Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on May 11, 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
Day today and I wanted to honor my mother by sharing a little bit about her with you. She passed away in 1999 and I’m gonna let you guess a few things about my mom. I will give you a hint. Every answer starts with the letter P. Okay, so we’ll start out. Her favorite color that she loved was.
It was pink. All right, if you said pink, you get a point.
Her favorite flower was the peonies. All right. I mean, you could have said pansies or some other things or petunias, but she loved peonies. She was a gifted.
Not as gifted as my wife, but she was very gifted. I always remember talking on the a lot. She wasn’t ahead of her time in many things, but I think she had the first mobile phone back in the 60s. It was a 25 foot cord that was attached to the wall. She was very mobile as she walked around.
But I thought of this today because of Mother’s Day. But also one thing I remember about mom and what she was usually doing on the phone, she was praying with people. That’s the last P. She was known as a woman of prayer. And even years after she passed away, I’d be driving in a car and thinking, I’ve got a decision to make today. I need to call my mom.
Did you ever do that after your parents have passed away? It’s just in your mind or once or twice I picked up the phone and started dial 35742, my childhood phone number, and then realized my mom’s been gone. But that was because she was a praying person. Today we’re going to be looking at what does prayer look like in Luke chapter 11. We invite you to turn in your Bibles with us.
Or if you want to use the Pew Bible. The new Pew Bible is page 922. 922. Please follow along. As I read, He being Jesus, was praying in a certain place.
And when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, lord, teach us to pray. Just as John also taught his disciples. And he said to them, whenever you pray, say, father, your name be honored as holy, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us and do not bring us into temptation. The more familiar version of this is the book of Matthew, but they’re both recording what they heard was said that day or remembered.
He he also said to them, suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says to him, friend, lend me three loaves of Bread. Because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I don’t have anything to offer him. Then he will answer from inside and say, don’t bother me. The door is already locked and my children and I have gone to bed. I can’t get up to give you anything.
I tell you, even though he won’t get up and give him anything because he is his friend. Yet because of his friend’s consistent pounding on the door, his shameless boldness, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be open to you.
For everyone who asks, receives. The one who seeks, finds. And to the one who knocks, the door will be open. What father among you? If his son asks for a fish, would give him a snake instead of a fish?
Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion. 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? May we pray, Father? As we look at this all important part of our life, the practice of prayer. Show us today, Father, ways that we can improve our prayer life so that it is more effective and so that it honors and pleases yous more.
In your Son’s name we pray. Amen. After some introductory words. Today we’re going to be looking at the practice of prayer. We’re going to be looking at persistence in prayer.
And we’re going to be looking at promise of prayer. And they’re all P’s to honor who? My mom. Okay, All P’s today talk about an introduction. First it tells us in verse one, he was praying in a certain place.
And when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, lord, teach us to pray. Just as John also taught his disciples. The first thing here is Jesus example. Who is praying here? It’s Jesus.
God in the flesh, sinless man, perfect in every way. But yet Jesus took time to pray because prayer is necessary. And if Jesus needed to pray, then who else needs to pray? All of us. We need to follow Jesus example.
The next thing is when it mentions a certain place. We know that Jesus would take certain times to pull away and go somewhere and pray. And often it was on the Mount of Olives. And what I want to point out here is that in Jesus prayer life, prayer is intentional. He set aside a time, he knew a certain place where he wanted to go and pray.
It wasn’t Haphazard. This was an important event in his life. Jesus took time out of his busy schedule. He went away to certain places, like the Mount of Olives. And we should follow his example.
Praying with the TV blaring is probably not the best place to pray. Playing with your grandchildren all running around you is probably a time that you have to pray. But it may not be the best time to pray. Or when you’re in the car and you’ve got the radio blaring. What I’m trying to say is prayer is talking to God.
And as with your spouse and your children and your friends, if you really want to talk to somebody, you go to a place that you can do that. You set aside time, you make appointments. Prayer should be intentional. And then we see the disciples saying, lord, teach us to pray. I just want to point out the disciples had a desire here that they wanted to learn how to pray better.
Therefore, for us, prayer is something that we can all grow in. It’s not something that anybody ever gets to the point, you know, I don’t have any room to grow here. We should all desire and pursue to do better in our prayer life. Let’s look now at the practice of prayer again. I read verses two through four.
He said to them, whenever you pray, say, father, your name be honored as holy, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves are also. Forgive everyone in debt to us and do not bring us into temptation. Jesus here is presenting them with a basic outline or a basic list of elements that are needed for effective prayer. It’s a list of elements that are needed.
