Preparation for a Year of Healing—Part 4
THE LORD'S PRAYER |
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More Lessons From Jesus About Praying Through
the years I have found out much about prayer, but I am certain what
is left for me to know is about as vast as an ocean would remain after
drawing one bucketful from it. Prayer is as infinite as God Himself.
It touches eternity. As a practice and privilege that is ours in Christ,
it is to me, even with my little knowledge, the most practical and valuable
asset that I own. My Lord has given this most valuable asset to me by
His grace. And, for anyone who may read this, this holy and awesome
gift is available for you also. We’re all made from the same mud
and we all have the same grace extended to us.
Through several articles, with
Scripture we find in Matthew
6:9-13, we have considered what the Lord Jesus taught His
disciples about praying. In this passage we have what many have called
“The Lord’s Prayer.” We have found it contains seven
urgent petitions. To consider the last four of these, we will jump from
the Matthew passage to a similar lesson in Luke
11.
Here the Prayer is somewhat shortened and does not have an “Amen”
where we find one in Matthew.
Instead of the conclusion we have come to expect from Matthew, we have a parable about
how to make our petitions. What we learn in it serves to strengthen
what we have said before about the seven petitions each being recorded
in the form of an Aorist Imperative. This manner of Greek grammar gives
the petitions their urgency.
In learning from this parable
,we expect the Holy Spirit to strengthen us for the discipline of intercession into which we are about
to engage for this coming twelve months. We will not forsake the Prayers
the Lord Jesus has taught us. We will continue with them and, as well,
take on the disciplined use of the prayers we find in three of Paul’s
Prison Epistles—in Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians.
Learning
from Jesus will give us the nerve and muscle to strengthen us for the
discipline we will gain from Paul. So, let us go now Luke 11.
As we have noted, there is no conclusion to the prayer here. Instead there is a story to teach us how to press in to the One Who holds the answer to the four petitions that touch upon our needs. These four follow the first three petitions that have to do with the glory of God and the coming of His Kingdom on earth. The last four are important, but they are secondary to the spiritual concerns of the first three. The story begins abruptly. This
makes the point clear as there is no break in the praying.
The man making the request had
not knocked one time softly to see if perhaps the storeowner might still
be awake. He knocked loud and long. He went beyond the bounds of propriety.
He showed no regard for the man who was asleep with his children. He
only had regard for his own need. But, consider this. The need and the
urgency of the man knocking was that he might have something to give
to another person.
On looking at this in the Greek
New Testament, we might discover that the man who came to this man’s
house in his journey had lost his way. He had missed his road and happened
upon this man who might help him for the night—if only that man
were prepared with a cupboard of food.
This man who had no bread in
his house got his request, not because he was a friend of the man on
whose door he was knocking, but because of his importunity.
Importunity? What is importunity?
How could Jesus use the story
of so disdainful a person to illustrate that deeper level of prayer
into which He was leading His disciples?
I don’t know how He found
the liberty to do this, but He did. And there are lessons for us to
learn from it.
That man “prayed” to his friend for two reasons. One:
the situation upon him demanded an answer.
Two:
he knew that the man on whose door he went to knock held that answer.
There was no appeal to that man
inside as a friend. There was no mention of his own goodness or worthiness.
There was no sense that he had anything coming to him. There were but
two factors involved in his supplication: he had a need and he knew a man who could meet that need. He needed bread and he
knew there was bread in the house of the man on whose door he was knocking.
The story simply teaches that
when we have a pressing or embarrassing need, one with which we cannot
continue, there is Someone who can relieve us, if we but persist in
our push in unto Him.
But
wait. Jesus continued His lesson on importunate praying. The next three
verses are important if we are to understand what He was teaching. You
will see in this next verse three more Imperatives. But this time they
are Present Imperatives. Remember, Imperatives give commands. If they are Aorist
Imperatives, as were the seven petitions of “The Lord’s Prayer,”
they make an urgent request that must have an answer right away. A Present
Imperative is a command that is repeated over and over and over.
Three actions associate themselves
with the kind of prayer Jesus was teaching: asking, seeking and knocking. In verse 9 they occur as Greek Imperatives
in the Present Tense. Jesus was telling the disciples to “ask and
keep on asking, never ceasing until what you are asking for is given
to you. Seek, and keep on seeking, never ceasing until you find what
you are looking for. Knock and keep on knocking, never ceasing until
the door at which you are knocking is opened. For everyone who asks
and asks and asks receives; and whoever seeks and seeks and seeks finds;
and to the one who knocks and knocks and knocks it will be opened.”
That’s importunate praying, the kind that refuses to be denied. It is implied in “The
Lord’s Prayer” and taught directly by the Lord Jesus in parables.
The prayer of importunity does not make use of vain repetition. Jesus warned against this in Matthew 6:7. When you pray, do not keep talking on and on the way ungodly people do. They think they will be heard because they talk a lot.NIRV® Sadly, many have used the Prayer Jesus taught us to pray in a by-rote
and religious way. We must remember that, in Matthew 6:9, He said, After
this manner therefore pray ye. He then followed with the seven points of urgent supplication.
As we take these points into our heart, they give us direction for our
praying, much as a road map will give us direction for travel. What
we encounter and where we stop along the way will unfold as we travel.
If we’re shut in and cannot travel, then what a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer. By this, we can travel around the world.
The fact is: those who are on “lock down” might travel farther
than those who are outside and a beset with “busyness.”
