The Lord Jesus Teaches You to Pray

You are able to pray, and you do, because the Lord your God has chosen to communicate with you, and He has thereby established a relationship with you, inviting you to call on Him as your Dad.  It all hinges on the fact that He has called you to be His own, and He has named you His own dear child — in the circumcision made without hands, that is, by your Holy Baptism into Christ Jesus.

As a newborn infant is held safely in the arms of his parents, sheltered in their home, protected by their constant attention, fed and clothed, washed and cared for, so are you held, safe and secure, in your Father’s hand.  Before you have ever learned to know your need or even how to ask for any help (or anything at all), while you are still so oblivious to His providential care, He is already meeting all your needs and preserving the life that He Himself gives to you in body and soul.

But as you are then growing up and learning to live as His child, as a member of the household and family of God, He also teaches you to pray — to say “please” and “thank you,” so to speak.  It’s more than a mere formality or simple politeness; He is catechizing you in the way of faith and love, in the rhythm of family life.  He would have you know and trust, more and more, what He is like, and to become more and more like Him in the way that you think and speak and act, in the way that you live in relation to Him and with others.  He would have His sons grow up to be men after His own heart, and His daughters to become women like His Bride, the Church, the Mother of us all.

So your Father in heaven speaks to you and deals with you in love, and He bestows His Holy Spirit upon you by His grace through the Ministry of the Gospel of His incarnate Son.  For it is in the Word and work of Christ Jesus, the promised Seed of Abraham, in His own Body of flesh and blood, that you know your God and Father and learn to love and trust in Him.

You have heard it already in the case of father Abraham.  When he was a stranger in a pagan land, the Lord God called him, and led him, and brought him to the Land of Promise.  He named him the father of many nations, when that man was already old and still childless.  And the Lord swore an oath to that old man, that He would be with him and bless him, and that all the nations would be saved by and through his Seed.  By the Covenant of Circumcision the Lord God Almighty actually bound Himself to Abraham’s flesh, and sealed His promise in Abraham’s body, eventually to be fulfilled in the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ.  By the Spirit of the Lord, Abraham believed the Word and promises of God, and by such faith he was accounted righteous.

All of this the Lord has already accomplished in calling Abraham to Himself, when He then also chooses to reveal to Abraham His plans for Sodom and Gomorrah.  See, He has made Abraham His own beloved child by faith, but here He also invites the man into the intimacy of friendship; more than that, He catechizes Abraham in what it means to be a father.  By Word and example, the Lord prepares the old man to become the patriarch of His people (and the ancestor of His Christ).

To say it simply, the Lord leads Abraham to pray in the righteousness of faith and in the justice of love and mercy.  In laying before him the intentions of His wrath against those wicked cities, He provides Abraham an opportunity to call upon His mercy, and thus to lay hold of Him according to the true heart of His almighty power, which is made known especially in grace and compassion.

Abraham does so with humility and reverence, in the fear of the Lord, to be sure; in repentance he knows himself to be dust and ashes.  Yet, in the faith and knowledge of God’s forgiveness, trusting His Word and promises, and responding to the friendship that God has shown to him, Abraham prays and intercedes for Sodom and Gomorrah with an almost brazen boldness and courageous confidence.  In the righteousness of faith, he appeals to the righteousness of God.  In doing so, he demonstrates a profound understanding, that God will not destroy the righteous with the wicked, but will rather spare the wicked for the sake of the righteous.

Like a little child asking his father for good things, always eager for more in the certainty of Dad’s generosity, Abraham is not shy about asking — and even continuing to push for more.  Except that Abraham does not appeal for himself, nor only for his nephew Lot and his family, but he intercedes for the entire population of those evil cities.  It’s not that he condones or defends their wickedness — he does not — but he pleads that God would be patient, and preserve the righteous remnant, and spare the rest of the people on account of the few righteous among them.

This is not simply how Abraham happens to pray, but this is how he believes in God, how he exercises his faith in the promises of God, and how he lives in the confidence and expectation of God’s faithfulness and grace.  And with such prayer he will likewise teach his children to know and love the Lord their God, to worship Him in repentant faith, and to live in the sure and certain hope of His mercy and forgiveness.  It is specifically for the sake of such catechesis of his children and descendants that God here catechizes Abraham by opening Himself up to the man.

This is what fathers do for their children.  They teach them how to pray, and thereby teach them to know God rightly, to love and trust in Him, and to live in love for other people, too.  Along with all the other things a father teaches and does for his children, nothing else is more fundamental and important than prayer.  A father prays for his children and sets an example of prayer for them.  He prays also for himself, because he lives by faith in his own God and Father.  And he intercedes for others beyond the family, because he exercises love for the neighbor.  Children learn from all of this, even as they learn to ask for and receive good things from their Dad.

So Abraham did for his family, for his descendants.  And humanly speaking, you might consider, then, where and how the Lord Jesus first learned to pray, and how to pray, when He was a little Boy.  Surely His parents taught Him with their words and by their example.  Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, being faithful in their callings, as they had learned from their own fathers and mothers, catechized and taught their Son from the Holy Scriptures.  So did Jesus learn to pray from the Word of God in their home, in the synagogue, and at the Temple in Jerusalem.

Now, then, in much the same way, the Lord Jesus teaches His own household and family to pray.  As the incarnate Son of God, a Man after His Father’s heart, He is a faithful Husband and Father to His Church.  And that means that, not only does He protect and provide for His people, but He also teaches them to live by faith, to live in love, to call upon Him, and to call upon the Father in His Name, to pray and petition, to praise and give thanks.  So does He catechize you even now.

He urges you to pray with all boldness and confidence.  That is the chief and central point to His two little Parables this morning.  You should not be shy or hesitant in going to the Lord in every circumstance, whatever the time of day or night.  You can count on Him to provide for your every need, so that you will lack for no good thing, neither for yourself nor for your neighbors.  And you may ask Him with the confidence of a child seeking help from his or her Dad, except that He is not a sinful man but the gracious and merciful Lord, who is merciful to all who call upon Him.

Jesus not only urges you to pray — as elsewhere the Lord commands you to pray — but He also provides you with the very words by which to call upon the Father in His Name; and He promises that His Father will hear and answer your prayer.  He will not ignore you.  He will not deny your prayer or refuse to meet your needs.  Neither will He give you evil things instead of good, but He will pour out His Life-giving Holy Spirit upon you, so that you do not perish but gain eternal Life.

The Our Father is more than information or instruction.  With these Words the Lord God does for you as He did for Abraham.  He initiates and establishes a relationship with you, an intimacy of friendship and familial love.  He draws you into a fellowship of faith with Himself, and thereby also makes a place for you within the broad fellowship and family of His one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church.  He teaches you to pray, not in lonely isolation, nor as a private individual, but within a community of brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, with one God and Father in heaven.

To pray in this way is to be and to live as a Christian, as a child of God, a disciple of Jesus.  It is to actively rely upon the Lord your God for all that you need, for both your body and your soul, for this life and for the Life everlasting.  It is to live by faith in His forgiveness, and therefore, also, to forgive those who sin against you.  It is to eat from the open hand of God, and to open your hand in love to feed and care for your neighbor, for your own children and family, and for your fellow Christians, and even for the fellow who comes calling on you for help in the middle of the night.

As you pray, so do you believe, and so do you live.  Or, so you should.

Where do the confidence and courage come from?  Where are such faith and love to be found?  How shall you pray as you ought, and how shall you live and love in harmony with such prayer?

The answer is found — and it is given to you — in the very One who teaches you to pray.  Your boldness and confidence rest upon His generous love and gracious mercy toward you.  Your faith resides in His faithfulness.  As a child of God in Christ Jesus, you learn to rely upon your Father by way of His constant care for you, and from His compassion for you in all trial, fear, and need.

Jesus teaches all of this in teaching you to pray.  But that is not all that He does.  For one thing, He exemplifies the life of prayer in His own practice.  Especially in St. Luke’s Holy Gospel, the Lord Jesus is often found praying; for He lives in perfect faith and perfect love, and so He persists in perfect prayer.  That belongs, first of all, to His life as the true and perfect Man.  But then it also belongs to His Office and Ministry as your merciful and great High Priest.  It is still the case that He actively prays and intercedes for you, now and forever, at the Right Hand of the Father.

The Lord Jesus Christ, by His Cross and Passion, and in His Resurrection and Ascension, is not only the One who prays for you, but He Himself is your Voice of Prayer to the God and Father in heaven.  As He is the Word of God to you, made Flesh and dwelling with you bodily in the Gospel, so is He also the divine Word that avails for you and speaks to the Father on your behalf.  And He is also already the Father’s resounding “Yes” and “Amen” to all of your prayers and all of your needs.  It is in Him, by His Ministry of the Gospel, that the Father gives to you the Holy Spirit.

For the sake of this one Righteous Man, Christ Jesus, the Lord God Almighty forgives you all your sins.  He does not punish or destroy you, nor count your transgressions against you, nor withhold any good thing from you because of your sins.  On the contrary, He rescues you from every evil of body and soul, saves you from sin and death, and reconciles you to Himself in Christ Jesus.

Along with His forgiveness of your sins He also feeds you with the Bread that you need.  Bread for each day, yes, to nourish and support this body and life on earth.  But also the Bread of eternal Life, the Bread which does not perish but preserves you in the imperishable Body of Jesus.  Hence the connections that Christians have always made between our prayer for “Daily Bread” and the forgiveness of sins and the fellowship of the Lord’s Altar in the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus.

