Seek and ye shall find, knock and the doors shall be opened, ask and it shall be given and God’s love come a tumbling down.
Of all the vertical habits – praise, confession, lament, illumination, gratitude – the one that is most habitual for most of us, I suspect, is supplication or petition. There are few atheists in foxholes (hiding as the bombs drop all around), because when our needs are great we call out to God for help. Just before the test starts, we ask God for help. When we or someone we love gets sick, we ask God for help. When our team faces a formidable challenger, we ask God for help. When something threatens our lives, whether we lose our job, or we lose power or we develop a life threatening illness we ask God for help. When we fall in love we ask God to make the other person love us back. When we interview for a job, or put a bid in on a house, or buy a scratch ticket we toss off prayers that God will help things turn out in our favor.
Sometimes, it seems that these prayers are answered. We get what we think we want. But if we pray such prayers for help long enough we soon learn (along with the Rolling Stones) that we can’t always get what we want.
For some people whose prayers are not answered the way they want, this is cause for them to stop asking. A loved one dies too soon. He doesn’t get a full scholarship to an Ivy League and has to attend the community college. The man she was head over heels in love with didn’t give her a second glance and married someone else. He wanted to be a hero but the war was a nightmare full of unspeakable suffering. He faced impossible situations and when he came home wounded in body, mind and spirit he can’t find adequate health care and many question whether that war was honorable at all.
When our prayers are not answered the way that we want it is tempting to turn away from God, close down the relationship, stop asking, stop looking, stop knocking on heaven’s door. It is so tempting to become cynical toward people with faith, give up on religion and slog through life with no hope. For such people life is hard, full of bitterness and struggle until you die.
Another strategy many use when prayers are not answered is to try harder. Maybe we just need to work harder at being good. Naughty boys and girls get crossed off the gift list. If we can just be good enough to stay on the list then God will give us what we want. Or maybe it’s a matter of perseverance, if we keep knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door, like a whiny child begging for junk food at the grocery store, we’ll wear God down and he’ll give us what we want just to shut us up. Or maybe we just haven’t learned the right words to say for God to answer our prayers.
That’s what the disciples ask when they see Jesus in prayer. “Lord, teach us to pray.” Jesus, give us the right words to say so that our prayers are answered just as your prayers are answered. Jesus didn’t give his disciples some magic words to get anything they thought they wanted. But because they had turned to him with an openness to learn, he taught his disciples how to pray. Let us turn to this teaching now. Page 66 in the NT in the pew bibles – Luke 11.
Lord, in our need, open us to your love, your grace and your perfect will for our lives.
Seek and ye shall find, knock and the doors shall be opened, ask and it shall be given and God’s love come a tumbling down.
The first part of the teaching in Luke is a version of the Lord’s Prayer. This one is a little shorter than the one in Matthew, but they are basically the same prayer. It is commonly the first scripture, sometimes the only scripture that Christians memorize. While we usually pray it as a prayer in and of itself – it is actually a model for our prayers – it teaches us how to pray any prayer.
Note that it doesn’t start with a petition for help. It starts with God’s name, God’s address and the God’s plan for all of creation.
Jesus teaches us to call God Our Father (Abba, Daddy) Some people have trouble with calling God Father, but to understand what Jesus is teaching we have to understand this metaphor for God. Jesus expands on this in verses 5-8 and 11-12. Note also that God is Our Father – when we pray we need to always remember that we are part of a community – faithful prayers cannot be self-centered, benefiting us to the detriment of any other person or to the rest of creation.
God’s address tells us more about the God to whom we pray. In heaven is the name for God’s kingdom – the realm where everything goes according to God’s will, the way God always intended it to be from creation. In God’s realm there is shalom – well being for every living creature – there is enough – our cups run over with blessings – all creatures live in harmony with one another according to God’s divine plan.
God’s plan comes next. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God is planning for an invasion. God’s kingdom is coming to this earth full of pain and suffering. God’s work is to transform all our tears into laughter. All our struggle into peace. All our needs will be met. When the shalom on this earth matches the shalom in heaven God’s work will be done, God’s salvation will be complete. This is the mission of Jesus Christ. This is the mission of his followers. At our baptisms Christians become citizens of this kingdom of God, at our confirmations we pledge to live our lives according to God’s will, dedicating our lives to following the way that leads to life.
Naming God and remembering God’s plan for creation is what we do when we praise. This is why we start each worship service with a time of praise. So that we are reminded of why we are here, who has called us here and the nature of God’s kingdom in which we have been invited to live. By giving us the Lord’s Prayer as a model Jesus is encouraging us to always start our prayer time by remembering who we are praying to, remembering his divine plan for shalom and asking for God’s will to be done here on earth. Praise puts us in a posture that is open to the God we can trust. This is the God we love. This is the God who loves us as dearly as any parent could love a child. God will for us is nothing less than the best for us and all creation. That best is called shalom.