The kind of prayer illustrated
by the man who refused to be shamed was not selfish praying. He was
poor and ill-prepared, but his life and his request turned not on himself.
His “praying” was even an inconvenience in his own affairs.
He, too, could have been sleeping, but he was out making request for
someone else. This is close to being intercession.
What was the desperation that
caused the importunity? The man had nothing
to set before his friend. It was midnight, a
desperate hour. Could this point to the last hour? Probably so. Why
was there nothing in the house? Luke
11:13 gives us insight. Is it not because the Holy Spirit had not been free
to do His work? See the verse. If
ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children:
how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them
that ask Him? This
word ask clues
us in again to the principle we are learning. It means to ask, without
ceasing, till the answer from Heaven is given. The bread for which the
man asked represented the Holy Spirit.
There
is a word in the Greek New Testament that describes this kind of praying
we are discussing. It is deésis (de-AYE-sis) and means the supplication that arises
out of urgency. Its kindred Verb is déomai and means to beseech, or, to make supplication. It
means to have, or to behold, a need and to make urgent requests that
it be granted. There is an absoluteness about this kind of praying,
a factor in the petition that says, “There is no use in considering
not granting my request. It must be granted, and I know You can grant
it.”
Knowledge is the foundation for
this kind of praying; faith is secondary. Faith reaches and supposes
that the answer will come, but knowledge knows the answer already exists.
It is resident in God. He must give it up. It’s an unusual word
for prayer, not like the more frequently used proseúche (pros-EU-keh) which means to approach God in a worshipful
attitude. This word, with its kindred Verb, occurs a total of 124 times
in the New Testament. Deésis with its Verb occurs 41 times. Some of the places where deésis, or its kindred Verb, occurs are very enlightening.
It was the kind of praying Zacharias did
before his son, John the Baptist, was born. But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer (deésis)
is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt
call his name John—Luke 1:13. It was God’s purpose
that John be born. The Scriptures foretold him in Malachi 4:5,6. Yet, the burden for his
birth fell on Zacharias. For that reason he prayed and prayed with a
supplication that would not give in until John was conceived in the
barren old womb of his wife. It is worth noting that this kind of praying
got the attention of one of the greatest angels in heaven. The angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence
of God...Luke 1:19. He came to announce that the petition of Zacharias
was being granted.
Then there was Anna, about 84
years old, who departed
not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers (deésis)
night and day—Luke
2:37.
Dear old Anna prayed this way. Her heart was taken with desire for the
Redeemer to come. The urgency and the necessity for Him to arrive was,
as it were, conceived in her womb of intercession. Of a certainty He
would come. The Scriptures demanded it. The faithfulness and Covenants
of God demanded it. The need of mankind demanded it. But Anna’s
heart also demanded it, so she prayed and prayed until He came and she
both beheld Him and held Him.
There is an interesting account
about Jesus and this kind of praying, also in Luke’s Gospel. And the Lord said, Simon,
Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you
as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not...—Luke 22:31,32. Prayed in
this passage is from the Verb deómai. In an issue that involved the demands of Satan upon
a disciple whom He loved, Jesus prayed and prayed and prayed. Jesus
knew well this level of prayer. With Him, prayer was not a briefly stated
matter, but one that took hours, all night long, or even days. In spite
of His omniscience (knowing all things) and His omnipotence (having
all power), in spite of His union with the Father, He prayed with an
earnest supplication that demanded an answer. His praying was an example
for us of intercession.
All this reminds me of a mother I knew who prayed and
prayed for her son in prison. She died, not having seen her request
granted, but a letter came from him requesting material for study so
he could prepare for the call of God upon his life. Her petition had
in fact reached God’s Throne.
Jesus was moved with compassion
when He beheld the multitudes scattered and torn like wounded sheep
with no shepherd and struggling with wild animals. He said, The
harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; pray (from déomai) ye therefore the Lord
of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest—Matthew 9:37, 38. What an urgency He was imparting!
He was saying, “Do not give up making supplication to your Father.
Press through to Him Who is the Lord of the harvest, beseeching Him
to put forth laborers into His harvest field.”
Further on in Luke, Jesus taught another important,
and surprising, lesson about praying. In it, however, we see pure supplication
for one’s own personal need, not intercession for another. This
passage demands our attention for more reasons than one. Among them
is the binding necessity that one continue always with praying and not
to lose heart or become despondent. Following is from Luke 18.
1 And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to
pray, and not to faint; (The Greek word used here for pray is not deómai. It is the much more general word proseúchomai. This
means simply to approach God with a request. The lesson taught in the
story, however, illustrates that kind of prayer about which we are telling
in this article.)
Whereas the key in the lesson
recorded in Luke 11 is importunity, in the above it is continual coming. That
the unjust judge should represent God and the widow represent
us is as strange as the two friends in the earlier story. But again,
it was Jesus Who told the stories, so we listen.
What rings through in both of
the parables from Jesus is the prevailing faith, both in the man who
asked for bread and in the woman who approached the judge. Their faith
grew from their knowledge that the one to whom they made supplication
could— indeed,
he could—answer. The parables illustrate a faith much more precious than of gold that perisheth,
though it be tried with fire—I Peter 1:7.
We will cover the last four petitions
of “The Lord’s Prayer” in the accompanying “prayer
starters.” Become ready for us to enter “The Discipline of
Intercession” together as we go into the new year.
© Berean Ministries Prayer
Starter:
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