It is in the eating and drinking of these Holy Things — in this Bread and this Cup, which are given and poured out for you and for the many — that you are firmly bound to Christ, your Head, and that all of you are knit together as one Body in Him.  Forgiven and forgiving, you eat and drink together with the Lord, and so also with each other in Him, unto faith and life forever.

Beloved in the Lord, as He so teaches you to live by faith in Him and in fervent love for family, friends, and neighbors, so, then, pray for one another.  Pray that God’s Kingdom would come to all of us and all the world.  And pray that He would take not His Holy Spirit from His Church on earth, but would continue to pour out the Spirit generously upon us through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The One who teaches you to pray is faithful, and He will do it.  Not because of your resolve or perseverance, but for the sake of His own righteousness.  For Christ has come, and He remains with you in peace and love.  He has taken His stand with you, and as He has died for you and risen from the dead, He ever lives to make intercession for you.  His prayer for you is signed and sealed with His holy and precious Blood, by His Cross and Passion, and in His Holy Communion.  And His own Resurrection and Ascension are indeed the answer that your dear Father gives to you.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

As God Speaks by His Son, So Do You Pray in His Name

The Lord your God has commanded you to pray, and He has promised to hear you.  He has also taught you how to pray and what to pray, so that you may approach Him and call upon His Name with all boldness and confidence, as a child looking to your Father for all that you need.  And it is truly meet and right that you should do so, because your need for Him is great.  He is your Life and your Salvation, and He is your Help and Hope at all times and in all places.

Pray to Him in faith according to His Word, that is to say, in the way that He has taught you and in the confidence of His promises.  Because He has so tenderly invited you to do so, look to Him as your own dear Father in Christ Jesus, the beloved Son.  And rely upon Him for all good things, for all that you need in body and soul, trusting in His mercy, His grace, and His forgiveness.

This way of prayer is the way of true wisdom in the fear, love, and trust of the Holy Triune God.  It is your acceptable and pleasing sacrifice and your sweet-smelling incense in the presence of the Lord your God.  And it begins, not with your speaking, but with your listening to His Word.

You know how and what to speak, both to and about God — you know how and what to confess and to pray — first of all by hearing what God the Lord says to you, and then by speaking to and about Him as He has spoken.

“Righteousness looks down from the sky,” and then “faithfulness springs up from the ground.”

God speaks His justifying Word of the Gospel to you, and then by faith you pray to Him as He has spoken.  For His Word does not return to Him empty or unfruitful, but as the Lord gives the seed, the sunshine and rain from heaven, and thus brings forth a bounteous crop from the earth, so does He raise you up, a new creation, and open your mouth and your lips to show forth His praise.

It is from a heart of faith in Christ Jesus that you pray.  This Son of David, who is the incarnate Son of God, the true King of Wisdom and of Peace, He is the One by whom you pray and are heard.  He is God’s Word to you — the Word of the Father in the Flesh of His Son — who has become your sure and certain Word of Prayer to God.

This Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished and fulfilled the good and gracious Will of God for you and your salvation.  He has overcome death and the grave and He has defeated the devil by atoning for all your sins with His holy and precious Blood, by the sacrifice of Himself.  In His Resurrection from the dead and in His preaching of the Gospel of His Cross, He has brought and established the Kingdom of God in His Church on earth.  And in your Holy Baptism He has not only made you a free citizen of that fair and glorious Kingdom, but He has made you a member of the Household and Family of God, a dear child of His own Father, by naming you with His Name.

All of this for which you pray He has done for you by His Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection, and He now gives to you by His Ministry of the Gospel, by His preaching and His Sacraments.

Thus, He teaches you to pray for the Gospel, first and foremost; which He delights to give to you and do for you by His grace.  He teaches you to pray for what He is already doing and giving!

The Gospel of Christ Jesus is the most important “daily bread,” without which you have no life.  Therefore, He teaches you to pray, that you would learn to know your need for it, and that you would look to Him alone to save you, and that you would receive the Gospel with thanksgiving.  He does not force it upon you, but He desires you to have it from Him so that you may live.

Worldly riches, earthly power, human fame, and temporal success, all are attractive and enticing, but all are empty of real life and altogether unable to save you.  To be sure, they are gifts of God, to be received and used with thanksgiving and sanctified by the Word of God and prayer.  But everything depends upon His Word and Holy Spirit, lest His good gifts become your deadly idols.

It is by and with the Gospel that the Lord your God gives you every good and perfect gift and all that you need, already here in time and all the more so for your body and soul hereafter in eternity.  With the Gospel God Himself is yours by His grace, and His Kingdom and His Righteousness are yours through His forgiveness of all your sins — purchased and won for you and all people by the giving of the Son of God into death upon the Cross and by the Resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead, who ever lives to make intercession for you before the Throne of His God and Father.

Everything depends upon the forgiveness of sins, since all that you deserve is only punishment, now and forever.  But the Gospel is entirely by the grace and mercy of God in Christ Jesus, by the divine Charity of the Father in His Son.  For His sake He forgives you all your sins.  In Him the Father speaks Peace to His people.  And with that grace He freely gives you all good things.  For it is in Christ Jesus, by your Baptism in His Name, that His God and Father is your God and Father.

He is your true Father, and you are His own dear child.  But He is not your Father only.  He is the Father of all who are baptized into Christ Jesus, the beloved Son.  He is the God and Father of all who belong to Christ by His grace, through faith in Him.

Therefore, as often as you pray, you do so in the fellowship of the whole Christian Church, both with and for your brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.  You pray to one and the same God and Father of all Christians everywhere, in the holy Name with which each and all of you are named.

And all those many brothers and sisters of Christ, all those children of the heavenly Father, they all pray for you and with you in the one Lord, Jesus Christ, and in the Life-giving Holy Spirit.  Really, there is that one Prayer of Christ and His Spirit, to which your prayer and the prayer of all the baptized faithful is united.  The crucified and risen Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the uplifted Hands and the holy Incense of your prayer, of your evening and morning sacrifice, which ever arise and ascend to “Our Father who art in heaven” and are gladly received by Him.

As this great fellowship of the Church depends upon the forgiveness of sins, so does the Church on earth also live in the mutual forgiveness of sins — each and all of you, one for the other — confessing your sins to one another and freely forgiving each other in the confidence of Christ.

The faith that lives before God in Christ Jesus likewise dwells in love with the neighbor in Christ.  And as you pray to your Father in the faith and confidence that He daily and richly forgives you all your sins, so do you thus abide in His love and forgive your neighbors for Jesus’ sake.

By contrast, a refusal to forgive those who sin against you is a rejection of the very forgiveness of sins that you yourself need and depend upon.  And that refusal of your neighbor — that rejection of the Gospel for your neighbor — shipwrecks your faith and poisons your prayer.

You simply cannot pray in the peace of Christ Jesus while refusing to forgive your neighbor.

So it is that your Father calls you daily to repentance.  He does so in His great love for you, His own dear child, so that you do not grow cold and hard and die in your sins, but that you would be turned to Him in faith, to receive from Him the forgiveness, Life, and Salvation of Christ Jesus.

He performs a kind of open-heart surgery, cutting you open and piercing your flesh to its core, in order to expose and deal with your animosity and enmity, your bitterness and grudges, and your stubborn rejection of grace — for that is what your refusal to forgive your neighbor actually is.

This painful process, which threatens to kill you — and in a sense, it does, there on the operating table — that is the discipline of a loving Father for His dearly-beloved child.  He opens you up and exposes your sick and sinful heart in this way, in order to speak tenderly to your heart by His Son.

He allows you to be tempted and tried, and He puts you to the test, in order to restore your faith, and strengthen your faith, and teach you to pray.  For surely your need and your hurt, your poverty and suffering bring you to your knees and turn your ears and heart back to God, to listen to Him, and then also your mouth and your lips to pray, to call upon His Name for mercy and salvation.

He teaches you not to despair, but to pray in this way, and He also answers your prayer by the way and the means of His Gospel.  He hallows His Name in you by the preaching of His forgiveness.  And He protects your faith and life within His Kingdom by His Holy Spirit through the same Holy Gospel.  So, too, according to His good and gracious Will, He thwarts the wickedness of the devil, the world, and your own sinful flesh, and He preserves you steadfast in His Word and faith.

He daily and richly forgives you all your sins — by His Gospel in His Church — and He daily and richly provides you with all that you need for this body and life on earth.

And by this same grace and mercy, by the Word and Spirit of His Son, and by the strong protection and sacred service of His holy angels, He guards and keeps you in the midst of temptation, and He delivers you from every evil of body and soul.

So it is that trial and tribulation, temptation, and tragedy are not able to destroy you, but rather serve the purpose of driving you back to God, your Father in Christ Jesus, in whom you endure — in whom you have peace and rest — unto the Resurrection of your body and the Life everlasting.

That same Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, your Savior, is the true King Solomon, the real Prince of Peace, and the very Wisdom of God the Father.

By Him God speaks to you — His Perfect Peace and His Sabbath Rest for your body and your soul — and in Him you speak to God: You pray, praise, and give thanks, and you call upon His Name.

As He speaks to you by His Son, so do you pray to Him by the Same.  What is more, dear child of God the Father, your prayer is heard by Him, it is acceptable and pleasing to His ears, and it is gladly answered in love with a resounding “Yes” and “Amen,” which is Christ Jesus Himself.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

To Pray at All Times and Not Lose Heart

The Lord Jesus teaches you to pray at all times — day and night, throughout your life — and not to lose heart.  Not as a desperate last resort, but with the unwavering confidence of a little child, knowing and trusting that your prayer is heard and will be answered by your Father in heaven.

