Prayer 101

Rogate Sermon| John 16:23-30| Praying in Jesus’ Name| Pastor James Preus| Trinity Lutheran Church

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus commands His disciples to pray. We pray to God for two reasons. First, God commands us to pray to Him. Second, God promises to hear us and to answer us. Martin Luther explains the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer with these words, “This means that I should be certain that these petitions are pleasing to our Father in heaven, and are heard by Him; for He Himself has commanded us to pray in this way and has promised to hear us. Amen, amen means ‘yes, yes, it shall be so.’”

All people are required to pray to God. That is the Law. Our Catechism explains the Second Commandment, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God,” with these words, “We should fear and love God so that we do not curse, swear, use satanic arts, lie or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.” So, the command to pray is Law, just as the command to have no other gods is Law. However, the commandment cannot bring about effective prayer, just as the command to love God does not bring about love toward God.

So, the command to pray would bring us no comfort or joy unless God added the promise that He will hear us and give us what we need. Jesus says, “Whatever you ask the Father in My name, He will give it to you. … Ask, and you shall receive, that your joy may be full.” And so, we have from Jesus not only a command, but a glorious and comforting promise. The promise is the Gospel, which is received by faith.

Before we go on, we need to define what it means to pray. To pray means to speak to God in faith. Most of the time that we pray to God, we are asking Him for something; however, we also praise Him for what He has given. Who asks someone for what he doesn’t need? And who asks something from someone from whom he does not expect to receive? And who praises someone for giving something whom he does not believe gave him anything? So, to pray, we must pray in faith, trusting God’s promise that He hears us, that He desires to give us what we pray for, that He is able to give it, and in many cases, that He has given it.

Faith comes from hearing (Romans 10:17). This is why Jesus says, “The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” When did Jesus say that we will ask the Father in His name? When He has spoken to us clearly. And why does He say that the Father loves us? Because we love Him and believe that Christ came from Him. And how do we come to love Christ and to believe in Him? It is through His Word being spoken clearly to us. We love, because God first loved us. The Gospel tells us plainly of God’s love for us in sending Christ to take our sins away. We believe, because it has been preached clearly to us that Christ came from the Father and returned in glory having won salvation for us.

We cannot separate prayer from faith, because prayer is to speak to God in faith. And we cannot separate faith from God speaking to us, because it is only through God’s Word that we can come to faith!

Apart from faith, we cannot ask God for anything, because we do not believe that He will give us anything. Imagine if you hit a baseball into your neighbor’s window and broke it. Would you feel confident to then go and ask your neighbor for a cup of sugar? No. You wouldn’t want to ask anything of your neighbor until you had made things right and were sure that your neighbor did not hold anything against you! And it is the same with God. If we believe that God is angry with us or that we are unworthy to receive anything from Him, then we aren’t going to ask Him for anything. We will doubt whether He listens to us or wants to give us anything good.

This is why it is important for us to listen to God. If you are to speak to God, you must first listen to Him speak to you. Jesus says that when He speaks to them plainly, then they will ask the Father in His name. Why is that? Because Christ will explain to them that He has made atonement for their sins by His death on the cross, that He has ascended to the right hand of God the Father and is now interceding for us sinners by the merits of His perfect satisfaction. If God sent His Son for our sake, how can He deny us any good thing? If Christ pleads on our behalf, how can God not listen to us?

But if you do not listen to Christ and His preaching, how can your conscience be comforted that God is reconciled to you? And how then can you know what to pray for? This is why we should not only regularly go to church to hear the preaching of the Gospel and divine instruction, but why we should daily pray our Catechism. I tell my Catechism students repeatedly that the Catechism is not a textbook; it is a prayerbook. A textbook is something you buy for a class, use it for that class, and then return it never to look at it again. A prayerbook is something you keep by your bedside and pray until the pages are so ragged, you can’t read it anymore, but it doesn’t matter, because you have learned it by heart.

