How To Pray? - A Sermon From Luke 11:1-13

Now Jesus was praying and In a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples, note that the disciple is not named, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.

And he said to them, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation.

And he said to them, Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves.

Verse 1.

He will rise and give him whatever he needs.

And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you.

Seek and you will find.

Knock and it will be open to you.

For everyone who asks, receives.

And the one who seeks, finds.

And to the one who knocks, it will be open.

What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? 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? The big idea in this passage, what if you summarize it all together into one sentence, I think it would mean this because all of these are connected.

He has a parable here.

He has a very clear teaching on how to pray.

And then he ends it with the greatest thing we could receive in prayer, which is more of the Spirit of God, more experience of God.

If we're an unbeliever, it would be to have the Spirit of God, right? So he says that's how we end it.

But all of these come together for this one idea.

The big idea would be pray practically and persistently, and especially pray for more knowledge and godliness from the Holy Spirit.

That's what this is all about.

Pray practically and persistently, and especially pray for more knowledge and godliness from the Holy Spirit, to receive that from the Holy Spirit.

That's what this passage is going to be about.

The hope, of course, and I think what the Lord would give to us this morning, is that for newer Christians, if you're a younger Christian, you haven't been walking with the Lord very long, or you would know in the secrecy of your own heart, you're not a very mature Christian.

You don't know how to pray.

I hope that you can walk away understanding more and having more clarity on how to pray and how you could start that.

But then for those of us who have been walking with the Lord and maybe even in times in our lives have had a strong prayer life, but we've grown stagnant, I hope that this will be a kickstart.