You've got to get this one thing right. (Feb 24, 2025)

Listen here:  https://www.pastorwoman.net/podcast/episode/5ea53dfd/youve-got-to-g...

They had seen him do it often...

but now they wanted him to

teach them how to do it. Truly, so many settings,

so many people - the disciples had seen Jesus

heal the sick, cast out demons, teach and preach,

answer the Pharisees, raise the dead, feed more

than 5000 people with one lunch.

Why wouldn't they want Jesus himself to teach them?

But of all the things the 12 could have learned from him,

it was prayer they wanted Jesus to teach them!

[hmmm, I wonder if that is what I would have most desired from the Lord.]

Luke simply records: Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”1

Some of us call it the Our Father, others The Lord's Prayer -- what you call it probably depends on your faith tradition. But Friend, when you recite it, do you think about what you are saying, the very words you are praying?

At my church each Sunday we kneel and pray it, though I wish we prayed it a little more slowly and deliberately, so we might be more conscious of the words and the intent of each line.

Jesus gave his men this model to pray:

Our Father,

who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy Name,

thy kingdom come,

thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins

as we forgive those who sin against us.

And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us

from the evil one . . . and Luke stops there with this prayer Jesus taught.2

We must get the first two words right, or we are in danger of missing it all.

"Our Father" implies relationship, and that not of the earthly sort. In fact, the fatherhood of God and our adoption into God's family is vital to our lives and certainly to meaningful communication with him, and answers to our prayers.

As we open Luke chapter 11, I am keenly aware of this time in Jesus' life as he journeyed toward the Cross in Jerusalem, just weeks away. The goal of Jesus' death wasn't just so you or I get to go to heaven when we die, although that is stupendous news. What Jesus accomplished on the cross had an even more profound, intimate, and joyous effect: it made us children of God.3 "To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater."4

Further . . .He wants to be my loving Heavenly Father. . . He's a God who's filled with mercy, who loved me when I was still in my sin, who chose me before the foundation of this world to be His, realizing that fatherhood didn't originate with my earthly father. Fatherhood originates with God. He is the essence and the truth of that concept. He was a father before the world began.5

When Jesus taught the disciples to pray, he wanted them to know the deep love of His Father . . . their Father. and he drove his point home with this:

You fathers—if your children ask for a fish, do you give them a snake instead? Or if they ask for an egg, do you give them a scorpion? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”6

I know what it is to be asked for something by my children, as I am a mother to four. If I would move heaven and earth to meet the needs of my children, yea, even to try to fulfill their wants--how much more would my Father! We simply must have a right understanding of God our Father--and certainly when we pray to Him! Which reminds me of God's promise: This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.7

Because why? He is my loving Heavenly Father.

O, the deep, deep love! - listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebimCyr67b0

Pray to your loving Heavenly Father - he is waiting for you.

Christine

Luke, #40

1 ­ - Luke 11.1

2 - Luke 11.2-4

3 - Revering God, Thaddeus J. Williams

4 - Knowing God, J.I. Packer

5 - Blair Linne, "Finding God as your Father," Wonderfully Made podcast, June 13, 2022

6 - Luke 11.11-13

7 - 1 John 5.14-15, NIV