Lord, in our need, open us to your love, your grace and your perfect will for our lives.
Seek and ye shall find, knock and the doors shall be opened, ask and it shall be given and God’s love come a tumbling down.
Next we come to the petitions. Give us this day our daily bread. Jesus encourages us to ask for what we need. Just as God provided manna in the wilderness each day that the Israelites were searching for the Promised Land, so God provides for our needs day by day. True prayer for help acknowledges our utter dependence on God’s mercy and love for life. As we grow in faith we learn that we don’t always know what is best for us. We are called to trust God, to open ourselves up for God’s will to be done in our lives. Sometimes God’s answer to our prayers is no – not to punish us, but because what we are asking for would do harm to ourselves or to another - that is not God’s highest and best will for our lives – it is not in harmony with God’s heavenly kingdom of shalom. God’s gift of daily bread is not everything we want – but it is everything we need to live a life of shalom.
The next petition is for God to forgive us as we forgive others. This is an acknowledgement that our needs go beyond the physical to the spiritual. And that when we do any harm to another person, when we turn our backs on God and close ourselves off to God’s will, our souls need help. We can get stuck in anger and resentment, our own grumbling and fuming can prevent us from experiencing shalom even more than any lack of food, water or shelter.
Receiving forgiveness and forgiving others are not two separate things. It’s not that if we muster up the ability to forgive then God will forgive us. Rather one who refuses to open themselves to God’s will enough for the Spirit to help them forgive another, cannot fully receive forgiveness. As one Christian wrote, “mercy flows through the same channel whether it is given or received.” Forgiveness and being forgiven are one and the same gift. True prayer must include a process for opening up this channel so that the forgiveness can flow freely between us and God and us and our neighbors and we can be set free to live in shalom. As we are set free from unforgiveness we find ourselves growing more and more into the likeness of Christ who looked at his enemies from the cross and prayed “Father forgive them for they no not what they do.”
Finally we ask God to lead us not into temptation and deliver us from the evil one. In other words we ask God to keep us safe from ourselves – from our wrong desires, from doing things that only bring pain – and to keep us safe from the evil that is beyond our own doing. Here Jesus encourages us to ask God for protection from any circumstances that might threaten our lives or our relationship to God.
Lord, in our need, open us to your love, your grace and your perfect will for our lives.
Seek and ye shall find, knock and the doors shall be opened, ask and it shall be given and God’s love come a tumbling down.
After this model of prayer Jesus gives us some humorous stories to show what the love of God the Father is like. At first glance we might think that the story of the desperate neighbor who pounds on the door begging for some bread to feed his unexpected guests is a story about persistence. Even if the friend who was in bed wanted the neighbor to go away before he woke up the whole family, if the neighbor kept pounding long enough the friend would get up and give him the bread, if only to shut him up. But the word translated in many of our Bibles as persistence actually means shameless. The neighbor doesn’t get his bread because he is persistent – the friend gives it because it would be shameful if he didn’t come to his neighbor’s aid in a time of need. If friends give to one another to preserve their honor, surely God, our holy Father who loves us will come to our aid in the time of need.
A little further down we have the examples of children asking their parents for food. “If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with ah live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider? You wouldn’t think of such a thing.” God, who loves us better than any human parent won’t put us to the test.
God does not lead us into temptation. God is not the one causing all the bad things that happen to us. Bad things happen because people have free will and are more than capable of harming one another. And bad things happen that are beyond human control because there are forces of evil in this world. The good news is that the kingdom of God is breaking in to redeem the world and set if free from evil, from sin and from suffering. And so, Jesus encourages us to turn to God for help in our time of need. Trust that help is on the way – is already around us if only we have eyes to see and accept it.
Lord, in our need, open us to your love, your grace and your perfect will for our lives.
Seek and ye shall find, knock and the doors shall be opened, ask and it shall be given and God’s love come a tumbling down.
These sayings are not a blank check on which we can write anything we think we want. But when we seek first the kingdom of God, when we truly knock on heaven’s door and when we are open to God’s will being done in our lives and in the world around us God answers our prayers. As a loving Father God gives us far more than we can ask or imagine. We just need to be open to God’s love, open God’s grace and open to his will being done in our lives. When we pray as Jesus taught us the assurance that God answers prayer is hardly needed.
Lord, in our need, open us to your love, your grace and your perfect will for our lives.
CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER
Of all the vertical habits – praise, confession, lament, illumination, gratitude – the one that is most habitual for most of us, I suspect, is supplication or petition. There are few atheists in foxholes (hiding as the bombs drop all around), because when our needs are great we call out to God for help. Just before the test starts, we ask God for help. When we or someone we love gets sick, we ask God for help. When our team faces a formidable challenger, we ask God for help. When something threatens our lives, whether we lose our job, or we lose power or we develop a life threatening illness we ask God for help. When we fall in love we ask God to make the other person love us back. When we interview for a job, or put a bid in on a house, or buy a scratch ticket we toss off prayers that God will help things turn out in our favor.