It’s like a recipe, and there are ingredients on a recipe. And if you leave that out, if you leave the yeast out of the bread, you’re going to be surprised when it comes out the oven. All these elements are necessary for prayer. And I want to say it’s fine to recite this prayer, but Jesus intention was not that this was the only prayer to pray. And it’s not the only way to pray.
It’s a list. It’s to help us to understand. And I want us to look at the Book of Matthew where we find the prayer presented in a little different way to give us some more insight here.
Whereas Luke 11:2 says, he said to them, whenever you pray, say Matthew words it like this, therefore you should pray. And again, it’s this emphasis that prayer is intentional. Like this, like this means that it is in a similar way to praying like this. It’s not saying you Pray this exactly it’s. And this is all that you pray.
It’s fine to use the Lord’s Prayer from time to time, but what Jesus is doing is teaching us how to expand upon this, but reminding us of what the necessary elements are. Matthew and Luke have slight differences in how they write on this. And if God had desired for us to pray only this prayer over and over exactly the same way, both gospel accounts would have had it written out exactly the same. But it’s not. So this prayer would probably better be titled not the Lord’s Prayer, but it’s really the model prayer for us to pray.
It was meant to give a guideline for prayer and it gives a specific order of topics that need to be covered and it also puts puts those in an order of priority when we pray. Let’s look at a couple other things that Matthew shares in the passage about the model prayer. In Matthew 6, 7 we read when you pray, don’t babble like the Gentiles. Since they imagine they’ll be heard for their many words. There was a way to pray among the heathen that they would just say the same thing over and over and over and over again because they assume that the more we say it, our gods are more likely to listen to us.
Prayer is not about the quantity of words. Saying more words, saying the words over and over again does not guarantee that God is going to hear you any better. Proper prayer is not about quantity. But also we learned there in verse five that it’s not about the quality of the words either. And when I say quality of the words, God could care less.
If you use three dollar words that are beautiful and long and poetic. God just wants you to come to him and talk to Him. But Jesus gives this warning about the hypocrites. It says when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites because they just love to pray standing in synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Truly, I tell you, they have their reward.
These people were praying with words and length of words and quality of words because they wanted people to sit there and say, oh, what a beautiful prayer. That’s not what prayer is supposed to be about. Jesus said that we go into our closet, we do it in private, but we also pray in public. But we’re going to see that when we pray in public, we’re not talking to the congregation or the group. Even in a group setting, we’re still talking to God our Father.
The quantity of words is not important and it doesn’t Guarantee a better response from God. And the quality of the words is not important, especially when the quality of the words is meant to gain attention or praise from others.
Matthew 6, 6 says, but when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door and pray to the Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Now some people may say, well, that means I’m only supposed to pray for myself. I can’t pray with other people because Jesus says, go to your private room. Well, throughout scripture, there are public prayers by godly men and women that other people hear.
What Jesus is saying here is the character of prayer is that it’s supposed to be personal and it’s supposed to be sincere. Again, it’s when you stand and pray with others. Don’t think about how they’re hearing your prayer. Think about how God is hearing my prayer. You are praying on everyone’s behalf to God our Father.
And the neat thing is that Jesus says that we can approach him as our Father, we can approach him as our daddy because he wants to have a personal relationship with us and going and talking to him one on one when no one else is listening. That’s when we can be very sincere in what we are saying. But we’re supposed to also pray with sincerity and a personal relationship with the Lord, even when we are in public. What are the five elements that Jesus talks about here in this prayer? We’re going to look at worship, which comes from Father, your name be honored as holy.
We’re going to look at allegiance, your kingdom come. We’re going to look at petition. Give us each day our daily bread. We’re going to look at confession. Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us.
And we’re going to look about deliverance and do not bring us into temptation. All of these things are to be basic elements in prayer. Let’s look first at worship. Father, your name be honored as holy. When you come to God in prayer, the first thing is not to start off with your list of things that he wants you him to do for you.
We’re supposed to come to him and talk about him, make him the attention of our prayer life. Worship him. Spend time showing your appreciation and giving, giving him thanksgiving. This is the beginning point of where all prayers should begin. But if we’re in a hurry, we tend to say, I have a short time to pray.
Let me ask God for this thing I need today. It would be much better if you only have a short time to pray, to forget about yourself and just spend time praising God and giving him thanks.
God is our friend. And if you have a good friend, do they talk more about themselves or more about you? When you get together, they talk more about you. That’s what friendship is. It’s a concern for the other person.