Such prayer is the voice of faith, which looks to the Lord your God and expects good things from Him.  Such faith rests upon His Word and promise in Christ Jesus and boldly calls upon His Name.  And whoever thus calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved.  Believe that is so, and pray.

It is to catechize you in such faith and prayer that your dear Lord Jesus tells this Parable of the Widow and the Judge.  It’s one of His great stories.  You can picture the scene, the woman in dire straits, in desperate need of justice, probably in danger of losing whatever little property she has.  She needs someone to help her, to contend for her, to fight for her and not take advantage of her.

Out of necessity that poor widow goes to that hardhearted judge, though he has no regard for God or man.  He is an unrighteous judge who acts only in his own self-interest.  He looks with contempt on the widow; he does not want to bother with her, he has no interest in helping her, and so he does his best to ignore her.  Only, she won’t stop asking for his help, because she has no choice, no one else to ask.  And her persistence finally wears him down, to the point that he relents and gives her justice, not because he cares, and not because it is good and right, but just to get her off his back.

That’s the picture Jesus paints of constant prayer — that you should confidently call on the Name of the Lord who loves to hear and answer His elect, who grants them justice and does it quickly.

It’s interesting how closely this Parable lines up with the story of Jacob, who wrestled through the night with that “Man” who turns out to be the Lord.  You can imagine that situation, too.  He has basically had to flee from his Uncle Laban, who has become envious and jealous of the blessings God has bestowed upon his nephew.  Despite Jacob’s personal faults and shortcomings, the Lord has been with him according to His promise, and Jacob has prospered in his years with Laban.  But now he is returning to the scene of his crime, as it were — to the brother he deceived and swindled, who was previously determined to kill him.  So Jacob doesn’t know what will happen.

He does what he can to hedge his bets.  He hopes for the best and prepares for the worst.  He sends his wives and his children and all his worldly possessions across the stream.  And then, through the long dark night, he is left alone.  I’m guessing that all of you have had nights like that, when everything is falling apart, crashing down around your ears, and everyone else has gone away, or so it seems and feels.  In the darkness you are all alone.  And perhaps you have also spent such nights wrestling with the Lord, with cries and tears and groaning too deep for words, looking for some help, some comfort, some peace and rest, a blessing in the midst of danger and heartache.

The “Man” comes and wrestles with Jacob.  That is the key.  Jacob refuses to let go of Him — but does anybody really think that God the Lord could not get away?  God has come to wrestle with Jacob, and God holds on to him.  He teaches Jacob how to pray.  And so does He also teach you.

Jacob finally lets go when he receives the blessing he has sought.  That’s what he’s after when he asks for the “Man’s” Name.  For it is by and with His Name that Yahweh blesses His people, as in the Benediction, whereby Aaron and his sons bless the other sons of Jacob with the Name of the Lord.  So in this case, the Lord blesses Jacob with His Name; and He gives to him a new name.

This is how you should pray, as well, calling upon the Name of the Lord and refusing to let go until He lays His Name upon you and blesses you with His Name.  So has He taught you, invited you, and commanded you to call upon His Name in every trouble and temptation, to pray, praise, and give thanks at all times and in all places.  And of course, you are given to seek and receive the blessing of His Name especially in the Liturgy of His Gospel, in His own Word and Sacraments.

But you do not know how to pray as you should.  And you do not pray as you should, because of your weakness, because of your sinful doubts and fears and lack of faith.  You do not listen to the Word of God, you do not trust it, and so you are too timid or too proud to pray.  Of yourself, left to yourself, that is how it is.  You do not listen to the Lord, and you do not call upon His Name.

But in His tender mercy and compassion, in His deep love for you, the Lord does for you what He once did for Jacob.  He prevails with you and for you.  He comes to wrestle with you, and He strives with you, and He teaches you how to pray.  Not only that, but He Himself prays for you.  Your dear Lord Jesus Christ, your merciful and great High Priest, ever lives to intercede for you.  And the Holy Spirit also helps you in your weakness, He prays and intercedes for you at all times.

Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit pray and intercede for you; and they also teach you to pray, first of all by calling you to repentance and to faith in the Gospel, and then also by giving you the very Words with which to pray: “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. . . .”

“When you pray, say this.”  So the Lord Jesus has instructed you with reference to the Our Father.  Not to restrict you, but to supply you and support you.  He puts these Words upon your lips and in your mouth, where you would otherwise have no right words and nothing to say.  He thereby gives you the Wisdom of God and the Spirit of God.  Consequently, during those long dark nights when everyone else has gone away, and everything is in danger, and you are threatened and afraid and seemingly all by yourself — you open up your mouth, and out come these Words of Christ.

In your Holy Baptism this Lord Jesus Christ has given you His Name.  The Lord renamed Jacob, “Israel.”  The Lord has renamed you, as well, with the very Name of God, the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the Name of Christ Jesus.  So you bear His Name.  He has blessed you.  He has given you His Spirit and made you a dear child of His own God and Father.

“Do you not know that all of you who are baptized into Christ are sons of God in Christ?”  So, God is your Father.  You don’t have to be afraid of Him.  You don’t have to bribe or bargain with Him.  You are His child, He is your Dad.  So, call upon His Name, the Name which He has given you.

That’s how you pray the Our Father.  It is in virtue of your Holy Baptism, whereby He has given you the new birth of water and the Spirit.  You thus share in the Sonship of Christ Jesus, so that His God and Father is your God and Father.  When you open up your mouth and pray the Words that Christ Himself has given you, and when you open up your mouth to pray from the heart of faith that Christ has worked in you by His Word and Holy Spirit — and when that Spirit of Christ Jesus prays in you and with you — what your Father in heaven hears is Jesus, His beloved Son.

Will the Son of Man find faith when He comes upon the earth?  Indeed He does, because He has first of all established such faith and faithfulness in Himself, in His own Flesh and Blood, for you and all the children of man, for widows and orphans in distress, once and forever.  And now by His Word and Holy Spirit He calls you to fear, love, and trust in Him, to be raised up and live in Him.

He brings you into that faith and life by His Cross, by way of your Baptism, and thereafter by His preaching and catechesis.  He puts you to death and raises you to life, He wounds you in order to heal you.  His Cross thus brings you to repentance.  His Cross brings you to faith.  And so by His Cross He brings you into His own ongoing prayer and intercession, which arises to His Father in His Resurrection from the dead.  As He rises from the earth and enters into heaven, as He sits at the Right Hand of the Father, so does your prayer ascend to the Father in heaven.  For Christ Jesus Himself is your Prayer, and you are heard and answered as surely as He lives and reigns forever.

The fact is that, by His Cross and Passion, He has wrestled with God and prevailed on your behalf.  Think of His agony in the Garden, how He prays with great drops of blood falling from His brow.  “Father, if it be possible, take this Cup from Me; yet, not My will but Thine be done.”

He calls upon the Father there in the Garden, as St. Mark tells us, with the very words that you are given to pray by the Holy Spirit: “Abba! Father!”  For there in the Garden of Gethsemane He has taken your place through that long dark night of the soul on the far side of the river, with family and friends far away, falling asleep, everything stripped away, and only His Father to call upon.

And it seems as though His Father will not help Him but destroy Him, hand Him over to the Cross, and leave Him to suffer and die in such brutal agony, bearing the sins of the entire world in His beaten, bruised, and battered Body.  It is the Lord Jesus Christ, the promised Seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose hip is put out of joint; for His own Cross and Passion were already in view as He wrestled with Jacob at Penuel.  And in that Hour, it is for you that He strives and wrestles.

It is in this way that God gives justice to His elect.  It is by this way and means that He justifies you and declares you righteous.  It is in this way that He vindicates you in the face of all your enemies — by handing over His Son, Christ Jesus, to the Cross — and then by raising Him from the dead.

So, let’s think again about that widow and that judge.  Although it may seem obvious that the judge is somehow supposed to represent God, and that the widow represents you, it is not you who have been so persistent.  It is God who has been so persistent in bringing you from your unrighteousness to faith, in breaking your heart of stone and granting you a heart of flesh, and in converting you from someone who cares for neither God nor man to someone who loves God and your neighbor.

It is Christ Jesus who has accomplished all of this for you, and it is Christ Jesus who now works such faith and prayer in you.  By His Cross and in His Resurrection He teaches you to live and to pray as He does.  He strives and wrestles with you through the night, and He prevails upon you, to bring you to repentance and faith.  And in this way, by the way of His Cross, He teaches you to pray in the sure and certain hope and confidence of His Resurrection.

Your suffering under the Cross prompts you to pray in this way.  It reduces you to nothing but the one hope that you have had all along, which is your God and Father in Christ Jesus and His Word and promise; so that, in suffering you are brought into hope, to call upon the Name of the Lord, to rely upon His Word and Holy Spirit.  It is like ancient Israel in the wilderness, when God let them go hungry, and then He opened His hand to feed them.  And again, it is like Israel in the Land of Canaan, which God gave them as He promised.  Over and over again the people abandoned the Lord and turned away from Him to other gods; so the Lord, in His mercy and love, would send enemies to discipline the people, to call and bring them to repentance; then they would call upon His Name for deliverance, and He would hear and answer and send the judges to rescue them.

So does the Lord your God likewise discipline you, as a father disciplines the son whom he loves.  He lays the Cross upon you, to put you to death and raise you to life; not to destroy you, though it may feel that way at times, but that you would open up your mouth and call upon His Name.

