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Love
Teaching Text: Luke 11: 1-13
One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”
He said to them, “When you pray, say:
“‘Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.’”
Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
Praying the Psalms
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
Did you recite the Lord’s Prayer growing up?
If yes, what did you think when you did that?
C.S. Lewis lost the love of his life, his wife Joy, to cancer after only being married for 4 years. Afterwards he wrote A Grief Observed - at first published under a pseudonym.
Here is the brutally honest way Lewis described some of his prayers in that time…
“When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”
– C.S. Lewis
Prayer doesn’t work, or doesn’t always work like pulling a lever and getting what we want from God. The wild part is sometimes it does, but because we don't always know when we develop all these THEOLOGIES OF UNBELIEF to protect ourselves and to protect God.
Either we can’t bear being disappointed, or we don’t think God would bother, or we just want to leave it to a sense of mystery of whatever life reveals.
But Jesus wants to tell us to keep going with prayer. Even if we don’t like how it goes at first, especially if we don't like how it goes at first.
What about the practice of prayer makes you want to give up or not even try?
The invitation and the instruction is to just keep knocking even when it looks like we aren't getting what we need.
And in the shameless audacity of the continuing knock - you will find yourself provided for.
Tim Keller said God answers our prayers exactly as we would if we had all the information.
But of course we don't have all the information. Or the same degree of Love or Power. We often don’t know the prayers of our neighbors, or the way all the longings of our heart relate to the wider world.
We are often aren’t aware of resistance to our prayers.
So we have to trust God. And it's building that loving friendship and trust and confidence in conversation with God that we realize our whole lives are held. And even what we lose is held by God.
So Jesus teaches us:
One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”
He said to them, “When you pray, say:
“ ‘Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
– Luke 11: 1-2
The Kaddish was one of three important prayers in the first century Jewish worship liturgy and it began like this…
“Magnified and hallowed be His great Name
In this world which He created according to His Will.
And may He establish His Kingdom during your life.”
Look at the two of them side by side… (this is also in Pete Greig’s book)
“Magnified and hallowed be
His great Name
in this world which He created
according to His Will.
And may He establish His Kingdom
during your life.
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your Name,
Your Kingdom come,
Your Will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
The utter crucial difference is the personalization of Jesus’ prayer…
Call Him Abba. OUR ABBA.
Call Him Abba and then speak to Him like you would to a good Father….
You can call the God of the Universe, Abba - Father - Friend.
"The most important discovery you will ever make is the love the Father has for you. Your power in prayer will flow from the certainty that the one who made you likes you, he is not scowling at you, he is on your side. Unless our mission and our acts of mercy, our intercession, petition, confession, and spiritual warfare begin and end in the knowledge of the Father’s love, we will act and pray out of desperation, determination, and duty instead of revelation, expectation, and joy.”
– Pete Greig
There are some important things to say about this prayer, but the most important thing is to pray it.
Get it in your mouth and mind and heart.
The one who asks receives.
The one who seeks finds.
To the one who knocks the doors is open.
“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
– Luke 11: 9-13
PERSIST
What does it mean to persist in prayer?
What stops you from persisting in prayer?
