Have you caught yourself praying “Dear Lord, please bless this food to our bodies” when you know the food you are about to eat is inundated with unhealthy additives, artificial coloring, and highly processed ingredients like a Twinkie? Too often our prayers are characterized by shameful immaturity and reckless requests.
“‘Lord, teach us to pray!’ This request from one of the disciples (Luke 11:1) gives evidence that we must learn how to pray. One commentator states, “While praying is as natural to the Christian as breathing is to a mammal, even breathing must be studied and practiced if it is to be correct. Singers and public speakers work on their breathing so that they get the most out of their voice and don’t injure it. The fact that we have been praying since childhood is no guarantee that we really know how to pray effectively.”
John 17:1 gives us some guidelines to follow for effective praying, “These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:”
What are God’s guidelines for our prayers?
Our Position (“lifted up his eyes”)
- Position without emphasizing the physical.
Was our Lord kneeling or standing when he offered this prayer? We don’t know. All we do know is that He lifted up His eyes to heaven. Most people bow their heads and close their eyes when they pray, but Jesus lifted His head and focused His eyes on heaven. Many people fold their hands when they pray, but I don’t find this practice anywhere in Scripture. In fact, the Jews were accustomed to lifting up their hands, open to God, expecting to receive something! Many different prayer postures are recorded in the Bible, and all of them are acceptable. Remember that ultimately our prayer is not in the physical realm before people but in the spiritual realm before God!
- Position with emphasizing the passion.
While the outward posture can be evidence of the inward spiritual attitude, it is not always so. The important thing is the posture of the heart. It is much easier to bow the knees than to bow the heart in submission to God. According to II Timothy 2:22, we are to “call upon the Lord out of a pure heart.” As we lift our eyes to heaven, God lowers his gaze to our pure hearts!
Our Focus (“Father”)
- Focus on the Father as your audience.
Jesus addressed His Father six times in this prayer. Four times He simply said “Father”; the other two times, He called Him “Holy Father” and “righteous Father.”
Do you ever hear people addressing their prayers to the Son or even to the Holy Spirit. Is this wrong? When Stephen gave his life for Christ, he saw Jesus in heaven and addressed his prayer to him: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” (Acts 7:59). There appears to be no prayer in the Bible addressed to the Holy Spirit. Since our prayers are addressed to God, and since Father and Son and Holy Spirit are all in the Godhead, technically we can address our prayers to each of them. With that being said, the biblical pattern instructs us to pray to the Father, in the name of the Son, and through the power of the Spirit.
- Focus on the Father as your authority.
Unless we do the will of God, our living will negate our praying.
Did you notice the reference to Christ’s “hour”? This refers to the hour for which He had come into the world. The hour when He would die on the cross, be buried, rise again, and finish the great work of redemption. You may trace this “hour” in John’s Gospel. (John 2:4; 7:30; 8:20, 12:23; 13:1; 17:1) Jesus is praying with submission to His Father’s timetable.
As one writer asserts, “The purpose of prayer is not to get man’s will done in heaven, but to get God’s will done on earth.” There is a price to pay when we sincerely pray in the will of God. Jesus was about to receive the cup from His Father’s hand (John 18:10, 11). The Father had prepared the cup, and the hour had come.
Our Worship (“glorify the Son”)
What does it take to get your full attention-a certain topic, person, place, and hobby? For God that thing is always His GLORY! If you want to get God attention, appeal to His glory.
- Worship God as your priority.
You have probably noticed that “The Lord’s Prayer” teaches us to put God’s concerns before our own. We pray “Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done” before we bring up our own needs-daily bread, forgiveness, and protection from sin. When our praying centers on the glory of God, we see our needs and requests in proper perspective. Matters that seemed so important have a tendency to shrink to their proper size when measured by the glory of God.
- Worship God as your purpose.
The glorification of Jesus Christ meant the completion of the great work of salvation. In this prayer, Jesus spoke as though His work on the cross were already finished. “I glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given me to do” (verse 4). If Jesus Christ had not been glorified, there could be no salvation for sinners today. The Holy Spirit would not have been given. There would be no church, no New Testament, no Christian life.
Whose purpose drives your prayer life? One author states “we should ask ourselves ‘if God answers this request, will it bring Him glory?’ ‘And what will this answer look like when Jesus comes again?’” I have discovered that testing my prayers by the glory of God is a good way to detect requests that are selfish and short-sighted.
Our Trust (“may glorify thee”)
According to Dr. Jon Jenkins, the greatest number of shipwrecks in the world have occurred in the Great Lakes, and the greatest cause of those shipwrecks is FOG. Suppose the Master had looked at His situation through human eyes alone. Could He have prayed as He did? No; it would have been impossible.
- Trust God with your past.
Suppose Christ had looked back on His years of ministry and evaluated that ministry from a human point of view. It would have looked like failure. He had very few followers, and His own nation had rejected Him. Humanly speaking, His work had failed. Yet He prayed, “I glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given me to do” (verse 4).
When you pray, trust God to use your past for His glorious plan.
- Trust God with your present.
If Christ would have looked around, what would He have seen? A small band of men, all of whom would fail Him in one way or another. Peter would deny Him three times. At that very hour, Judas was bargaining with the Jewish council and selling the Master like a common slave. Peter, James, and John would go to sleep in the Garden when they should be encouraging their Lord. And all of the men would forsake Him and flee. Yet by faith, Jesus prayed, “I have been glorified in them” (verse 10). In spite of their past failures, these men would succeed! These weak men would invade a world that hated them and bring many to the feet of the Savior. Jesus saw all of this by faith.
The potential of our prayers cannot be limited to human resources around us!
- Trust God with your projections.
If our Lord had looked ahead, He would have seen arrest, conviction, and death on a cross. Humanly speaking, it was defeat; but by faith, He saw it as it really was-victory! He said to Andrew and Philip, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). Glorified! We would have said, crucified. But he looked beyond the cross to the glory that would come. “Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).
When we pray by faith, we start seeing things from the divine perspective. Faith enables us to see the invisible. Faith treats as present and accomplished that which God will do in the future.
Stop with the Twinkie prayers. Eliminate the routinely impetuous and selfish prayers. Quit with the flowery lingo. Start praying like Jesus. Period.
Will you make sure that your prayers fit within God’s GUIDELINES of position, focus, worship, and trust?
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