And as you are united with Christ Jesus in His Cross and Resurrection by your Holy Baptism in His Name, so is He both your Prayer and your Father’s Answer to your prayer.  He is God’s “Yes” and “Amen” to your every need, and to each and all of those Petitions He has taught you to pray.

It is in Christ Jesus, the beloved Son, that God is your own dear Father in heaven.  It is in Him that God’s holy Name has been given to you.  It is in Him that God’s Kingdom comes to you, and in Him that God’s good and gracious Will is done for you, unto everlasting Life and Salvation.  It is in Christ Jesus that you are fed with daily bread for this body and life and for the Resurrection.  It is by Him that your trespasses are forgiven; that you are protected from all trials and temptations; and that you are delivered from the old evil foe and from every evil of body and soul.  And so it is that, in and with Him, you shall at last be raised up from this valley of death to your Father in heaven, as surely as He is risen from the dead and lives forever.  “Amen! Amen!”  It shall be so!

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Christ Our Lord Teaches You To Pray

Nothing is more basic to the Christian faith and life than prayer.  Indeed, prayer is the very voice of faith itself and the primary good work of the Christian life, an act of love for both God and the neighbor.  St. Paul writes, therefore, that prayer, intercession, supplication, and thanksgiving be made on behalf of all people, in the name and for the sake of Christ Jesus, who died for all and desires that all be saved.  So are you to pray at all times, without ceasing, and not to lose heart.

How, then, shall you pray?  Christ Jesus Himself teaches you by His Word and Holy Spirit, else you would not know how or what to pray as you should.  Not only has He commanded you to pray and promised to hear you, but He has given you the very Words with which to pray in His Name.  What is more, He not only teaches but exemplifies the practice of prayer in His own life, from the waters of the Jordan to the Garden of Gethsemane, from His Transfiguration to His Crucifixion.  And having sacrificed Himself for you and for all people on the Cross, He has also risen from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father, where He ever lives to make intercession for His Church and for the world as our merciful and great High Priest in all things pertaining to God.

This is your sure and certain confidence in prayer, that Christ and His Spirit pray with you and for you.  Each and all of us Christians pray to our Father in heaven as those who are baptized into Christ Jesus, the beloved and well-pleasing Son.  His God and Father is our God and Father, and His prayer is our prayer.  It is for this reason that you are able to ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and that you may do so in faith, without any doubting.

That voice of faith with which you approach the throne of grace with all boldness and confidence, as a little child asking your own dear Father, arises in your heart and from your mouth by the hearing of the Word of Christ.  Christian prayer necessarily begins, therefore, not with your speaking, but with that hearing of Christ Jesus, your Savior.  For He is merciful to all who call upon Him in truth, but how shall you call upon Him whom you have not heard?

Prayer goes hand-in-hand with the Word of God, and you cannot pray without it.  The prayer of the entire Church belongs inseparably to the teaching and fellowship of the Apostles, who devoted themselves to prayer and the Ministry of the Word.  So it is that all things are sanctified for you by the Word of God and prayer.  You do not have the one without the other.  It is the Word of the Lord that opens your lips to pray, praise, and give thanks.  Before it is ever a petition or request, therefore, prayer is first of all the confession of what God has spoken; and already in asking for what He has promised, you give Him thanks and praise in the sure and certain confidence of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom the Father’s answer is always “Yes” and “Amen.”

You pray, then, in the expectation that every good and perfect gift is from the Lord, our God and Father in Christ Jesus, including all that you need for both body and soul, for this life and for the life everlasting.  All that He has created and given to you is thus to be received with thanksgiving, and again, sanctified by means of the Word of God and prayer.  In this way His Name is kept holy among us, the very first thing for which He has taught you to pray.  So, too, you sanctify each day as a Sabbath rest in Christ — not simply Saturday or Sunday, but all your days and nights, all your evenings and mornings.  Of course His Name is holy in itself, and every day is holy to the Lord; but these sacred things are made holy for you by the speaking and hearing of His Word in faith.

This rhythm of daily prayer is simply a daily catechesis in the Word of God.  As you hear and confess His Word, as you are instructed in the way of faith and love by the Law and the Gospel, and as you are thereby taught to pray, His Holy Spirit is actively present and at work to bring you daily to repentance.  He calls you by the Gospel, enlightens you with His gifts, sanctifies you in the faith, and preserves your life in Christ Jesus.  All of this the Spirit does by the Word, which puts the old Adam in you to death and raises you to newness of life in and with the Lord Jesus.

That is the rhythm of life for every baptized believer in Christ, but it never is by your own reason and strength.  Even in the weakness of your faith you simply cry out, “Kyrie, eleison!”  “Lord, have mercy and help me!”  “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!”  Thus do you avail yourself of His Word and Spirit, and you pray.  You rely on the Ministry of His Gospel in His Church, and you likewise give daily attention to His Word and prayer throughout the week.  Indeed, the stronger and more healthy your Christian faith becomes, the more you gladly hear and learn the Word of God — and, along with that, the more frequently and fervently you pray and call upon His Name.

There is no time of the day or night when a Christian is not crying out from the heart unto the Lord in repentant faith.  Faith itself is already the inward groaning of the Holy Spirit, longing for Christ Jesus.  But as you believe with the heart, so do you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.  For as you have heard, so do you believe, and so do you speak in confession and prayer.

To call upon the Name of the Lord is your daily sacrifice of thanksgiving, both in the morning and at the close of the day.  With such prayer, whereby you look to the Lord for all that you need, you worship and adore Him as your true and only God.  Not only that, but in your love for Him you also pray and intercede for His entire Church and for the whole world, which He so loves by the giving of His only-begotten Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, in whose dear Name you pray.

In your prayers and intercessions for the world — for your neighbors near and far, for those you know and those you don’t, for friends and foes alike — you are united to Christ our Head, our great High Priest, within the royal priesthood of all those who are baptized in His Name.  Praying for your neighbors in this way, as Christ Jesus ever lives to pray and intercede for you and for all people, is the most distinctive and definitive duty of your priestly vocation as a Christian.

As often as you pray the Our Father, and as often as you pray in the Name of Jesus, you are praying for His whole Church in heaven and on earth, and for as many as He will call to Himself from all the nations.  In that same light, it is comforting to realize that His entire Church is always praying day and night for you, as well, and for each and all of us, from the rising of the sun to the place of its going down.  So it is that we, as Christians, have all things in common.  And with our prayers and intercessions, our praise and thanksgiving, we love and serve each other to the glory of God.

As fundamental as all of this is to the Christian faith and life — as significant and necessary as the Word of God and prayer are to your spiritual health and strength — the actual practice of daily prayer does not come so easily or naturally to any of us poor sinners.  How often have you tried, perhaps, to establish some routine, some discipline of prayer and devotion, whether on your own or with your family, only to find that it becomes harder and harder to keep up with it?

It is true that you are easily distracted by the worries of the world, by the deceitfulness of riches, and by the desire for other things, and that you are tempted to give away your time, attentions, and energies to every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles you.  It seems burdensome to devote yourself, your heart and mind, your body and soul, to the Word of the Lord.  Yet, His Word alone endures forever, while all of those temporal things that entice you will wither and fade like the grass and the flowers of the field.  And the more you are distracted and captivated by those idols of this world, the more desperately you need the Word of the one true God in Christ!

Thankfully, He does not leave you tossed about and helpless, but in compassion He shepherds you.  By His grace and tender mercy, He encourages you and assists you in the discipline of daily prayer, first of all by His commands and promises.  For He Himself has commanded you to pray and has promised to hear you.  And again, along with His exhortation and admonition, He has also given you the very Words with which to call upon the Name of God: “Our Father, who art in heaven.”

He has taught you how to pray, not only by His Holy Scriptures, but even before you could read He put His prayer upon your lips, and thereby into your heart and mind, by the teaching and example of your parents and pastors.  The Second and Third Commandments, too, not only expose your sin, but also serve you as a curb and a guide, as a rule of faith and prayer.  The Second Table of the Law helps to protect your neighbor from the harm that you would do to him, but the First Table of the Law is for your own protection and benefit, that you should not neglect to hear the Word of God and call upon His Name in prayer.

Your earthly parents taught you to eat your vegetables, even before you learned how to enjoy them.  So does your Father in heaven command you to listen and to pray, even when you would rather not. And then, by His living and active Word He brings your heart and mind along in repentance.

To this day, even now, and throughout your life, the Lord Jesus continues teaching you to pray, and His Holy Spirit daily continues to help you in your weakness.  He does so by the ways and the means of His Word, by the agency of His Church on earth, and by the preaching and ministry of His Holy Gospel.  As you thus hear and receive His gracious Word, in which He and His Spirit are actively present and at work to give you faith and life, so does He gather you up in Himself and bring you like sweet incense, as a pleasing and acceptable sacrifice, into the Holy of Holies made without hands, eternal in the heavens, to be well received by Our Father.

Amen, Amen!  That is, Yes, Yes, it shall be so!

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

As He Has Taught You to Pray and Promised to Hear You

We pray in this way to our Father in heaven — we call upon the Name of the Lord with such bold confidence and intimacy — because our Lord Jesus has so taught us and commanded us to pray, and He has promised that His own God and Father hears and answers such prayers in His Name.

As the Lord your God has created you for life with Himself forever, for fellowship and communion with Himself — as He has brought you into being and sustains your body and life by and through and with His Word — and as He reveals and gives Himself to you by His Word and Holy Spirit — so does He invite you to pray and call upon His Name in accordance with His Word, by echoing back to Him what He has said to you, and by confessing and actively relying on His promises.