Sometimes, it seems that these prayers are answered. We get what we think we want. But if we pray such prayers for help long enough we soon learn (along with the Rolling Stones) that we can’t always get what we want.
For some people whose prayers are not answered the way they want, this is cause for them to stop asking. A loved one dies too soon. He doesn’t get a full scholarship to an Ivy League and has to attend the community college. The man she was head over heels in love with didn’t give her a second glance and married someone else. He wanted to be a hero but the war was a nightmare full of unspeakable suffering. He faced impossible situations and when he came home wounded in body, mind and spirit he can’t find adequate health care and many question whether that war was honorable at all.
When our prayers are not answered the way that we want it is tempting to turn away from God, close down the relationship, stop asking, stop looking, stop knocking on heaven’s door. It is so tempting to become cynical toward people with faith, give up on religion and slog through life with no hope. For such people life is hard, full of bitterness and struggle until you die.
Another strategy many use when prayers are not answered is to try harder. Maybe we just need to work harder at being good. Naughty boys and girls get crossed off the gift list. If we can just be good enough to stay on the list then God will give us what we want. Or maybe it’s a matter of perseverance, if we keep knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door, like a whiny child begging for junk food at the grocery store, we’ll wear God down and he’ll give us what we want just to shut us up. Or maybe we just haven’t learned the right words to say for God to answer our prayers.
That’s what the disciples ask when they see Jesus in prayer. “Lord, teach us to pray.” Jesus, give us the right words to say so that our prayers are answered just as your prayers are answered. Jesus didn’t give his disciples some magic words to get anything they thought they wanted. But because they had turned to him with an openness to learn, he taught his disciples how to pray. Let us turn to this teaching now. Page 66 in the NT in the pew bibles – Luke 11.
Lord, in our need, open us to your love, your grace and your perfect will for our lives.
Seek and ye shall find, knock and the doors shall be opened, ask and it shall be given and God’s love come a tumbling down.
The first part of the teaching in Luke is a version of the Lord’s Prayer. This one is a little shorter than the one in Matthew, but they are basically the same prayer. It is commonly the first scripture, sometimes the only scripture that Christians memorize. While we usually pray it as a prayer in and of itself – it is actually a model for our prayers – it teaches us how to pray any prayer.
Note that it doesn’t start with a petition for help. It starts with God’s name, God’s address and the God’s plan for all of creation.
Jesus teaches us to call God Our Father (Abba, Daddy) Some people have trouble with calling God Father, but to understand what Jesus is teaching we have to understand this metaphor for God. Jesus expands on this in verses 5-8 and 11-12. Note also that God is Our Father – when we pray we need to always remember that we are part of a community – faithful prayers cannot be self-centered, benefiting us to the detriment of any other person or to the rest of creation.
God’s address tells us more about the God to whom we pray. In heaven is the name for God’s kingdom – the realm where everything goes according to God’s will, the way God always intended it to be from creation. In God’s realm there is shalom – well being for every living creature – there is enough – our cups run over with blessings – all creatures live in harmony with one another according to God’s divine plan.
God’s plan comes next. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God is planning for an invasion. God’s kingdom is coming to this earth full of pain and suffering. God’s work is to transform all our tears into laughter. All our struggle into peace. All our needs will be met. When the shalom on this earth matches the shalom in heaven God’s work will be done, God’s salvation will be complete. This is the mission of Jesus Christ. This is the mission of his followers. At our baptisms Christians become citizens of this kingdom of God, at our confirmations we pledge to live our lives according to God’s will, dedicating our lives to following the way that leads to life.
Naming God and remembering God’s plan for creation is what we do when we praise. This is why we start each worship service with a time of praise. So that we are reminded of why we are here, who has called us here and the nature of God’s kingdom in which we have been invited to live. By giving us the Lord’s Prayer as a model Jesus is encouraging us to always start our prayer time by remembering who we are praying to, remembering his divine plan for shalom and asking for God’s will to be done here on earth. Praise puts us in a posture that is open to the God we can trust. This is the God we love. This is the God who loves us as dearly as any parent could love a child. God will for us is nothing less than the best for us and all creation. That best is called shalom.
Lord, in our need, open us to your love, your grace and your perfect will for our lives.
Seek and ye shall find, knock and the doors shall be opened, ask and it shall be given and God’s love come a tumbling down.