So it is. When we pray, our concern should be more about God. Good parents talk more about their kids than who? Than themselves. Good grandparents talk more about their grandchildren than they do themselves.
And if there’s somebody that represents someone else, they go not to talk about themselves. They go to talk about the person that they’re representing. The truth is that God deserves praise that is eternal, and God deserves praise that is everywhere. We get that here from Psalm 113. The Psalmist writes, hallelujah.
Give praise, servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Let the name of the Lord be blessed, both now and forever. That’s the eternality of the praise he deserves. And from the rising of the sun to its setting, let the name of the Lord be praised.
And you notice here, this isn’t verse 2077 in the Psalm, it’s verse what? It’s verse 1, 2, and 3. The Psalmist starts out with praise to Lord, worshiping him. The second ingredient in prayer here is allegiance. Just remembering the prayer, your kingdom come.
That means that we’re committing to the Lord, that we are living, most importantly in his kingdom. We are citizens in the kingdom of God, and that citizenship is more important than our citizenship in the USA or to any other country in the world. Nothing else is to take more importance than living in God’s kingdom, being obedient in God’s kingdom, and making sure that we do everything the way God wants His kingdom, kingdom to be. There are many parables in scripture, and it talks about servants, and it talks about vine dressers and keepers of gardens. And there’s a master who goes away, and he leaves all of his servants and people in charge.
It’s a picture of God’s kingdom. Jesus came and he began the kingdom he’s left over. We’re to live and work in that kingdom now as valid, faithful citizens, because Jesus is going to return. So when we talk about God’s kingdom, we’re talking about working in God’s kingdom now, but also looking forward with anticipation to his return, so that we will be excited when he sets his kingdom up throughout all of the world. Matthew 6:33, the famous passage where it tells us not to worry about anything in our life, everything that we think that is important, that the world emphasizes like food and clothes.
It’s all less important than making sure that we put the kingdom of God first. We read there in Matthew 6:33, Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. We started out with worship. We went to allegiance. And this verse is telling us if we focus on allegiance, then we know that the next category of petition, God is going to provide what we need.
And that’s where we are now in verse three. Give us each day our daily bread. After spending time in worship, after pledging our allegiance, we come and we ask God for not the extravagant things that we have, but we come and we ask him for these very simple things. Our daily bread, our daily needs. Ephesians 6:18 says, Pray at all times in the spirit with every prayer and request, and stay alert with all perseverance and intercession, not just for ourselves, but all the saints.
It’s during this time a petition in our prayer that we’re praying for others. We’re praying for ourselves. You know, God always knows what our simplest needs are. And even though he knows what our needs are, he still tells us, ask me daily to provide for you what you need. It’s a reminder to us that everything that we have that’s necessary in life, down to light and air, it all comes from God.
And when we acknowledge every day that we are receiving everything from him, it helps us to appreciate him more and to honor him more. There’s worship, allegiance, petition, and then we come to confession.
Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us. Every time we pray, there needs to be an acknowledgment that we are sinners. We sin when we don’t even realize that we are sinning. We also sin when we realize we’re sinning. Sometimes we intentionally do it, or unintentionally, but it’s something that we need to come before the Lord, spend time every day in confessing, and that gives us an appreciation for what he has done for us.
But we also have this daily element here. Not only that we’re asking God to forgive us, but we’re also supposed to keep a clean slate every day that we have forgiven everyone else who is in debt to us. In Matthew, chapter 18, I’ll remind us of the story of the man that just owed millions and millions of dollars to his master or to his king. And he came before the king, and the king said, pay up everything you owe. And the man says, there’s no way I can pay all this debt, please, please forgive me.
It’s a picture of where we are spiritually before the Lord. There’s no way we can ever pay the debt of sin that we have. But through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, God forgives us our sin. And in that parable, or maybe it’s a real story, we don’t know. Jesus doesn’t say, the Master said, I forgive you.
But then we know what happened. That man went out and from having been forgiven a very huge debt, one of his friends or co workers comes in and who owes him a very small debt. And the man says, pay me back. And the man uses the same words, please forgive me. It’s going to take me a while to pay you back.
But the man doesn’t forgive him. And what happens? Well, the Master hears about it and the Master becomes angry because he’s just forgiven this huge debt. Why can’t this man forgive just a little bit? And it tells us in Matthew 18 that His Master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay everything that was owed.