To pray is part and parcel of the life for which the Lord your God has created you.  But to pray to God as your Father does not come naturally to you as a poor, miserable sinner.  Indeed, your sins hinder and prevent you from praying, and they undermine whatever you do attempt to pray.  If God did not act to rectify your situation by atoning for your sins, forgiving your transgressions, and reconciling you to Himself, then you would neither know how nor be able to pray rightly and call upon His Name, and He would neither listen to nor heed your prayers, petitions, and requests.

The fact that you are able to pray, and that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ does hear and answer your prayers, is entirely by His divine grace and blessing.  Not only has He created you by His Word, but He also speaks to you His sweet Word of the Gospel.  And through that Gospel He daily and richly forgives you all your sins and thereby reconciles you to Himself.  He calls and welcomes you to Himself, and He tenderly invites you to call upon His Name for all that you need.

All of this He has done for you and given to you in the incarnate Son, Christ Jesus, your Savior and Redeemer.  That very Son of God who took your frail flesh and blood to be His own, who bore all your sins and sorrows in His Body to the Cross, has thus become your merciful and great High Priest in all things pertaining to God.  He is the all-sufficient Sacrifice for all your sins.  He is the Mercy Seat, the Ark of the Covenant, through whom you come to God in confidence and peace.

It is in and through Christ Jesus, the Lord’s Anointed, that God the Father gives to you His Holy Spirit.  And though you do not know how to pray as you should, the Holy Spirit helps you in your weakness.  He teaches you how to pray through the Word of God in Christ.  And what is more, He prays with you, He prays in you, and He prays and intercedes for you, even when you cannot.

It is by Christ, by His Word and Holy Spirit, that you are brought to His God and Father as your own dear God and Father in Him.  Not as a supplicant before your Sovereign, nor as a slave before your Master, in fear of punishment, but as a beloved son or daughter coming to your own Dad.

Like a little boy or girl, you are invited to climb up into His lap, to sit upon His knee, to throw your arms around His neck, to hide yourself in His strong embrace, and there to find safety and peace.

All of this, again, is in and through Christ Jesus, the Son of God.  It is in Him, and for His sake, that God is your Father and you are His dear child.  For you are a son of God in Christ by virtue of your Baptism in His Name, by your Baptism into His Cross and Resurrection from the dead.

In the waters of your Holy Baptism, all of your sins have been washed away, and you have been united with Christ Jesus, bound to Him in such a way that the wicked foe and all his horde cannot separate you from the Lord who loves you and gave Himself for you.  It is in Christ Jesus that the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon you generously by the grace of God through His Gospel, as He has named you with His Name and adopted you as His beloved and well-pleasing child by the washing of water with His Word.  Thus are you able to call upon Him as your Father, for so He is.

To pray, then, as one of the baptized into Christ Jesus, you pray also as a member of His Body, the Church.  It is not possible to be a Christian, nor to pray to God, apart from that fellowship of the Body of Christ.  Even when you hide yourself in your closet to pray, you nevertheless pray with Christ and with all those who belong to Christ.  And when you are gathered together with His Church, you pray together with His Church of all times and places, in heaven and on earth, because you are all one Body in one Lord Jesus Christ.  You are brothers and sisters, because you have one and the same Father in Christ.  You belong to one another, because you are fellow members of the one household and family of God.  So you are bound to each other, whether you like it or not.

When you pray, “Our Father,” and “Forgive us our trespasses,” you pray for all the children of your dear Father in heaven, wherever they might be.  So, too, wherever in the world the children of God are praying this Prayer that our Lord Jesus Christ has taught us, they are all praying for you.

I can attest from experience that even on the other side of the globe there are faithful Christians who daily pray, “Our Father who art in heaven.”  I know that Deaconess Rhein can testify to that same fact, even as her work on hymnal projects for the Church around the world has served and supported Christian prayer in various orders of service, in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

The Our Father has been translated into numerous languages; it is prayed and confessed in a vast variety of tongues.  But from the rising of the sun to the place of its going down, from east to west and shore to shore, it remains one and the same Prayer, voiced in one Spirit.  For there is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism; there is one God and Father of all who are baptized into Christ Jesus.

The sun never sets upon the Church of our one Lord Jesus Christ, for all around the world His Christians are praying every day as He has taught them to pray.  And by their praying they solicit the Father through His Son, our merciful and great High Priest, to guard and protect His people in body and soul, to forgive the sins of all believers, to call those who do not believe to repentance, faith, and Holy Baptism, and finally to raise the children of God from death to Life everlasting.

Because you pray in Christ Jesus, who has died for the forgiveness of your sins, and not for your sins only but for the sins of the entire world — and because you pray in communion with all of your brothers and sisters in Christ — the forgiveness of sins is of vital importance.  Indeed, the forgiveness that you need, and your forgiveness of those who sin against you, is fundamental to your faith and life in Christ, and fundamental to all your prayers and petitions.  Your relationship with your God and Father in Christ is closely connected to your relationship with others, especially your fellow Christians; and that entire family fellowship depends upon the forgiveness of sins.

Our Lord Jesus Christ reiterates this point along with teaching us to pray, “Our Father in heaven.”  If you forgive your brother his trespasses against you, so will your Father in heaven forgive you.  But if you refuse to forgive your brother, so will your Father refuse to forgive your trespasses.

Absolutely everything depends upon the forgiveness of sins.  For without the forgiveness of sins there is no Christian Church, and there is no life or salvation, not for you, and not for anyone else.

Dr. Luther has it exactly right when he teaches you in the Small Catechism that all of your other Petitions hinge and depend upon the Fifth Petition.  For you are worthy of none of those things for which you pray, nor have you deserved them.  God must give them all to you by His grace alone.  For you daily sin much, and you surely deserve nothing else and nothing less than punishment.  Yet, in His mercy, for the sake of His Son, your Father freely and fully forgives you all your sins.  And so, for your part, for Jesus’ sake, you gladly forgive and do good to those who sin against you.

With the forgiveness of sins everything else is already answered.  In Christ Jesus, your Savior from sin, God’s answer is always “Yes” and “Amen!”  For He who did not spare His own dear Son but gave Him up for you, also gives you all good things in and with Him, both for this body and life and for the Life everlasting.  His Resurrection from the dead is God’s Answer to all your prayers, His resounding “Yes and Amen” to all that you need and ask, and the Guarantee of all His mercies.

When you pray the Our Father, you pray with bold confidence because you know these Petitions are pleasing to your Father in heaven.  They are already His good Word to you before they become your words and prayer to Him.  They are the Words that open your lips to show forth His praise by praying to Him rightly and by confessing your faith in Him who is your Lord and your God.

It is not so much that you bring these Words to Him, as it is that He brings you to Himself by these Words.  For it is by the Word of God in Christ Jesus — especially by His Word of the Gospel, by His Word of forgiveness — that the faith in your heart proceeds from your mouth in this Prayer.  You pray that He would give you everything you need.  That His Kingdom would come to you.  That His Name would be hallowed in your body and life.  That His will be done for you and your salvation, against the wicked will of the devil, the world, and your flesh.  That your body be fed and clothed.  That you and your family be sheltered and kept in peace.  That your job and life in this world be secure.  And when your life on earth must end, that you be taken to your dear Father in heaven, body and soul, forever and ever, in and with and through your Savior, Jesus Christ.

There is no need that is not covered by the Our Father.  So you should never feel that you are at a loss for words when it comes to prayer.  When your family and loved ones, neighbors and friends ask you to pray for them, you can pray with your own words from the heart, of course, as a son or daughter to your Dad.  But do not neglect to pray this Prayer, which sets before God everything in heaven and on earth, all the needs of man, of His Church, and of all the people in your life.

In this Prayer the needs of your body as well as your soul are all covered.  And in Christ Jesus, as I have said, God’s answer is always “Yes.”  In fact, even before you call upon Him, He is already answering your prayer in Christ Jesus.  He does all of these things according to His promise, even without your prayers.  And yet, He invites you to pray, as well.  He teaches you to pray, and He commands you to pray — not as a matter of the Law, as though He would not act without your prompting, but as a sure and certain promise of His grace and mercy toward you in Christ Jesus.  To pray, therefore, is to honor His Word, to glorify His Name, and to exercise your faith in Him.

Solomon, in his youth, loved the Lord and walked in the ways of his father David.  But he did not yet know how to pray; he did not yet know the wisdom of true and right worship according to the Word and promise of God.  He did not yet know how to call on the Name of the Lord.  But when he asked for wisdom and discernment, he went back to Jerusalem, where the Lord had promised that His Name and His Glory would dwell.  And from that point forward, Solomon stood before the Altar of the Lord, before the Ark of the Covenant, and there he prayed in true wisdom.

So also, in the Words of the Our Father, you are brought to stand before the Lord your God in and with Christ Jesus, to pray to your Father in heaven in and with Christ Jesus.  And for Christ Jesus’ sake, your prayer is answered, as surely as He is risen from the dead, ascended into heaven, and ever lives to pray and intercede for you before the Throne of God as your merciful High Priest.

Now, in faith, in the freedom of the Gospel, you are certainly welcome to pour out your heart before your Father in heaven.  You can climb up into His lap, as I said.  You can simply pray that most basic prayer of faith, that cry for help, “Kyrie, eleison!”  “Lord, have mercy!”  You can open up your mouth and lay bare before the Lord who loves you all of your hurts and doubts and fears and sorrows, all of your needs, and all of your wants, trusting Him to care for you and provide for you in love.  And He hears and answers those cries of your heart, those prayers, for Jesus’ sake.

