On an old television series, Bob Newhart played a psychologist.
One of his clients was a door-to-door salesman whose consistent lack of
success left him very depressed. One day Newhart accompanied his client,
hoping to discover the root of his problem. It didn’t take long.
The salesman went up to the first apartment door and just stood there.
After a few moments Newhart said, “Well, aren’t you going to
knock?”
“Oh no!” the unsuccessful, unhappy salesman replied with
shock, “I never knock. I might bother somebody.”
“I never knock” is a funny line coming from a salesman on a
sitcom. It is a sad commentary if it describes the prayer life of a
Christian.
‘Our Father … give
us’
“Lord, teach us to pray,” the disciples asked Jesus. In
response, Jesus taught them to address God as Abba, Father, and to begin
their prayers by directing their attention toward God’s person and
work. Having thus prioritized his disciples’ pattern for prayer,
Jesus then teaches them to ask that God supply their most basic needs:
bread, forgiveness and protection.
The pattern is important. As N.T. Wright observes, “If we don’t
spend time adoring our Father in heaven, seeking the honor of his name,
and praying for his kingdom, all our own desires and hopes will simply
present themselves to us in a muddled, jumbled fashion, coming bubbling
up to the surface in what C. S. Lewis, contemptuous of the later
writings of James Joyce, called a ‘steam of consciousness.’”
In our next two studies, we will explore what it means to ask God to
provide “our daily bread.” First, however, we must address the
questions of why and how it is possible, desirable and even necessary
for us to ask God for anything at all.
Asking God
The Prayer of Jabez, by Bruce Wilkinson, has encouraged many
Christians to pray more frequently and fervently. Jabez’s simple
prayer begins “O that you would bless me indeed …”
Wilkinson’s brief book captures the essence of Jabez’s prayer.
It thereby highlights a central theme of the last three petitions of the
Lord’s Prayer: God wants to bless his people, and he wants us to
ask him for his blessings.
Most of us have had times in our lives when things were going rather
well, when we didn’t feel the need to ask anything from anyone –
including God. But inevitably there come times when all does not go
well. God can use these seasons of life to restore to us the humility we
ought always to cultivate, a sense that tends to disappear in moments of
triumph (cf. Psalm 119:67-71).
These times of need also remind us that God is always ready to listen
to requests from his children. As Eugene Peterson writes, “Christian
faith is not neurotic dependency but childlike trust. … We do not
cling to God desperately out of fear and the panic of insecurity; we
come to him freely in faith and love.”
Why do we ask God for what we need? Because Jesus taught us to do so.
How do we ask? By coming to God freely in faith and love, humbly and in
awareness of our need.
Ask, seek, knock
Shortly after Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer he
added:
“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; he who
seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of
you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for
a fish, will give him a snake? 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 good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7:7-11).
William Hendrickson notes that such asking “implies humility and a
consciousness of need. The verb is used with respect to a petition which
is addressed by an inferior to a superior. Asking presupposes belief in
a personal God with whom one can have fellowship. When one asks, he
expects an answer.”
God does not want us to stand quietly in the hallway of heaven, never
knocking on the door, never really certain if anyone is there to answer.
Instead, he wants us to come to him as trusting children come to a
loving father. He waits patiently to hear us pray “Give us this day
our daily bread.”
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Additional Resources
William Hendrickson, The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 1978); Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same
Direction (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1980); Bruce
Wilkinson, The Prayer of Jabez (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah,
2000); N.T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1996).
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