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Sunday 27 July 2025 Trinity 6, Seventeenth in Ordinary time, Proper 12
The four Ps of faithful praying
Luke 11:1-13
Context: an elderly but sprightly evangelical Baptist congregation in South Wales
Aim: to encourage the congregation to remain balanced and faithful in their praying
We all find prayer both challenging and difficult. Here in Luke 11 the Lord Jesus gives us one of the most useful and concentrated blocks of teaching that offers us practical help on how to remain both faithful and balanced in our prayer life.
PRAYER HAS PRIORITIES
Matthew offers us the Lord’s Prayer as a pattern to base our own prayers around, whereas Luke offers it as a set prayer for us to use. Throughout history God’s people have been blessed by taking both approaches. However, whichever approach we take, what this prayer shows us is that true Christian praying has priorities. First is the hallowing of God’s Name, alongside the desire for his kingdom to fully come. This solemnity is balanced against the intimacy of being able to call this most holy God ‘Father’. Then, having put God first, we come to our daily needs, the challenge of forgiving others as we ask for divine forgiveness ourselves, and the plea to be delivered from temptation. Without being legalistic, it is worth reflecting on our own prayers over the course
of a week and asking whether
our prayer priorities reflect those
of the Lord. In particular, a
regular self-examination of whom we might need to forgive is in order, for God requires that the grace we seek from him in forgiveness should flow through
us to others who in turn stand in need of our forgiveness.
PRAYER HAS A PROMISE
Next follows the wonderful little parable of the friend who needs some bread. At the heart of this story is an incredible promise, and perhaps a challenge too – that God wants us to be audacious in our praying. Indeed we are told that our shameless audacity is linked with God’s willingness to answer. Verse 11 should be written in the cover of our Bibles and on top of our prayer lists. How shamelessly audacious are you being in
your prayers?
PRAYER NEEDS PERSEVERANCE
If the parable gives us an encouragement to be audacious, our Lord’s application of it in verses 9 and 10 balances that with the need to persevere. Yes, it will be given us; yes, we will find; and yes, the door will be opened to us. But all those verbs are in the present continuous tense in the Greek of the New Testament. It is those who ask and go on asking who receive; it is those who seek and continue to seek who find; and it is those who go on and on knocking to whom the door is opened. So don’t give up. Be shamelessly audacious, but go on and on being that way.
PRAYER HAS A POWER
Lastly, the Lord points out that if we know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more so does our Father in Heaven. Except here in Luke’s account there is one gift that is singled out – the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the Lord is saying that all God’s good gifts come to us in some way through the Holy Spirit? Or perhaps he is acknowledging that prayer is hard work and that we need help? Here then is the promise not so much of power but of an empowerer to help us in our weakness and struggles. God himself by his Holy Spirit will help us in our praying, and in the end his presence with us is the best answer to prayer of all.
So here is our Lord’s prescription for a healthy and balanced prayer life – follow Heaven’s priorities; claim the Lord’s promise and be audacious; persevere; and look to his Holy Spirit for help and power.
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