But again, do not neglect this Prayer, the Our Father, the Lord’s Prayer, which is one of the most precious gifts that your Lord has given you.  For these Words of His teach your heart, your mind, your lips and tongue to pray.  So that, even when your heart is not in it, when it is too distracted, too sad, or too burdened to pray as you should, the Word of God supports and sustains you.  It is the Word of God that opens your lips, and He answers that Word of prayer with His Word of mercy in Christ, crucified and risen from the dead: “Amen, Amen!”  That is, “Yes, Yes,” it shall be so!

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Pray at All Times, and Do Not Lose Heart

The Lord has made clear what He would have you learn from His Parable of the persistent widow, and what He would have you do.  He is teaching you to pray at all times, and not to lose heart.  For God the Father would have you pray to Him, not as a slave, but as a son, a beloved child in Christ; that you would come to Him and ask Him for what you need, like a little child with his or her Dad.

The Lord would have you pray, not in fear or in desperation, but rather in eager confidence and joyful faith, and in a hope that refuses to be disappointed, even as you wait upon your God and Father for Him to fulfill His Word and promises.  As indeed He has and does in Christ Jesus.

But you do not know how to pray as you should.  You do not know how to pray as you should, because your heart and your mind are clouded by your sins.  And you do not know how to pray as you should, because, in your sin, either you do not recognize your need for God, and so you do not pray to Him, or you are painfully aware of your unworthiness, and so you are afraid to pray to Him.

That which you need the most is the forgiveness of your sins.  And yet, how should you dare to ask even for that?  And if not that, then how shall you ask for anything else?  For you are worthy of none of those things for which you ought to pray, nor have you deserved any of them.

It all depends upon the grace of God.  But precisely in your sin, you do not know how to grasp His grace, you do not know how to trust His mercy.  So you do not know how to pray as you should.

But the grace of God is found already in this, that the Holy Spirit helps you in your weakness.  He prays for you, first of all.  He intercedes on your behalf with groanings deeper than your words could ever express.  And this He does faithfully and constantly.  But the Spirit also teaches you how to pray.  He teaches you the Words of Christ.  He places them into your ears, and thereby upon your lips.  He opens your mouth to show forth God’s praise, to hallow His Name and use it rightly.  And that means, especially, that you call upon the Lord in prayer and give thanks to Him in Christ.

The Holy Spirit prays for you, and He teaches you to pray.  And then He joins your prayer to His prayer in Christ Jesus.  For it is by the Cross of Christ that the Holy Spirit teaches you to pray.

What is more, the Lord Jesus Christ is the Prayer.  Christ is the Prayer which the Holy Spirit offers to God the Father on your behalf.  And Christ is the Prayer that you are likewise taught to pray.  Christ is the Word that is placed upon your lips as you call upon your Father in heaven.

When you pray in the Name of Jesus, your prayer rises like incense before the Father in heaven, and it smells good to Him, because it comes to Him in the flesh and blood of His beloved Son.  Your prayer is lifted up to God in and with the sacrifice of Christ Himself upon the Cross and in His bodily Resurrection and Ascension.  So it is that your prayer is heard, and it is answered in the mercies of God, in the crucified and risen Body of Christ Jesus.

Christ the Lord, the Son of God, has come and taken His stand here with you in the flesh.  He has pitched His tent in the midst of the battle, where you contend with the devil, the world, and your own sinful heart.  He is with you and for you.  He is yours, and you are His.  And He sustains you.

The Spirit lays Christ upon your heart through the Gospel, that you may pray with confidence.  And the Spirit joins you to Christ Jesus, so that you are lifted up to the Father in and with Him.

So, then, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?  The answer is, Yes, because He has established Himself as your Advocate, your Redeemer, and your Savior, here on this earth.

In your own flesh and blood, Christ has become a merciful and great High Priest.  He shares your flesh.  He shares your blood.  He has taken your sin.  He has died your death.  All of this, that you may share His life and live within His Body by faith in His Word, in the Ministry of His Gospel.

See here, in Him you have the true and better Jacob, the promised Son of Abraham and of Isaac, who sees to it that His women and children, His dear Body and Bride, the Church, and all His members, are kept safe and secure within His Kingdom.  He sends them with all that He has across the River, so that He may contend, that He may stand fast, that He may be faithful on your behalf.

He has become Jacob, that you may become Israel.  He has striven with God, that God may strive with you in peace, and with every blessing, and with every good gift, more than you can imagine.

The Lord Jesus Christ has also become the persistent Widow, so to speak, that you might be the beloved and fruitful Bride of God.  He has persisted in prayer long after you would have lost heart, and given up hope, and stopped praying altogether.  Even then, He has not ceased to pray for you.

He has prayed for the justice of God.  But not according to your sins, nor for the punishment that you deserve according to the letter of the Law.  Rather, He has prayed for and established justice and righteousness for you by fulfilling the Law in His own Body of flesh and blood, in faith and love, and by suffering the righteous wrath of God and the judgment of the Law against your sins.

The very justice for which He has prayed, He has accomplished and provides for you and for all.  Righteousness for the guilty.  Innocence for you who deserve nothing but eternal condemnation.

So it is that God the Father delights to act quickly, to help you.  And it is most certainly true that He provides all that you need for this body and life, and for the life everlasting.  He forgives you all your sins, and He protects you from your enemies on all sides, even as He spares you from the punishment that His own Law would level against you.  Because His desire, from the beginning, unto all eternity, is that you would be His child, and that you would live under His protection.

You do not have to twist God’s arm to get what you need.  Nor should you be afraid to ask Him for justice, because the justice with which He serves you is the righteousness of Christ, which is yours by His grace, through faith in His Gospel, apart from any works of the Law on your part.

Indeed, because the Son of Man has come in the flesh, and by His Cross and in His Resurrection He has obtained for you the gracious adoption of sons, you are invited and taught to pray to God as your dear Father.  For you truly are His own dearly beloved child in Christ Jesus.  The Lord your God has bound Himself to you in the fellowship of His Baptism, His Body, and His Blood.

It is also by His Cross and in His Resurrection that He has brought you to repentance and to faith.  No longer are you the liar and deceiver that Jacob was, but now by the Spirit you confess the truth.

You remember how it was before, when the story first unfolded.  When Isaac asked him, “What is your name?” he lied and said, “I am Esau.”  But now, with the Angel of the Lord, there is no longer that charade and pretense of his youth.  Instead, there is the confession of truth: “What is your name?”  “I am Jacob,” that is, the supplanter or deceiver.  And yet, for all of that, he is also the one who has received the promise and blessing of God, both from his father and from the Lord.

It is much the same for you, also.  Who are you?  You are a sinner, that is true.  But that is not all.  You are also God’s own child.  So has the Lord Himself sworn to you, as He once swore to Jacob.

The Word and promises of God, that is all that Jacob had to hold on to.  And similar promises, even better promises, have been given to you in Christ Jesus, in His Gospel–Word and Sacraments.

How is it that Jacob prevails over the Lord?  It is not because he is mightier.  It is not because he, of himself, is more righteous.  He clings to the Lord and refuses to let go, because he clings to the promises of God.  The Lord has promised to Jacob that he will be blessed, and his Seed after him.  The Lord has promised that He will bring Jacob home in safety and give him this good land.  So Jacob hangs on to that, and he refuses to let go.  He will be blessed, though it comes by the Cross.

How is it that Jacob wrestles with the Angel, and the Angel is overcome?  It is because the Lord has given Jacob the very means by which to overcome Him, that is, by His own Word of promise.

And again, the Lord your God has given you better promises, or rather, the fulfillment of those promises He once gave to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.  He has accomplished your Salvation by the Cross and in the Resurrection of the promised Seed, Christ Jesus.  And He has named you with His own divine and holy Name through your Holy Baptism into that crucified and risen Lord Jesus.

Now, to be sure, the Cross by which He works in you, and from which He blesses you, often looks and feels more like the devil himself.  So you may be tempted to ask Him, “What is your name?  Are you actually my Lord or my enemy?”  But do not doubt His faithfulness and love for you, nor the victory that He has won over sin, death, the devil, and hell, on your behalf.

Though the Cross is a means of discipline and repentance, it is not a sign of the Lord’s anger against you, but of His great and steadfast love for you and for all the sons and daughters of man.  By the Cross He teaches you to live no longer by deception or in terrible fear, but to come home to your God and Father in repentance and faith, in humility, yes, but also with confidence in Him.

Bear in mind that Christ the Lord has borne the Cross first of all, in order to redeem you and save you for life with Himself.  Though He was and is the Son of God from all eternity, the Lord Jesus Christ learned the faith and obedience of Sonship in His own human body and life, as true Man, by way of His Cross and Passion on your behalf.  So, too, when your Father in heaven disciplines you by and with the Cross of His Son, it is an act of His mercy and love, that you might be rescued from your sinful unbelief and brought to repentance.  Not only that, but in laying the Cross upon you — as He has signed you with the Cross in your Holy Baptism — He is counting you worthy, by His grace, to share in the divine Glory of Christ Jesus, the beloved and well-pleasing Son.  But whereas Christ has borne the punishment of your sins by His Cross, it is for you His great blessing.

