endorsement of prayer.
Praying
sometimes is hard. Some years ago the
great writer Leslie Weatherhead told a beautiful
story about a man who was a member of his church. The man was now old and ill. He
didn’t have much time left on the earth.
His preacher went to see him in his nursing home room. The first thing the preacher noticed was that
there was a chair close to his bed, very close to his bed. The chair didn’t seem to invite anyone to sit
in it. The preacher sat in another chair
and the ill man said, “Let me tell you
about that chair.” He said, “Many years
ago I found it very hard to pray. I
couldn’t get the words out. I was
struggling and so I asked my pastor at the time for some help. He told me that I shouldn’t worry about
kneeling. He told me I shouldn’t worry
about the words. Instead my pastor said,
“Put a chair in front of you and imagine God sitting there. Just talk to him like you would a friend,
your best friend. See how that works.”
The
man said, “I tried it. It worked. It changed my life. It changed my prayer life. I have prayed with a chair in front of me
ever since that day.”
A
few days later, the daughter of the man called the minister to let him know
that her father had died. She said this,
“He died peacefully, but his body was
in a strange position. His body was on
the bed, but his head was in a chair. I
wonder why?” The preacher told her about
the conversation the two had just had.
In the end, it didn’t seem strange at all.
When you pray, said Jesus, pray, “Our Father…” Pray for a relationship. Somewhere in our lifetimes our relationships
with our fathers change from father to friend.
That is what prayer is about.
So
praying gives us a relationship with God.
Now notice the things we are to pray for. First, Jesus says, pray for your daily
needs. Some years ago there was an
article in Sports Illustrated about a major league baseball player, a pitcher,
who prayed that God would help get batters out.
In that same league there was a player, a batter, who prayed to always
get a hit. With tongue in cheek, the
writer wondered, “God must be confused when those two face each other in a
game.” Someone once said that there are
four answers to prayer. There is “yes.” There is “no.” There is “wait a while.” And there is “are you kidding me?” Ask God to give you what you need every day. You won’t be disappointed.
Second Jesus says we are to pray for
forgiveness. Luke puts it this way, “And
forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone
indebted to us.” Wow! Really? We’re asking
God to forgive us and the reason we boldly ask for that is that we’ve already
forgiven every one in our lives.
Forgiveness
is hard. It may be the hardest thing we
do. Messed up relationships keep our
stomachs in knots and awake at night. We
know that forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to be in a
relationship with the one who has hurt us.
But we
also know that if we forgive, the hate and the sin won’t be our’s
to carry any more. It will be settled in
our heart. And when we forgive others,
says Jesus, God will forgive us. It is
hard to draw close to God if we at odds with our neighbors. It’s getting late so let me finally say that
we pray that we will not head off to temptation.
Let
me finally say this. I don’t pray as I
ought to pray. I don’t pray as often as
I should pray. There are nights that I
fall asleep praying. But more than
anything else, I want to continue my relationship with God that my mom started
lo these many years ago. I think I’ll
try to do a little better with my prayer life.
How about you?
(Special thanks to my mother
and father for making my prayer life important.
It is something I will continue to do.
Thanks to all of you who hold me in your prayers).