Next we come to the petitions. Give us this day our daily bread. Jesus encourages us to ask for what we need. Just as God provided manna in the wilderness each day that the Israelites were searching for the Promised Land, so God provides for our needs day by day. True prayer for help acknowledges our utter dependence on God’s mercy and love for life. As we grow in faith we learn that we don’t always know what is best for us. We are called to trust God, to open ourselves up for God’s will to be done in our lives. Sometimes God’s answer to our prayers is no – not to punish us, but because what we are asking for would do harm to ourselves or to another - that is not God’s highest and best will for our lives – it is not in harmony with God’s heavenly kingdom of shalom. God’s gift of daily bread is not everything we want – but it is everything we need to live a life of shalom.
The next petition is for God to forgive us as we forgive others. This is an acknowledgement that our needs go beyond the physical to the spiritual. And that when we do any harm to another person, when we turn our backs on God and close ourselves off to God’s will, our souls need help. We can get stuck in anger and resentment, our own grumbling and fuming can prevent us from experiencing shalom even more than any lack of food, water or shelter.
Receiving forgiveness and forgiving others are not two separate things. It’s not that if we muster up the ability to forgive then God will forgive us. Rather one who refuses to open themselves to God’s will enough for the Spirit to help them forgive another, cannot fully receive forgiveness. As one Christian wrote, “mercy flows through the same channel whether it is given or received.” Forgiveness and being forgiven are one and the same gift. True prayer must include a process for opening up this channel so that the forgiveness can flow freely between us and God and us and our neighbors and we can be set free to live in shalom. As we are set free from unforgiveness we find ourselves growing more and more into the likeness of Christ who looked at his enemies from the cross and prayed “Father forgive them for they no not what they do.”
Finally we ask God to lead us not into temptation and deliver us from the evil one. In other words we ask God to keep us safe from ourselves – from our wrong desires, from doing things that only bring pain – and to keep us safe from the evil that is beyond our own doing. Here Jesus encourages us to ask God for protection from any circumstances that might threaten our lives or our relationship to God.
Lord, in our need, open us to your love, your grace and your perfect will for our lives.
Seek and ye shall find, knock and the doors shall be opened, ask and it shall be given and God’s love come a tumbling down.
After this model of prayer Jesus gives us some humorous stories to show what the love of God the Father is like. At first glance we might think that the story of the desperate neighbor who pounds on the door begging for some bread to feed his unexpected guests is a story about persistence. Even if the friend who was in bed wanted the neighbor to go away before he woke up the whole family, if the neighbor kept pounding long enough the friend would get up and give him the bread, if only to shut him up. But the word translated in many of our Bibles as persistence actually means shameless. The neighbor doesn’t get his bread because he is persistent – the friend gives it because it would be shameful if he didn’t come to his neighbor’s aid in a time of need. If friends give to one another to preserve their honor, surely God, our holy Father who loves us will come to our aid in the time of need.
A little further down we have the examples of children asking their parents for food. “If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with ah live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider? You wouldn’t think of such a thing.” God, who loves us better than any human parent won’t put us to the test.
God does not lead us into temptation. God is not the one causing all the bad things that happen to us. Bad things happen because people have free will and are more than capable of harming one another. And bad things happen that are beyond human control because there are forces of evil in this world. The good news is that the kingdom of God is breaking in to redeem the world and set if free from evil, from sin and from suffering. And so, Jesus encourages us to turn to God for help in our time of need. Trust that help is on the way – is already around us if only we have eyes to see and accept it.
Lord, in our need, open us to your love, your grace and your perfect will for our lives.
Seek and ye shall find, knock and the doors shall be opened, ask and it shall be given and God’s love come a tumbling down.
These sayings are not a blank check on which we can write anything we think we want. But when we seek first the kingdom of God, when we truly knock on heaven’s door and when we are open to God’s will being done in our lives and in the world around us God answers our prayers. As a loving Father God gives us far more than we can ask or imagine. We just need to be open to God’s love, open God’s grace and open to his will being done in our lives. When we pray as Jesus taught us the assurance that God answers prayer is hardly needed.
Lord, in our need, open us to your love, your grace and your perfect will for our lives.
CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER
- Think of someone who has a need; someone for whom you would like to pray. I’m going to lead you in an imaginary encounter with Jesus.
- Allow Jesus to appear in any way He wants. He might look like the picture of Jesus on our window over the altar. He might look very different. Just imagine Jesus standing here in our midst. Notice what he is wearing. Notice his face, his hands.
- Imagine that and your friend walk up to Jesus. See that person, turn toward Jesus and lean on him for support and comfort.
- Now ask Jesus what gift he would like to give to the person in his arms.
- Listen and watch to hear and see how Jesus responds.
- We know Jesus has something for this person, so if you see nothing or hear nothing, guess what Jesus would give him or her. Ask the Holy Spirit to influence your guess! Keep watching and listening as the music plays.
- Listen to or sing Leaning on the Everlasting Arms
- Thank Jesus for his gift and ask him if he would like you to share what you experienced in this prayer time with the person you have been praying for.
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