It is for you that Christ Jesus strives and wrestles through the heat of the day and the depths of the night, whose body and limbs have been put out of joint in that fight, that He might obtain for you the blessing of His God and Father, the gift of His Name and the outpouring of His Holy Spirit.

And as the Lord has given you His Name, you may call upon that Name in prayer, with confidence in His mercy.  He would have you persevere in that sure and certain hope, by faith in His Word.  Therefore, do not take “No” for an answer, even when that is all you seem to be hearing.  Do not lose heart, not in the face of the Law and its accusation of your many and great sins, nor when you are under attack by all who set themselves to sin against you in this fallen and perishing world.  For here is the truth of the Gospel, that your prayer is always before your Father in Christ Jesus.  And in Him it is already answered.  For His bodily Resurrection from the dead is the guarantee that your prayer is answered with this resounding “Yes” and “Amen,” which is Christ Himself for you.

Your Father in heaven loves you.  He welcomes you, not as a slave, but as a son.  He rejoices to hear your prayer, and He rejoices to answer it.  As He has answered Christ, as He has answered Jacob, so does He say “Yes” to you, and so does He bless you at all times with His Holy Name.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

To Pray by the Word and Promise of God in Christ

God has commanded you to pray and has promised to hear you.  Because of His command, prayer is not an option but a fundamental aspect of the Christian life.  It is your duty to pray, not only for yourself, but for the whole Church, and for the entire world for whom God gave His only Son.

Because God has also promised to hear your prayer, and has not only invited you to pray but has taught you the very words with which to pray, and has taught you to come to Him as your dear Father in Christ, you pray not only as a duty, but as a matter of faith: In the joyful confidence that our Father in heaven hears your prayer and answers you in love for Christ Jesus’ sake.

Prayer really is the voice of faith.  As you believe in your heart according to God’s Word, so do you pray with your lips.  You pray, trusting and believing that what you ask in Jesus’ Name, it is God’s desire to grant in His love for you.  Not because you deserve it, but because He is merciful; because He is your Father, and you are His dearly-beloved and well-pleasing child.

Prayer really begins, not with your talking, but with God’s talking.  Your Father speaks to you by His Son.  He speaks to you through the Holy Scriptures and by the preaching of His Word.  Prayer thus begins, not with your mouth, but with your ears: Hearing what God has said to you, receiving His Word into your heart, and then confessing what God has spoken.

Prayer is a confession, first of all, of what God has said, what He has promised, what He has done.  And then prayer also petitions Him; it asks Him for things according to His promise.  You ask Him for those things which He has promised to give and do for you.  Such prayer is sure and certain, and it will be answered, because it is according to His good and gracious will.

In the Our Father, in particular, God has given you exactly the words that you are to say; so that, even though your heart and mind are never exactly right, the words that you speak are.  Exactly right.  They ask God for what you need the most, including especially the forgiveness of your sins.

And your prayer is not all by its lonesome.  It is not your quiet little voice alone that ascends to your Father in heaven.  He cares about you; He does hear your voice.  But He receives your prayer in and with Christ Jesus.  Your prayer of faith is joined to the prayer of Christ Himself, who prays for you.  And it is carried to the throne of grace by the Holy Spirit, who also intercedes for you: with groaning too deep for words, but so also with these words that He has taught by the mouth of Christ.  You pray to God your Father in and with Christ Jesus, in and with His Holy Spirit.

Really, your prayer is lifted to God with Christ on the Cross.  As He is there lifted up for you in love, so does your prayer rise to God in and with the Sacrifice of Christ, by which all of your sins are forgiven and your faith is perfected.  For it is by His Cross that you are reconciled to God and at peace with Him.  It is by the Cross of Christ that God calls you to Himself as His own dear child.

You are united with Christ in His Cross and Resurrection, because you die and rise with Christ Jesus through Holy Baptism in His Name.  And so it is that, by your Baptism, you also share His Sonship.  The Father of Jesus is your true Father in Him.  That is how and why you pray to God as your Father, just as dear children ask their dear fathers on earth — only ever so much better.  When you pray to Him, you curl up in your Daddy’s lap and hide yourself entirely in Him.

To be sure, none of us earthly fathers are perfect.  In fact, the Lord cuts us to the quick when He says, “If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give you the Holy Spirit.”  But so does Christ Jesus affirm that His God and Father is indeed the perfect Father, by whom all fatherhood on earth is named.  He does not learn from us how to be a proper Dad, but we all learn from Him who loves us, who hears and answers your prayer and provides for all your needs of body and soul, now and forever.

He does it all for Jesus’ sake.  Like everything else in the Christian life, it all depends on Jesus.  It is by the mouth of Jesus Christ that God has taught you and invited you to pray the Our Father.  And it is in and with Christ Jesus that you pray, that is, by the faith and confession of His Name.

Not only that, but Jesus Himself is also God’s answer to your prayer.  In fact, He is God’s loud “Yes” and “Amen” to all that you ask of Him, to all that you need.  In giving you His only Son, God does not withhold any good thing from you, but rather, for Christ Jesus’ sake, He gives you grace, and life itself, and every blessing, unto the resurrection of your body and the life everlasting of your body and soul.  Thus do you also say “Yes” and “Amen” to the Word and promises of God in Christ, knowing that, in Him, all things are yours, and you are His forever and ever.

Because everything depends upon Jesus and His forgiveness of your sins, when you pray in Jesus’ Name, you do so as a member of His Body, a member of His Church, from within that communion of saints, which lives in the unity of faith and love.

You are obliged, therefore, to love and forgive your neighbor, as God in Christ loves and forgives you.  It is right there in the middle of the Our Father.  As you pray that God would forgive your sins — and everything depends on that forgiveness — so do you pledge yourself and obligate yourself to forgive your neighbor who trespasses against you.  For Christ Himself forgives both you and your neighbor.  And as you pray through Christ Jesus, so do you forgive your neighbor.

He teaches you to pray like this:  “Our Father.”  “Give us this day our daily bread.”  “Forgive us our trespasses.”  Such prayer is not selfish.  It is not private, isolated, or insulated against others.  It is set within the context of His Church, and it belongs to the entire household and family of God.

Whenever you pray the Our Father — whenever you pray as a Christian, in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ — you pray not only for yourself, but for the whole Church; for all of your brothers and sisters in Christ; for all of your Father’s children, wherever they may be in His vast Kingdom.  Not only for those brothers and sisters in Christ whom you know; and not only for those particular needs that you know and mention before God; but for all of your fellow Christians, wherever they are in the world, whatever their needs may be.

By the same token, all around the world, every day, morning and evening, from the rising of the sun to the place of its going down, your brothers and sisters in Christ are praying for you, even though you may never know each other here on earth.  Your Father knows each and all of you by name, and it is His good and gracious will that His children pray for their whole family in Him.

This is part of what it means to be the Body of Christ.  This is what it means to be joined to Christ, our Head, who is our great High Priest.  As by His death He has reconciled you to God, so by His sacrifice has He brought you into the true Holy of Holies with Himself, in His own Body.  And as He has risen and ascended to the right hand of His God and Father, where He ever lives to make intercession for you — so are you and His whole Church always praying together with Him.

The Church prays for herself and her needs, especially here on earth under the Cross.  The Church also prays for her neighbors in the world, for all of those people for whom Christ Jesus died, which is of course to say, for everyone without exception.

So that is how you are taught to pray: With love in your heart and forgiveness for your neighbor, as Christ loves you, and has forgiven you, and continues each day to forgive you all your sins.

You pray in confidence that God your Father desires to give you good things, and that He does so, even without your prayer; that He will continue to take care of you in His love and mercy for you.  By such faith and trust in God, whether you see it and feel it at any particular time, you do not begrudge any good thing to your neighbor in the world, but you gladly do what you can to serve and help your neighbor, beginning with forgiveness of his sins against you, but so also with food and clothing, and by whatever other ways or means you may be given opportunity to serve.

Thus do you live as God’s dear child.  As you pray, so do you live.  Really, the Christian life begins in prayer, in hearing God’s Word and confessing His Word.  And as you hear and receive what He speaks and gives to you in Christ, your whole life as a Christian proceeds as a continuous prayer of faith and love, in the way that Christ Jesus never ceases to pray and intercede for you.

Now, when you consider how often your prayer falters; when you think about your life and your days, and you realize how often you fall short; when you realize how often you fail in your faith and in your love — do not for that reason despair, and by all means do not stop praying!  Do not suppose that first you must get your faith right and get your life together before you can start to pray; if that were the case, you never would be able to pray.  Rather, remember that God has commanded you to pray, and so, to begin with, you pray on the basis of that commandment.

Among those things for which He has taught you and commanded you to pray, you ask that His Name would be hallowed in your life, that His Kingdom would come to you also, that His will be done in your life, and that He would forgive your sins.  And all of this He does, by His grace, by His Son, by the Ministry of His Gospel.  Thus, by His Word and Holy Spirit, and especially by His forgiveness of all your sins, He brings forth true faith in your heart, He strengthens and nurtures that faith, and He calls from your lips the prayer of faith that characterizes your life as His child.

Therefore, keep on listening to His Word.  And as you hear, so also speak as you are spoken to.  Pray what He has said to you.  Ask Him for what He has promised.  Pray at all times, and do not lose heart, knowing that your Father hears your prayer with divine mercy and tender compassion, and for Jesus’ sake He answers you in love.

