Praying Rightly
John 16:23-33
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. John 16:23-24 “And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… In 1952 Members of the House and Senate of the United States introduced a joint resolution for an annual National Day of Prayer. The resolution stated that a day should be set aside, “on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.” On April 17 of that year, President Harry S. Truman signed a bill proclaiming that a National Day of Prayer must be declared by each subsequent president at an appropriate date of his choice. In 1988 the law was amended so that the National Day of Prayer would be held on the first Thursday of May.
The stated intentions of the National Day of Prayer were that it would be “a day when adherents of all great religions could unite in prayer, and that it may one day bring renewed respect for God to all the peoples of the world.” This, of course, however well-intentioned, is flawed thinking. There is only one “great religion” – Christianity – which preaches and understands that there is only one true God who is revealed in Christ alone. And, all important things considered, Christianity has nothing whatsoever in common with other false religions. If all religions would try to unite – praying to their own gods – it would look to all the world as if there were no significant differences in spite of the glaring evidence to the contrary. This is, at best, a false witness, and why we must not participate in the watering down of the one true faith. We do not unite with others and their false beliefs and false gods.
Some years the National Day of Prayer gets more publicity than others; frankly, it ought just to go away, for the last thing this unbelieving world needs is more and more false and watered-down religiosity and spirituality and sentimentalism. The question before us today is this: What does God want you to know about prayer, and what does He want you to do with what you know, in order that we pray rightly?
This day in this Church Year is called “Rogate,” which, in Latin means “Pray!” As we heard in today’s Epistle, Paul exhorts Timothy this way: “Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.“ God’s people are to pray, not just on one day of the year, but as a matter of course in their daily lives. It is something we are privileged to do also each and every time we are gathered here in the Divine Service.
The Jews were very familiar with prayer from the Old Testament, with beautiful examples filling especially the book of Psalms. And Jesus taught His disciples about prayer on many occasions – with the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, with parables urging Christians to pray often and persistently, and with His own example. On several occasions He even sought a private place so that He could pray. But, as He, the Son of God, was about to fulfill His mission on earth, there would be an important change in the nature of prayer.
Some things wouldn’t change; for example, what prayer is. Praying, most broadly, is simply talking to God. But a good prayer, a godly prayer, isn’t just babbling or rambling. Prayer is talking to God with thanksgiving and praise. Prayer is talking to God with a confession of your sins or weaknesses or needs. But primarily, to pray is to ask God for something.
God wants you to ask Him for things. Some people think that to be selfish, and might be critical of those who spend too much time asking God for things. On the contrary, we don’t spend nearly enough time. God is angered at any time when we imagine that we don’t need anything from Him, or whenever we think that He is unwilling to hear or to help us in our need. So, Jesus says to ask for what you need. That has always been the main purpose of prayer. It is always right to ask.
What was about to change, though, for Jesus’ disciples, and really, for all people, was the way in which prayers were to be offered from then on. “Most assuredly,” Jesus said, ‘whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you.”
Now, genuine prayer is always to the one true God. Prayers offered to idols or false gods were never valid. In the Old Testament the Jews prayed to the true God who revealed Himself to Moses – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But now God has revealed Himself more fully as the one God who is three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is the Father who sent His Son to be the sacrifice and the Mediator for all mankind. God is the Son who fulfilled His Father’s will and reigns at God’s right hand. God is the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son and brings His Word to us.
From this point onward, men were to approach God the Father in prayer specifically through Jesus the Christ, asking God the Father to hear us in Jesus’ name. That means, not necessary adding the words “in Jesus’ name” to every prayer. It does mean asking the Father to hear us for the sake of Jesus because of His saving work on our behalf and on the basis of Jesus’ intercession on our behalf. Now that Jesus has been revealed, crucified, risen and ascended, all prayers to God must be offered through faith in Jesus, who is “the one Mediator between God and man” (I Tim 2:5).
You bought this order viagra online should understand the nature of your problem and you needs to be able to appreciate the necessity for patience and perseverance. People normally feel shy asking for Sildenafil Citrate In any traditional store and hence they can discount buy viagra order it online. Intake of good nutrition and performing healthy physical activity should lower the risk of appalachianmagazine.com online cialis mastercard stroke is increased two to three times in people with diabetes and the death rate is increased by four times in people suffering from diabetes. Consumption of alcohol actually buy cipla viagra appalachianmagazine.com increases the sex fantasy but kills the actual functionality while this act.
