God’s Pattern for Prayer

While Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
–Luke 11:1

The disciples were an ordinary group of men. Quite frankly, many of them weren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, if you know what I mean. They weren’t the most intelligent or educated men of their day. But after hanging around Jesus for a period of time, even the disciples made the connection between Jesus’s power and His prayer life. Look at Luke 11:1: “While Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’”

After spending time with Jesus and watching the way He lived, seeing all the miracles He performed, observing His oneness with the Father, and then realizing how often He prayed, the disciples were able to connect the dots. They understood that prayer was the channel through which the power of God flowed into Jesus’s life. So they said, “Lord, we want supernatural power like that in our lives. We want to experience that kind of intimacy with God in our lives. Lord, teach us how to pray.” Jesus answered His disciples’ request by giving them a model of how to pray. It’s the most famous prayer in history–what we call the Lord’s Prayer.

In Luke 11:2, Jesus began His instructions by saying, “When you pray . . .” Isn’t it interesting that He didn’t say, “If you pray”? For Jesus, prayer was foundational, and it ought to be foundational for His followers as well. Jesus assumed His disciples would be people of prayer.

In the account of this scene found in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus introduced the Lord’s Prayer by saying, “Pray, then, in this way” (6:9). Notice that Jesus did not say, “Pray this specific prayer.” Nowhere in the New Testament did any apostle ever pray the Lord’s Prayer word for word. This prayer is a model for us to follow; we are not commanded to pray it word for word.

The Lord’s Prayer is not some kind of mantra we’re supposed to repeat, nor is it filled with magic words that will automatically make great things happen in our lives. Instead, this prayer gives us a pattern we can use to pray more effectively.

Today’s devotion is adapted from “God’s Pattern for Prayer” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2008.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.