When You Pray, Say...

Scripture Reading: Luke 11:1-4

Did Luke write down everything Jesus said here? I don’t know, but if he did, Jesus cuts right to the chase. Lesson number one: “When you pray, say…” And then Jesus repeats the prayer we have come to know as “The Lord’s Prayer.”

It is not the first time Jesus taught this prayer. He included it in the Sermon on the Mount, delivered near the beginning of His public ministry. We can assert that learning The Lord’s Prayer to be able to pray better is like learning grammar to speak or write better. Sure, you can speak and write without ever learning the rules of grammar, but you’ll be a more effective speaker and writer if you lay a good foundation in grammar. Yes, you can pray without knowing The Lord’s Prayer, but you’ll be more effective in prayer by learning it.

Coming from a non-liturgical church background, it has been a long journey to be able to appreciate some of the traditions of liturgical churches – things like saying The Lord’s Prayer in corporate worship. I’m not leaving my Baptistic roots for Anglicism anytime soon; I’m just thinking that when Jesus told the disciples to “say” He probably meant that, and liturgical churches get that right. And it’s okay to admit that.

Why would we “say” The Lord’s Prayer? Isn’t it just meant as a model, like a skeleton upon which we are supposed to put flesh? Certainly, there is justification for looking at it as a model or outline of the kinds of things we ought to be praying about and for. But when I learned reading and writing, I had to first learn the alphabet. We sang it. You did too, I bet. Until we learn the alphabet, we can’t make sense of words. Until we learn The Lord’s Prayer we can’t make sense of prayer – at least not like we hope to.

Even if your church doesn’t recite The Lord’s Prayer together, you can and probably should make it a personal devotional habit. Getting that down is Jesus’ first instruction on learning to pray.