Prayer is the voice of faith, that is true.  But prayer does not finally depend upon your faith.  No, your faith and your prayer alike depend upon your God and Father in Christ.  Your prayer is not answered because you have believed well enough.  Your prayer is not answered because your faith is good enough or strong enough.  Your prayer rests entirely on Christ, your merciful and great High Priest in all things pertaining to God.  Though you falter and fail, He never does.  Risen from the dead, He ever lives to pray and intercede for you.

God has spoken through His Prophet Isaiah, that even before you pray, He has already heard and begun to answer your prayer and your every need.  You see that especially in the Cross of Christ; for while you were yet a sinner and God’s enemy, Christ died for you, the Righteous One for the unrighteous and ungodly, that you might be reconciled to God and justified by His grace.  There in His Cross and Passion you behold the love of God, who has become your Father in Christ Jesus; and in His Resurrection from the dead you find that all of your prayers have already been heard and answered with that resounding “Yes” and “Amen,” which is indeed Christ Jesus Himself.

Not only does the entire Church all over the world pray for you each day; Jesus prays for you each and every day, and all through the night.  He prays for His whole Church; He prays also for you.  And rest assured that God withholds no good thing from His beloved Son, who is your Savior indeed, your own dear Friend, and evermore your great High Priest.  As He prays for you, so does God answer, and so are you sustained and strengthened in the one true faith, unto life everlasting.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The Lord Jesus Teaches You How to Pray

It is in His fatherly divine goodness and mercy toward you — because He knows what you need and daily and richly provides it — that the Lord your God has taught you and invited you to pray and has given you the very words with which to call upon His Name.  Such prayer is not by your own design, nor is it a matter of your ingenuity or cleverness.  It is a good and perfect gift from the Father of Light, who speaks to you by His Son in order to bestow His divine Wisdom upon you in fulfillment of His good and gracious Will for your life and salvation.  So does He teach you to come to Him as your own dear Father, boldly and confidently, through Jesus Christ your Savior.

Sharing His Cross and Resurrection by your Holy Baptism in His Name, your life is hidden with Christ in God.  In His Body and with His Blood you enter the Holy of Holies in the midst of His true Jerusalem, eternal in the heavens, and you stand before the true Ark of the Covenant to pray, praise, and give thanks to your God and Father in the confidence of His Word and promises.  That is where you stand at all times and in all places by faith in His Gospel, as a beloved child of God.

Because you thus pray to the Father in virtue of your Baptism into Christ Jesus, the Lord’s Prayer — like all Christian prayer, properly understood — is never a private prayer.  There is no such thing as a private Christian or private Christianity.  Even when you take it to the Lord in prayer in the solitude of your own home, you do so as a member of the Body of Christ, as a member of His holy catholic Church in heaven and on earth.  It is always our Father, and never simply my Father.

The use of the Our Father, in particular, along with other standard prayers, such as those in the Catechism and in the historic rites of the Liturgy, is a confession of the Church’s catholicity and of your connection to it.  The Our Father is part of our common language as Christians, that is, the special language we all speak as fellow citizens of our Father’s Kingdom.  For the Words we use — even before we begin to “understand” them intellectually — these Words that God has spoken and given for us to pray and confess — are Words that every Christian has received and speaks, a confession of the one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all.

The catholicity of the Our Father is demonstrated in the special importance attached to the Fifth Petition, that we be forgiven, as we forgive those who trespass against us, which Jesus reiterates in His teaching of the Our Father.  Since you pray in communion with the entire Church, in the unity of Christ, your relationship with others, especially with your fellow Christians, is an integral part of your prayer.  And, as a Christian, your relationships are defined chiefly by forgiveness.

You come before the Lord in prayer with repentance and a humble recognition of your sins; for you know that of yourself you are not worthy to stand in His presence, and that you do so only by His tender grace and mercy.  Each and every prayer that you bring to Him, therefore, presupposes and depends upon His forgiveness.

Thus do you fear the Lord your God in the true wisdom of repentant faith.  Which means that you live by listening to His Word, by calling upon His Name, and by relying on His gracious gifts and promises for all that you need.  And in this fear and faith of God, in His forgiveness of all your many sins, you are likewise called to forgive and gladly to do good to those who sin against you.

In much the same way, the Lord teaches you to pray the Our Father as a kind of discipline, as part of your ongoing catechesis and Christian discipleship.  For this prayer lifts your heart and mind above and beyond your own selfish cares and concerns to intercede for the whole Church, for all the baptized children of God, for all your brothers and sisters in Christ, wherever they may be in His vast Kingdom.  Everything you pray for in the Lord’s Prayer, you pray not only for yourself, but for all who call upon God as their Father, and for all whom He would call to be His children.

Indeed, the Our Father is truly an all-encompassing prayer.  Along with the forgiveness of sins, which you need the most, it includes everything you need for this body and life and for the life everlasting.  Nothing is excluded.  There is no situation or circumstance for which the Our Father is not ideally suited, nothing you might face which is not addressed in these seven Petitions.

Whenever you find yourself at a loss for words — and to be sure, you do not know of yourself how to pray as you should — yet, you have divine wisdom in this Prayer that your Lord Himself has given you.  For though your heart and mind are never as pious or as focused as they should be in this life on earth, your lips are here guided by the Word of God Himself.  So does the Holy Spirit also pray with you in this Word of Christ, as He is always praying for you in your sinful weakness.

When you pray and intercede for others, too — for your family and friends, for the Church, for those who are sick — again, the Lord’s Prayer is always most appropriate, a prayer for all seasons.

By no means should you ever suppose that you have nothing to say, nor worry that you aren’t creative or clever enough to pray.  Rather, in the humility of repentance, and in the confidence of faith, pray and speak as the Lord Jesus has taught you:  “Our Father who art in heaven. . . .”

In such wisdom, the Lutheran Church has always included the Our Father in all of her orders of service — whether simple or elaborate, both short and long alike.  And you should know from the Small Catechism that Dr. Luther instructs the head of the house to include the Our Father in the daily prayers of his family — in the morning and at night, and both before and after every meal.

In short, as God’s own child, baptized into Christ, you cry out, “Abba! Father!” to your God and Father in heaven.  Do not take offense at the comparison, but you are thus like an infant or toddler learning how to speak, babbling “Dadda, Dadda, Dadda,” over and over throughout your days with the grateful affection of a little child for the very dear Father who loves and cares for you.

After all, the same Lord has actually called you to become like a little child and, as such, to receive and enter into His Kingdom by His grace alone through faith in His Gospel.

So, too, in praying the Our Father with your own sons and daughters, and by teaching them to pray in this way, you pass on more than just a single prayer.  You actually teach them how to speak the Word of God with the language of faith.  You teach them the most basic pattern of true worship.

In fact, the Our Father encompasses the entire scope of Christian worship.  It is the gracious Word of Christ to you and to His Church on earth.  Hence, it is His good work and gracious gift.  For this precious thing is not of your own fabrication or design, nor is it anything that you could ever have thought up or imagined.  Like all Divine Service, it comes to you from God.  And when you pray in this manner, it does not cease to be His Word and His work in you.  Not that your praying is the Gospel or a means of grace, but the Word itself — with which the Lord Jesus opens your lips to call upon the Father in His Name — it is a gift of His pure Gospel and His grace.  He thus bestows His righteousness upon you from heaven, in order to raise you up in faithfulness from the ground.

Your praying of the Our Father, in turn, is therefore a genuine good work of faith, a sacrifice of repentance and thanksgiving, and an act of worship in Spirit and Truth.  That is to say, you worship God the Father in the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ, His Son, by means of His Word of Truth.

You entrust yourself to Him, your body and soul and all that you have, as a whole burnt offering.  You give thanks for all His gifts and benefits in the sure and certain hope of the Gospel.  And you gather up your neighbors in love to share with you in the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God.

So it is that the Our Father functions as an integral part of the Church’s morning and evening sacrifice, arising before the Lord as the holy incense of faith, which is pleasing to Him.  And in the daily prayers of your home and family, it is likewise the summary and conclusion of all your petitions and intercessions, covering all for which the Lord your God would have you pray.

And in the celebration of the Sacrament of the Altar, it is a sacrifice of thanksgiving for our Lord Jesus Christ, and a petition that our Father in heaven would pour out His Spirit upon His people, His Church; that by His grace we would believe His Word, and recognize the Body and Blood of Christ in the bread and wine, and so receive this Bread of Life and His Cup of Salvation in true faith and to our abundant blessing, and bring forth the fruits thereof in our lives.  Indeed, we pray in this way in the confidence that He does all these things according to His Word and promise.

Bear in mind, in all of this, that Christian prayer is not a button or a cord that you push or pull for service from the Lord, as though He were a household servant instead of your dear Father in heaven, or as though He were not already (even without your prayer) daily and richly providing you with all good things — solely out of His fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in you.  Surely He gives daily bread to all people, even to the wicked, and He causes His sun to shine and His rain to fall on both the evil and the good.  But as for you, pray that He would grant you the wisdom of a listening heart to recognize His fatherly hand in all His gifts of body and soul, and to rely on Him alone, trusting not in yourself but in Christ and His mercy.

Pray to your Father in heaven, as the Lord Jesus has taught you to pray, for much the same reason and with the same mind that you go to Church and receive His Holy Sacrament.  Not because you feel like it, but also and especially when you don’t!  Not because you thereby do some great favor for the Lord.  And not as though you were somehow worthy of yourself to stand before Him.

But pray to Him — and pray the Our Father, in particular — because He has commanded you to pray in this way; because He has promised to hear and answer your prayer with a resounding “Yes” and “Amen” in Christ Jesus; and because you need His gracious mercy and forgiveness every day.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.