Jesus’ Teaching on Prayer – PS

A longtime friend of mine (a note about her is at the end of this post) told me that she would have liked to have heard the answers to the questions about Jesus’ teaching on prayer that our Life group discussed. Below are answers to the questions that I included in yesterday’s post.

Opening
What standard prayer(s) did you recite as a child?

Thank you for the world so sweet;
Thank you for the food we eat;
Thank you for the birds that sing;
Thank you, God, for everything.

Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Matthew 6:5-8
In Matthew 6:1-18 Jesus warns his disciples against hypocrisy (pretending to be what one isn’t) in giving to the needy, in prayer, and in fasting.
1. How does their hypocrisy affect the way that hypocrites pray?
2. How does it affect their reward?

1. Hypocrites pray where they can be seen by others.
2. Their reward is that they are seen by others instead of that God rewards them. God’s reward could include answering their prayers.

Matthew 6:9-13
As you know, this prayer is generally called The Lord’s Prayer. Luke 11:1-4 records a shorter version of it which Jesus gave on another occasion in response to one of his disciples asking him to teach them how to pray.
1. What concerns related to God come first?
2. What personal concerns follow?
3. How are forgiveness and prayer related? See also Matthew 6:14-15.

1, The concerns related to God which come first are that He be glorifed, that His kingdom come, and that His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
2. The personal concerns which follow are that God will meet our needs, that He will forgive us our sins, and that He will protect us from temptation.
3. God’s answering our prayers to Him depends on our forgiving others for what they have done to us.

Luke 11:5-13
Jesus records Jesus as following his teaching of the Lord’s Prayer with a parable (11:5-8) and some comments (11:9-13) on prayer. The comments are also recorded in Matthew 6:7-11.
1. What does the parable in Luke 11:5-8 teach about prayer?
2. How does Luke 11:9-13 relate to the parable?

1. The parable in Luke 11:5-8 teaches that we should be persistent in our prayers to God. One of the group members, Pat Peddle, suggested the parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8) as another parable with the same lesson.
2. Luke 11:9-13 says that God will give us good things in answer to our prayers just as a father gives good things to his children in answer to their requests to him. Other group members (others present were our host, Roland; my wife, Leonora; and Eugene Champion) reminded us that God doesn’t always answer our prayers with a “Yes”; sometimes He answers with a “Later” or “No.” However we know that however He answers our prayers, He will work things out for good (Romans 8:28).

My “longtime friend” (Rose Harmer) and I attended the same Pentecostal church in northern Ontario when we were adolescents. Several years ago she and her husband, Bob, visited our family here in Newfoundland. Like me, she has a blog at WordPress. Listeningtohear is a devotional blog, and I enjoy reading Rose’s weekly posts and often comment on them.

Jesus’ Teaching on Prayer

Yesterday (Thursday) evening I attended the weekly meeting of our church’s Life group hosted by Roland and Sherry Loder. Five attended, and we studied Jesus’ teaching on prayer.

We spent the first half of our study time discussing the following questions:

Opening
What standard prayer(s) did you recite as a child?

Matthew 6:5-8
In Matthew 6:1-18 Jesus warns his disciples against hypocrisy (pretending to be what one isn’t) in giving to the needy, in prayer, and in fasting.
1. How does their hypocrisy affect the way that hypocrites pray?
2. How does it affect their reward?

Matthew 6:9-13
As you know, this prayer is generally called The Lord’s Prayer. Luke 11:1-4 records a shorter version of it which Jesus gave on another occasion in response to one of his disciples asking him to teach them how to pray.
1. What concerns related to God come first?
2. What personal concerns follow?
3. How are forgiveness and prayer related? See also Matthew 6:14-15.

Luke 11:5-13
Jesus records Jesus as following his teaching of the Lord’s Prayer with a parable (11:5-8) and some comments (11:9-13) on prayer. The comments are also recorded in Matthew 6:7-11.
1. What does the parable in Luke 11:5-8 teach about prayer?
2. How does Luke 11:9-13 relate to the parable?

