Many times in my life I have looked at how someone has done something and thought to myself, “I can do that myself.” I’ve read numerous manuals and YouTube videos, and some explain the task poorly, giving long, convoluted instructions that make everything look harder than it needs to be. Maybe the worst of these are the recipes you find on many a website that give you a long, drawn-out story before they even begin to explain how to make the recipe. Too often, prayer gets turned into something that feels like it needs to be drawn out and full of dramatic, flowery language. Even today, a good percentage of Christians are not comfortable praying aloud. The tradition of perfectly put-together prayers started before the time of Jesus. In this tradition, the teacher would instruct pupils how to pray properly, encouraging them to add enough flourish that they might think they would impress the Almighty with piety proven through perfectly prose-turned prayer. The disciples sought to continue this tradition by asking Jesus to teach them the perfect way to pray. Jesus turns to them and shows them a truly countercultural way to pray, simple and to the point. Prayer has power, and Jesus teaches us that dedicated, persistent prayer matters more than impressive argumentation and prose.
He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 So he said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, may your name be revered as holy. May your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.”, 5 And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, 6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ 7 And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. 9 “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish? 12 Or if the child asked for an egg, would give a scorpion? 13 If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition (Friendship Press, 2021), Lk 11:1–13.
The prayers of Jesus are different, and the disciples recognize the unique power in His words. They want to learn how to pray, which leads to the question they direct to Jesus here. In response, He doesn’t give them a theologically complex, verbose script; instead, He gives them a simple structure to follow. The flowery language is stripped out of the prayer because eloquent words too often provide cover to our pride. By contrast, a simple prayer directs our minds to our stripped-down needs. Our hearts should focus on asking God to provide sustenance, forgiveness, and protection, and to keep our minds on the source of the fulfillment of our needs. This places the focus entirely on God’s glory and our basic, daily reliance on Him. Therefore, when we don’t feel comfortable praying, we can look to this response and find comfort in the fact that Jesus leads us to keep our prayers simple and focused on what God can and will do for us. However, should we be called on to pray, our focus cannot shift toward something that has the purpose of sounding good; rather, it must be with a pure heart. Through this prayer, Jesus shows us that anyone can pray, and everyone is called to pray, because it is simple; and if you ever need a guide, Jesus provides one through this prayer.
At the heart of prayer is desperation. When we think that we can supply our own needs, we do not pray with desperation, relying upon God. To highlight the desperation required during prayer, Jesus shares a story about a friend who arrives at midnight, and to the host’s dismay, their pantry is bare. Thus, he has nothing to give the guest and risks being inhospitable to his friend. With no solution at home, he runs to a neighbor for help. When in our lives do we feel out of control, or as if we cannot solve a problem with our resources, whether those resources are our finances, our abilities, or our intellect? Many pieces of furniture have arrived at my home, and I immediately set the instructions aside and started building. I am assured in my abilities to put together a table or bookshelf; unfortunately, I am not always in the mind of the one who designed the furniture, and something often goes awry. Only in the midst of my failure do I dig the instructions out of the trash and backtrack until I reach the part put together out of order, so I can fix it. Similarly, with prayer, we truly come to God only at the midnight hour, when our resources have failed us. Too often we think we are self-sufficient, so our prayers only scratch the surface and are often fueled by trying to impress God, but God is not impressed by our language; he is impressed by our desperate pleading and shameless audacity to come before the Almighty with our requests.
The story continues to show that the man goes to the neighbor without getting what he needs, and instead of giving up, he keeps knocking. Even when the neighbor gave a number of excuses, the man kept asking, and eventually the neighbor got up because he persisted. Therefore, God invites us to be persistent in our prayers; we are called to pray with desperation, as one who recognizes they have no other options. When we truly recognize that we are out of options and need a miracle, we do treat prayer exactly like this. However, most of the time we ask God for a pat on the back, and we pray to be seen as pious. However, the prayers to feign piety run counter to what Jesus is instructing here. We are called to turn to God with a desperation and persistence at all times, not just when our lives are falling apart. Instead of tossing out the manual that Jesus gave us, we are invited to start with the instructions and recognize our need for constant dependence before the project falls apart. Jesus commands us to ask and seek; this isn’t a mere suggestion, but a command, so that our prayer life must be one of constant asking and seeking, as this is key to a relationship with the Almighty. However, we shouldn’t treat this as a transactional formula in which prayer immediately leads to a blessing. Rather, it is a formative process, since persistent prayer forms us and leads us toward becoming persistent pray-ers. Thus we pray persistently not to change God’s mind, but to change our hearts. When we empty ourselves of the false belief that we author our own salvation, we recognize that God is the only power that leads us to a new life.
Our world is broken; as a result, we see chaos spring up everywhere, creating an environment where everything has the potential for divisiveness. We might turn to many places for answers, but no YouTube tutorial will give us a perfect one. However, Jesus gives us a simple manual for prayer, reminding us of our desperation and pointing us to the Almighty as the only source to meet our needs and the only solution to the ills of our world. Even when we don’t feel as if we have the ability to pray, Jesus presents us with a script, because God does not need our words to understand our need, and we are not expected to have perfect prose, just a heart that is pure and completely reliant upon Christ in our prayer. Therefore, as we come to God, the most important aspect is that, with pure intentions and desperation, we keep coming, we keep asking, we keep knocking, because when we take this tactic, we draw closer to God, and God blesses us with His presence. As people, we know good gifts; we give them during holidays and birthdays, but God’s gifts are superior in every way. This is why Jesus commands us to be persistent pray-ers: as we do, we draw nearer to God and receive the presence of the Almighty, the greatest gift of all.
