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A few months ago, some of you might remember, I publically professed my love.  No it wasn’t a testimony or a shout out to my family.  None of that...

I professed my love for my iphone... do you remember?

Well, the reasons are obvious.  I mean, you can do everything with this thing.  Just this week, Kayley and I saw this older couple outside CVS over at the corner of 43rd and Cortez.  They had locked their keys in the car.

So Kayley and I were just back from a mission trip, still filled with a Spirit of helping others, and so we decided to help.  What was amazing was how much I could do with my phone.  You don’t have the phone number, let me look that up for you.  Oh yes, of course I have Bradenton PD’s phone number in my contact list.  Let me log in to triple A’s website for you.

The only thing I couldn’t do was open up the car door for them.  Yet!  Well that is, until someone creates an app for that.  I mean, there is almost an app for everything.

Watch this...

Thy Phone Prayer Video Bump 

 

Friends, we are starting a new sermon series this week on prayer.  Part of our mission statement is Loving God, and certainly prayer is one of the ways we demonstrate Loving God.

Now maybe you are one of those disciples of Jesus that is able to truly pray without ceasing.  You pray often and early.  God knows what on your heart, because you have made it known through prayer.  You are a true prayer warrior.

Or maybe, you are in need of the “supplication app” from the iphone.  You know prayer is something that we are supposed to do as believers, but to be honest maybe you are thinking you aren’t real good at it.

You go through something difficult or maybe even very happy and worthy of celebration, and then later you think to yourself, “Wow, I should have prayed about that.”

Have you ever told someone you would pray for them and some need they have, only to realize the next time you saw them that you forgot?  Has that ever happened to anybody in here?

Maybe you are like the early disciples with Jesus from our scripture lesson this morning.  You want to talk to God, you know Jesus has the way for life, but you still feel you should ask, “Teach us to pray, Lord.”  Some of us just don’t feel good about prayer.

If that’s you this morning, then let’s look again together at what Jesus said in response to that question.  How did Jesus teach disciples how to pray?

Our scripture lesson ends with the assurance that God provides good things for those that love Him.  If human beings, as the creation, know how to give good things to their children, says Jesus, then how much more will our creator God know how to give those things?  The point is, ask God for things in prayer, and God will provide.

So what good things does God give us in prayer?  What does Jesus say about prayer?

In the first century, prayer was not the same as it is today.  Prayer was the communities business.  Jewish people prayed together, the same prayers throughout the day.  They were prescribed as part of the community of God’s people.

For example, each morning when a Jew would open their eyes, the day begins with the “modeh ani” which is a prayer translated as "I give thanks before You, Living and Eternal King, that You have returned within me my soul with compassion; [how] abundant is Your faithfulness!"  The reciting of this prayer marked a person as a member of the Jewish community of God’s people.  All Jewish people prayed the same prayer.

So when the disciples ask Jesus how to pray, what they are really asking for here is a prayer that would mark them as followers of Jesus.  Simply put, what they are asking for is a community prayer.  Something they could all pray together, as the same prayer.

What they received from Jesus is what we now know as the Lord’s Prayer.  It is indeed that prayer that marks us as the community of God’s people, disciples of Jesus.  It is something we pray together.

Sometimes people are uncomfortable with the Lord’s Prayer, because it seems impersonal or rehearsed.  To say a real prayer, according to those people, is something that comes from the heart.  But that is our culture of the individual and our lack of community coming out.  The disciples operated in prayer as their Jewish ancestors did, as a community.

So, what is offered as the community prayer Jesus teaches?  What would Jesus have his disciples pray about, in order to receive the good things offered by God?

Well, if you notice, to break this down, within the Lord’s Prayer here in Luke (and by the way it’s not all here as we know it) there is address, two statements, and three requests.

“Our Father, who art in heaven” names God as creator of all, but maybe more importantly names us as His children.  From this address, the relationship between God and the community of God’s people is clear.  We are his children and God is our Father.  God is in heaven as creator, and we are here on earth as the creation, as children of God.

Next come the two statements.  Just to be clear that this relationship between God as Father and we as His children is not casual or even completely the same as the father-children relationships we know, the statement “Hallowed by your name” makes it clear.  God is to be honored as Holy; not treated as a teenager might treat their Father, but on a different level.  God is Holy!