So also my Heavenly Father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart. When we don’t forgive other people, the most important thing is we’re not really hurting them as much as we’re hurting who. We’re hurting ourselves. And God tells us, don’t let your unforgiveness go from one day to the next. It’s an element of prayer that should be there part of our life every day.
Ephesians 4 says, don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Get things settled. Forgive people before the sun goes down. Don’t let anything last to the next day. Because the warning here is, if you let your anger persist, if you don’t forgive people, it gives the devil an opportunity to work in your Life.
The Ephesians 4 passage leads from unresolved anger, unresolved forgiveness that opens to doors of temptation that Satan is continually lambasting us with. So here we are, we’re asking God forgiveness. We’re telling him we have forgiven other people and, and we move to the next element and that’s to pray for deliverance.
In Luke 11 it’s recorded, do not bring us into temptation. He’s not saying here necessarily, everybody else, it’s, I need to be delivered. And all the rest of my friends and other believers that I know. Our struggle against temptation, our struggle against evil, our struggle against Satan is not a monthly or biannual affair. Satan is Prowling around every day, every hour, trying to discredit Jesus Christ by causing us to sin.
We go to Ephesians chapter six. It tells us about our responsibility here. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil spiritual forces in the heaven. It’s a daily battle.
But the biggest part of the battle is not what we do, but it’s asking God to help us to make it through it. Here in Ephesians 6:18, and with putting on the armor of God, pray once a week. What does it say? Pray at all times in the Spirit, with every prayer and request. And not only pray, but stay alert with perseverance and intercession of also for others, that they will not come into temptation.
We must continually fight against Satan, but we can’t resist him alone. We must pray about it daily for ourselves and for the struggles of others.
That’s the practice of prayer. Let’s look at the persistence in prayer. We’re not going to go into this in a lot of depth. I just want you to get the main point and with other parables and stories that Jesus shares. Not every single element of the story is about anything important.
He wants us to get the main idea here because we’re going to read about a friend that doesn’t seem too kind. We don’t want to take that to mean that God isn’t kind to us. We need to get the main point here. But I’ll read in verse 5, he also said to them, suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says to him, friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I don’t have anything to offer him. Then he will answer from inside and say, don’t bother me.
The door’s already locked. My kids are in bed and I’ve gone to bed. I can’t get up to give you anything. I tell you, even though he won’t get up and give him anything because he is his friend. Yet because of his friend’s continual pounding on the door, that’s what he’s doing, his shameless boldness.
He will get up and give him as much as he needs. First thing is, he’s approaching somebody that he knows is his friend. I mean, how many people would you knock on their door at midnight? It would be a select few. So he’s going to someone that he knows is his friend.
But here, this guy’s had a long day. He’s got seven children and they’ve all been crying and they got to bed late and they spilled milk on the floor. And finally he and his wife have a moment’s peace and quiet and they’re lying down in bed. And the last thing he wants to do is get up and turn on the lights. And the whole household does what wakes up again.
It’s kind of funny, though, because he’s yelling down, I can’t come to the door. My kids are sleeping. He’s probably woken them up anyway. But you can picture please don’t bother me. The door’s locked.
If I get up, my kids are going to get up. We’ve had a hard day, but the man continues to ask. And what Jesus is telling us here is that we are supposed to be persistent in our prayer. The friend knew that there was a need he had, and here’s the key. He had reasons why he did not want to get up and help.
But the persistent friend still received what he needed. And what I want to point out here is that sometimes it seems that God is not answering our prayers. Let’s be honest. Do we all feel that way? Or God, why aren’t you answering this today?
I need this right now. Well, just like the friend, God often, I would say he always has reasons that we can’t comprehend that keep him from answering our prayers immediately.
But eventually he will answer your prayers. He’s either going to say yes, sometimes he’s going to disappoint us. And do what? Say no, don’t say, that’s not an answer to prayer. That is an answer to prayer.
But sometimes he’s going to tell you or he’s not going to tell you. He’s going to leave you to wait. But we can be certain that his timing, his understanding not of just my situation, but of all things, allows him to answer our prayers in the right manner and at the exactly right time, which is best for us, which is best for everyone else, and which honors him the most. There have been many times in my life that I’ve prayed for things that I wanted God to answer right away and in a certain way. And he does it.
And then I find out months or years later, wow. If God had answered the prayer I wanted him to answer, it would have affected my children negatively, or my church, or my wife or a friend. God sees all those things. When he’s telling you to wait, continue to pray, be like the persistent friend, but allow him to answer in the right way, in the right time. Persistence in prayer.