That is the first thing to understand about prayer, and that is also what makes a “national day of prayer” impossible, and even sacrilegious, because no nation on earth confesses that the name of Jesus alone saves, and any prayer offered to God that is not in the name of Jesus – trusting in Jesus as the one and only Mediator – is open idolatry.
Now, for those who do know how to approach God the Father in Jesus’ name, we have been given a solemn command by God: “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God” (Ex 20:7). That’s the Second Commandment which tells us not only that we are not to misuse God’s name, but also that we are to use God’s name rightly. God commands us to use His name to pray to Him. And Jesus Himself says, “Ask!”
So, prayer has God’s command attached to it. Therefore, it isn’t optional. We are to pray each day because God commands us to pray. Pray in obedience to Him, as Luther points out in the Large Catechism. Of course, don’t fool yourself, as many people do, into thinking that, as long as you’re praying regularly in your home, that’s basically all God commands, as if He didn’t also command you to go to church, to hear His word, to use His Sacraments, to support the ministry of the church with your offerings. All these things are commanded by God, and Christians must do them, not in order to earn God’s favor or the forgiveness of sins, but in the new obedience that God requires of those whom He has saved by faith in Christ.
Pray also because of the promise of Jesus: “Whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you.” That is a great promise. The One who created all things, preserves all things, rules over all things, has promised to give you whatever you ask in Jesus’ name. But this wretched sinful flesh is sluggish and cold, and the devil drives you away from prayer, and the world gives you so many “better” things to do with your time. But over all those things that stand in the way of prayer stands the command and the promise of Jesus: “Ask!” And, “Whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you.”
But what are we to ask for? You know. There are seven things Jesus teaches us to ask for, seven requests or petitions. You know them as they make up the petitions of Our Father. First and foremost, God would have us pray for His name to be holy among us, for His kingdom to come, and for His will to be done among us. Then He would have us pray for daily bread – for all that we need for our life on earth.
Then we are to pray that God would forgive us our trespasses, with the understanding that we, too, are to forgive those who trespass against us. We are to ask God to lead us away from temptation, and to deliver us from evil. Every need that you have in your life falls within the scope of those petitions. Study your Catechism—first the Small, then the Large, and see how much light God has shed on prayer in Martin Luther’s summaries!
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask for specific things, too. Jesus tells us to ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers into His harvest (Mt 9:38). Paul commands us to pray for kings and all who are in authority (I Tim 2:2). He asks us to pray for ministers of the Word and for all the churches, for all the saints of God, and for one another. James tells to pray for wisdom.
And when you don’t know what else to pray for, don’t despair, for here we have yet another reason why God has sent down His Holy Spirit to dwell with us here on earth in this Christian Church. As Paul writes in Romans 8:26-27, “For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.”
Know this: God will hear and answer these prayers. He will do it not only because He has commanded it, not only because He has promised it, not only because we ask for things according to His will, for things He Himself wants to give. He will do it, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel, because “the Father loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God.”
The Father loves you. That is the main point and reason that we get to pray. It is His love for you and all mankind that moves us to pray and be obedient to Him. And the Father loves you this way: He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to take upon Himself all your sins – every last one of them, and die for you, taking your place on His cross. Then, on that very first Easter morning, Christ rose from the dead to defeat death and the devil for you, and set you free to love Him in return.
And if that weren’t enough, God gives you His gifts of preaching and the Sacraments through which he continually delivers to you what Christ accomplished on the cross. You get to hear that Christ died for you. You get to receive His forgiveness in the Absolution – “forgiveness from the pastor, as from God Himself, not doubting but firmly believing that by it, our sins are forgiven before God in heaven.” You get to remember your baptism, where God made you His own Child and washed away your sins. And you get to receive His body and blood for forgiveness, life, and salvation.
And you get to pray. Use it each and every day, for all the reasons we have considered today. You know the true God and how to approach Him. He has commanded you to pray. He has promised to hear. He has taught you what to pray for. And He has tied it all to Christ Jesus, the beloved Son of God, who loved you to death and back to life again, and for whose sake the Father also loves you.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