It is common for older Lutherans to laugh and say they used to know their Catechism back when their pastor made them memorize it, but not anymore. But it shouldn’t be so. A fifty-year-old should know his Catechism better than a fourteen-year-old, not because he repeats the same sentences over and over again until he can say it without looking to the pastor, but because he daily prays a portion of the Catechism.  That is, as a part of his daily devotions he recites a little bit of God’s Word. That is what the Catechism is. It is a simple instruction in God’s Word. By adding a minute to your daily prayers, you can continue to learn and remember your Catechism and aid your prayers.

By hearing Jesus speak plainly to us, we learn to pray in Jesus’ name. To pray in Jesus’ name means first, to pray based on the merits and intercessions of Christ. It means to say to God, “Do not look at my sins or deny my prayer because of them, because I am neither worthy of any of the things for which I ask nor have I deserved them, but I pray that you will give them all to me by grace, that is, by the merits of Christ. Do not look at my sin; look at Jesus’ righteousness. Do not look at my unworthiness; look at Jesus’ merits. Do not focus on my transgressions, but gaze at Jesus’ wounds which make me whole.” That is what it means to pray in Jesus’ name. It means to pray to God through faith in the Gospel, that God will give you all good things for the sake of Christ Jesus His Son. We pray not that God reject us for what we have done that is displeasing to Him, but that He answer us for the sake of Christ Jesus His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.

In fact, when we pray in Jesus’ name, we are praying as those who have clothed ourselves in Christ. It is as if Jesus Himself were praying for us. Jesus says, “I do not say that I will ask the Father on your behalf, for the Father Himself loves you.” In other words, when we pray in Jesus’ name, God considers Himself our dear Father and we His dear children, so that we may ask Him as dear children as their dear father, yes, even as Christ Jesus asks the Father for anything. If God the Father could deny His Son Jesus, so could He deny the one who prays in Jesus’ name. Yet, the Father loves the Son, and so He loves those who have faith in Him.

Yet, you may be thinking of a time that the Father appeared to deny His Son, when in the garden the Son prayed, oh, take this cup away! Yet, the Father did not take the cup away, but gave it to Christ to drink to the bitter dregs, that is, to suffer the punishment for all sins on the cross. Yet, even in this, the Father did not deny the Son, for Jesus said, “Not My will, but Your will be done!” And it was the will of the Lord to crush Christ for the sake of our salvation.

And so, we learn to pray in Jesus’ name also means to pray according to Jesus’ Word and promise. This is why we should not only pray the Lord’s Prayer, but meditate on it, read from our Catechism what it says about it, so we recognize the awesome things for which we pray. We pray for His name to be holy among us, for His kingdom and Spirit. That is, we pray for the Holy Christian Church on earth, that she triumphs in the church militant, and rejoices in the church triumphant. We pray for every bodily need on earth. We pray for forgiveness, for deliverance from temptation, and from an evil death.

And in all these things, God says yes to us as if we were Christ Himself. Yet, as Jesus Himself suffered for the sake of our salvation, so God permits us to suffer, but always to be worked out for our good. Our sinful flesh, that is, our old Adam does not pray in Jesus’ name. It wants us to grow impatient and assume that if God does not give us exactly what we pray for as we prayed for it, then He is a failure of a god! Yet, Jesus teaches us how to pray to the Father: Not my will, but yours be done.

Our prayers are always for the sake of the heavenly kingdom. Even when we pray for daily bread, we would rather God give us no daily bread if that bread were to prevent us from entering His heavenly kingdom. That is why we always pray, “Thy will be done.” God is not saying, “no,” to us when He doesn’t give us everything exactly as we want it, if we are praying “Thy will be done.” Rather, God takes our prayers and with His Holy Spirit, He makes them better and makes them serve the kingdom.

But this does not mean that God does not care about our problems. Quite the contrary! God cares so much for you, the little and the great things. That is why you should constantly pray to Him for everything. He loves to hear you and answer you. Yet, God always has the right priorities. He desires your eternal salvation. It is His good pleasure to give you His kingdom. So, ask for it in Jesus’ name. You will receive it. Amen.