Hebrews 4:16. We read, Let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need. That friend knocked on the door of someone. That was his friend. He approached that door boldly in the middle of the night.
And God says, you can do the same thing with me. In the Old Testament, the holy of holies was behind a curtain that was as thick as a man’s hand, and only the high priest could go in there once a year. But when Jesus died on the cross, that veil was rent from top to bottom. And it shows us that now not only can the high priest go into the presence of God, but now we can walk into the throne. There might be a few of us today that could go to England and go to Buckingham palace, and you don’t even have to knock on the door.
You can just walk right in to the king. Anybody here today like that?
We can do that with God. And he is the great and awesome King of the universe. He’s given us this. This wonderful gift that no matter what he’s doing, we can just run into his presence, and we can do it with boldness. And we know that he’s going to receive us and he’s going to help us with what we need.
God is ever available in prayer, and God is ever willing to listen to what our prayers are. He never tires of us coming to talk to him in prayer. The practice of prayer, the persistence of prayer. And lastly, we end up with the promise of prayer.
Jesus says, I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock, and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives. The one who seeks, finds.
And to the one who knocks, the door will be open. Jesus is just emphasizing over and over and over and over that your prayers are going to be what answered. If you ask, you’re going to receive. If you seek, you’re going to find. If you knock, it’s going to be open.
None of these have anything negative in there. And as if that’s not enough emphasis, then he goes on to say, everyone who asks receives, receives. He’s emphasizing it again. The one who seeks finds. The one who knocks, the door will be opened.
It can’t be more clear that God’s promise is that he will always do what? What’s the right answer? He will answer our prayers. And then Jesus says these statements that probably seem rather humorous. And it should to us.
What father among you? If his son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead of a fish? It’s just not going to happen. That’s ridiculous. Or if he asks for an egg, we’ll give him a scorpion.
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. Our earthly fathers give what their children provide. Need God much more. So will the Heavenly Father. And here’s the greatest gift that he’s given us.
That the Holy Spirit comes to live with us, to be with us, to commune with us, to help us, to pray, to help us to live, to give us the strength. But the promise of prayer is that God will always answer your prayer. And he doesn’t always give us what we want, but he gives us, more importantly, what what we need.
James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift is is from above. There are no bad gifts from the Father.
Even when he allows sickness and illness in our life, there’s still some reason there that those things are good and perfect. Every good and perfect gift is from above. Coming down from the Father of Lights and he doesn’t change. We can count on him eternally being only a good giver of gifts. Philippians 4:19 promises us that my God will supply all your needs according to all his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
There isn’t anything that you need that God cannot provide for you. So I end with three applications today. The first one is, are you setting aside enough time to pray?
And I ask you this week, make a commitment to either better frequency in your prayer or make a commitment to choosing a place this week that I don’t. Whatever it is, if it’s one time this week or five or 10 that you’re going to choose a place that you can go and spend time time with the Lord with undistracted, undivided attention. And the third thing is not only frequency and place, but just spending more time with the Father. I encourage you sometime today, write down what your goal is and ask God to help you to do that this week. I’m not asking you to make a decision or commitment to do something for the next year.
Just make a commitment about prayer for this week. The second thing is what elements of prayer do you need to focus more on? Do you need to spend more time in worship when you pray? Do you need to spend more time in expressing your allegiance to the Lord? Maybe you need to spend less time in petition.
Maybe you’re going to say, you know God, I’m going to really Try to limit what I asked for this week because I really don’t need that Lamborghini as much as I thought that I needed it. Okay.
Are you spending time in confession every day. And are you praying that God will help you to be delivered from evil? Decide which of these do you need to try to think about more? Last thing is, like the disciples said, lord, teach us to pray. We can all learn how to pray better.
And I’m going to recommend two books for you. One is by Kay Arthur. It’s called Lord Teach Me to pray in 28 days. This is a book I’ve read over and over again. There’s a some books that you can just read many times and another one is called Praying the Bible.
I’m going to leave these up here. Not for everyone to take them home. It’s just so you can look at the title so you can get that. But like the disciples, be desirous to learn how to pray better and ask the Lord to help you to grow in that. May we close in prayer.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your instruction on prayer. We thank you, thank you for prayer that we can come boldly into your presence. Let us not take that lightly, Father, but let us enjoy it and embrace it for the gift that we have that we can do this with you. Help us all to be desirous to grow in our prayer lives. Show us how and what we need to do, what we need to commit to, Father, that we would be better prayers this week.
In Jesus name, amen.