Learning to pray - Luke 11:1-13

Featuring: Ian Bentley

Date: Sunday, 26 May, 2013

Remember – that God our Father is God and he may not always give us everything we ask for even as a human parent doesn’t give everything a child asks for.

I have mentioned before that in times past I used to read the Perishers a cartoon strip in the Daily Mirror. In one cartoon a little boy, Baby Grumplin is walking to church with his sister Maisie and the conversation goes like this, “If I pray very hard I’ll get everything I want won’t I Maisie?” “Well everything within reason.” “Here what’s this within reason lark? Ask and thou shalt receive is what it says!” Maisie responds “Oh I shall loose patience I shall. It means ask for something proper something unselfish, something within reason. To which Baby Grumplin replies “I knew I should have read the small print.”

Well Maisie has got it right and wrong yes we are to ask and yes we will receive but in all we need to remember that God’s will for us is perfect and he will only give us what is good for us or what is in accord with his purpose.
In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed, “Father everything is possible for you. Take this cup away from me. Yet not what I will but what you will” (Mark 14:36). As we know it was not the will of the Father to keep Jesus from death.
As we pray we need to remember God will only give us what is good for us or what is in accord with his purpose.
Friends I know this only too well. Daily I pray to be able to bowl a cricket ball like Stuart Broad and often end up bowling like Stuart Little! But then God knows my pride and it wouldn’t be good for me!

But seriously Jesus here is not encouraging us to act as if God is some celestial philanthropist just giving us everything we want. However that does not mean that God does not answer our prayer. When your child or grandchild ask for a third cake you answer them but the answer is not what they want to hear and sometimes it is so with God, his answer is no and sometimes we find that hard and we cannot understand. But then we are children and as such are called to trust our heavenly Father.
What has Jesus to teach us about prayer? He tells us it about our relationship with God who is our Father in heaven to whom we come as loved children and of whom we can ask anything knowing that he will give to us what is for our good, our spiritual and physical welling and as a blessing through us to others.

It is as we shall be reminded in our closing hymn a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer! And again as we shall be reminded we forfeit peace and we needlessly bear pain when we will not come to God in prayer.

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