It’s important that we know to whom we are talking, and so the address and the first statement clearly communicate who it is we are talking to.

The second statement is about the Kingdom of God that is to come.  This is a theological declaration about God’s intention for the creation; God’s intention for our world.  In the beginning, creation was perfect and all things were perfect.  There was no sin, no chaos, and no darkness.  God was in harmony and relationship with His people, the image of God walking with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the day.  Jesus prays that this Kingdom will come again.  That it is God’s intention, that this perfection return.  

Our community prayer makes it clear that the God, who is our Father and we who are His children, are engaged in a Holy relationship with it’s purpose stated clearly in prayer, as returning the world to the Kingdom that God intends.

We are only two sentences in to this prayer, and look at all we have already declared together as the community of God’s people.  

Then we come to the requests.  What would Jesus, teaching the community of disciples about their community prayer, desire to ask God for?

There are three things.

The first is basic.  We need food, but more than food we need shelter, clothing, and all the other basics.  Our Daily Bread here functions as covering all the basics.  God knows that we need these things in order to survive, but not only just to survive, but also in order to be in relationship with God.  So praying for Our Daily Bread puts us in a position to serve God.

Second is the need for forgiveness.  Again, these disciples are Jewish and so they understand the need for forgiveness.  In Judaism, forgiveness was like a debt.  If someone acts against another, a debt was incurred.  That debt could only be satisfied by the person to whom the debt was owed.  So when it comes to God, the debt was not something that was deserved, but something that was given by God’s grace.  So this prayer is asking that God’s grace satisfy the debt of sin.  And also, those given forgiveness, should be prepared to give it to others so that is also included in prayer.

But more than that, this second request is the acknowledgment that as disciples we live in a broken and imperfect world.  It is the admission that we fall short in the ways that God would have us live, it’s a statement of humility.

Finally, the last request is about spiritual protection.  It sounds funny that we would ask that God not lead us into temptation.  Of course, God would not lead us into temptation.  But what we are really saying is that God is in charge of protecting us from harm, from evil in the world, and so God keeps temptation from “getting us.”  Again, just as in the previous two statements, this one too is a statement of dependence on God.  It is the community’s acknowledgement that God is in charge of all things.

Can you believe that all that is included in the Lord’s prayer?  Did you realize that in just a few simple lines of our community prayer, we have asked God for so much?

Jesus offers His disciples, and us, a prayer that marks us as His people.  He gives us a prayer that declares that God is in charge in every way we can imagine, and that we are dependent on God in every way we can imagine.

And when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, just as disciples of Jesus have prayed for two-thousand years, we are not just praying as Jesus taught us, we are praying as the community of Jesus Christ.  It’s a powerful prayer to say the least!

Friends, are you intimidated by prayer?  Do you worry that you don’t pray often enough, or even pray in the right way?  Were you wondering how to find that “isupplication” app on your iphone earlier?

Well, when Jesus was asked how to pray, He offered the Lord’s Prayer.  It was a simple address, two statements, and three requests.  But it was so much more than that.  It is so much more than that even today.

If you are wondering about prayer, I would encourage you to start there.  When you rise in the morning, start your day with the Lord’s Prayer.  When you tell someone during the day you will pray for them, do it with the words of the Lord’s Prayer.  When you face struggle, or celebration, or fear, or frustration, then you don’t need an electric shock to tell you what to pray, you need the Lord’s Prayer.

Don’t let people tell you that because you aren’t eloquent enough to recite a Psalm-like prayer, then you aren’t doing it right.  That’s not what Jesus said.  Jesus said, when you pray, pray like this...

We are just beginning some discussion about prayer with this series, but perhaps we have started with all you really need to know when it comes to prayer.  If you missed every week from now on, you would have enough of a basis of prayer to be a integral part of this community of God’s people.  

That’s what the Lord’s Prayer is, our community’s prayer.  When we pray it, we address every need, every want, and every hope for God’s people.

Heck, we don’t need an app for prayer, because we already have it.  It’s called the Lord’s Prayer and you would be amazed at how much you can do with this simple prayer.  I know I am...

Thanks be to God for the Lord’s Prayer.

Amen.