Three Myths About Prayer
In Luke ch. 11, we are welcomed into the scene that truly encapsulates the way that we are formed to be more like Jesus. Jesus’ disciples are with Jesus as he is praying. Listening to Christ pray is like listening to Bach play the piano or watching Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel. The disciples pray along by listening and then they beg of Jesus: Lord teach us to pray (v. 2).
1. Prayer Is An Innate Skill. Large swaths of the evangelical church in America have done their congregants a great disservice in failing to foster this paradigm-shifitng request— “Lord teach us to pray”— in their congregants. For many Christians in America, it is simply assumed by churches that you will automatically know how to pray. The disciples sitting near Jesus as he prayed to his Father were no novices in prayer. They were first century Jews who prayed the psalms throughout their daily lives and recited psalms and corporate prayers in the synagogue. But something about Jesus’ prayer was still so foreign and novel to them that they knew the prayers they had learned and the prayers of Jesus were of a different character. Their response asking for help is truly the first prayer: we want to pray, Lord teach us how to pray. Prayer is the language of the Kingdom of God. It is not foreign in grammar or vocabulary but in content.
2. I have to come up with the words to pray. The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. He responds with his most famous prayer, the Lord’s prayer, and these words have been life-giving in prayer for the Church ever since. But the reality is, Matthew 7 and Luke 11 are not the only places that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to pray. The psalms immerse us in a school of prayer. The psalms also run the entire range of the human condition from rapturous praise to hopeless abandonment and everywhere in between. Consider the end of the lament longing for home in Psalm 137: “O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock! (vv.8-9).” Are the psalms condoning violence against innocent children? How could something like this be in the Bible about a God of love? But those questions miss the point. This psalm is not promoting violence in God or in humanity but transparency between the divine and women and men. The psalms give us words for even our most base and heinous impulses because the psalms are shaping us towards a life that is fully alive to God.
3. If I have to work at prayer it becomes a “work.” The reason most people struggle so consistently with prayer is because they fail to embrace the struggle. Jesus’ response to the disciples’ request, “Lord teach us to pray,” is a prayer for daily bread, for daily forgiveness, for daily strength to overcome the evil one. There is not a prayer that will suffice for all of time. We must see each day afresh in the grace and provision of God. Think of your most valuable relationships. It is likely that there was an ease, an instant connection that felt a lot like grace, that paved the way for the relationship at the beginning. But that relationship has only strengthened and deepened to the extent that you both have invested in the relationship. There is not less grace present in the relationship because you have worked at it over the years. If anything, you have found more grace because of the work. Prayer is like this because the grounds for all our work in prayer is the grace of Jesus. Remember where we started in Luke ch. 11? The disciples long to pray in response to hearing Jesus pray. All of our work in prayer is a response to our listening in on the love shared between Father, Spirit, and Son. We ask, “Lord teach us to pray,” in order to be immersed in the eternal love of the Trinity.
