Persistence in Prayer

Short talk at Cheddington - Thursday 9 October 2008

Teaching on Prayer Luke 11. 5 - 13

Teaches that prayer will be answered. Everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; to those who knock the door will be opened

Yet it does not seem as though this is our own experience

This reading follows The Lord’s Prayer. Disciples ask Jesus how to pray. John had taught his disciples.

• We are to pray for the coming of the Kingdom
• our daily food
• forgiveness of our sins
• not being brought to the time of trial

In the Lord’s Prayer we can always say our prayer is answered

But our reading is more about Persistence in Prayer than us being given what we believe we want

We are to persist – like the man who needs 3 loaves of bread. We are to have shameless audacity – but the key to the reading is that God will give us as much as we need – not what we think we require.

So God will give good gifts to those who persist in prayer, and not the things that would be harmful to us

What are these good things we can expect? Clue in last verse – God will give his Holy Spirit to those who ask him.

This should be our prayer – to persist in asking for what we need – though that may be God’s assessment not our own – and especially to pray for the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the church – that good think which God will give to those who ask him