We spent the other half of our study time discussing the REFLECT questions on Luke 11:1-13 in The NIV Serendipity Bible for Study Groups (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1988, page 1357). I had permission from Serendipity House, Inc., to provide copies of the questions to the group. However I don’t have permission to copy them here and so am not doing so. Sorry. I heartily recommend both the book and the set of questions to readers of this post.

Next week our Life group will hold its last meeting of the 2013-14 church year, a social, and the group may not resume meetings in the fall. Thus this may be the last weekly Friday post at Open Theism.

Open Theism contains four earlier articles on prayer: “Open Theism Encourages Prayer,” March 23, 2013 (part of my opening series of articles on open theism); “Prayer,” May 17, 2013 (part of our Life group study of Ephesians 6:10-20); “Prayer,” December 10, 2013 (part of my current series of reports on my family’s reading of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology in our daily Bible reading); and “Prayer in Daniel,” May 9, 2014 (part of our Life group study of prayer).

Prayer in Daniel

Yesterday (Thursday) evening I attended the weekly meeting of our church’s Life group hosted by Roland and Sherry Loder. In the group’s preceding meeting I’d asked the group to “read Daniel 2, 6, and 9 and try to discover who prayed, the circumstances under he/she/they prayed, and the lesson(s) about prayer for us” for our next meeting (yesterday’s). Seven attended yesterday’s meeting, and we read from Daniel 2, 6, and 9 and discussed the following questions on them.

Daniel 2
– What decree did the king make? Why?
– What did Daniel do because of it?
– How did God answer Daniel’s prayer?
– What does the event teach about prayer?

Daniel 6
– What decree did the king make? Why?
– What did Daniel continue to do?
– What happened to Daniel?
– What does the manner of Daniel’s praying teach about prayer?

Daniel 9
– What did Daniel discover?
– What did Daniel pray for?
– How did God answer Daniel’s prayer?
– What does the content of Daniel’s prayer teach about prayer?

Here I’ll share just what I can remember of what the group suggested that the passages taught about prayer.

What does the event in Daniel 2 teach about prayer?
Daniel’s asking the king to set a time for him to show him the interpretation of the king’s dream before Daniel knew what it was shows that he had faith that God would reveal the dream and its interpretation to him and suggests that when we pray we should have faith that our prayer will be answered. His making the matter known to his three friends and telling them to seek mercy from God about it suggests that we should ask others to pray on our behalf.

What does the manner of Daniel’s praying in Daniel 6 teach about prayer?
Daniel’s continuing to pray as usual after knowing of the king’s decree shows that he considered prayer to be more important than life. His praying towards Jerusalem where the house of God was, praying three times a day, and kneeling to pray suggest that we should focus on God/Heaven when praying, have regular times of praying, and show reverence to God when praying. His giving thanks to God in his prayer, described by his enemies as a petition, suggests that we should include thanks to God in all of our prayers.

What does the content of Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9 teach about prayer?
Daniel’s prayer contained confession of Israel’s sin, admission that they deserved what had happened and was happening to them, and a request for mercy from God. We noted that Daniel reinforced what he said in his prayer by accompanying it with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. The prayer provides a model of the attitude that we should have when we pray, including recognition that our obtaining what we ask for will not be because of our deserving it but because of God’s mercy.

Open Theism contains three earlier articles on prayer: “Open Theism Encourages Prayer,” March 23, 2013 (part of my opening series of articles on open theism); “Prayer,” May 17, 2013 (part of our Life group study of Ephesians 6:10-20); and “Prayer,” December 10, 2013 (part of my current series of reports on my family’s reading of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology in our daily Bible reading). Next week I’ll share from our Life group study of what Jesus told his disciples about prayer in Luke 11:1-13, which includes the Lord’s Prayer and a parable about prayer.