1/6 Pray Like This

This is Scripture for Students. I’m Steve Whitacre, president of Trinity College and a pastor at Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville. I want to help students build a daily habit for life-long Bible reading. Today is January 6, 2025 and this episode of Scripture for Students is called Teach us to Pray. Grab your Bible and let’s get started.

Our readings for today are Genesis 6, Matthew 6, and Ezra 6.

It’s been about a week since New Years Day. Did you make any New Years Resolutions? I hope you did. It’s a great practice to take some time at the beginning of each year, to assess how your life is going: spiritual life, relationships, school, work, everything—and ask, what are a few changes I could make this year to grow in godliness?

I’ll tell you about a New Years Resolution I make just about every year. Pretty much every January, I think: I want to grow in prayer this year. I love to pray, but I also find myself dissatisfied. I want to grow in my consistency and frequency. I want to grow in depth and desperation and I want to experience God’s presence even more when I pray. Prayer is talking to God, it includes making our requests known to him but it is even more than that: it includes praising him for who he is, confessing our sins and receiving his forgiveness, and thanking him for his gifts. Today’s reading can help us grow in our understanding of what prayer is and in our ability to pray well. In Matthew 6, Jesus teaches us how to pray.

Matthew 6:5–15

5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 

6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 

7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 

8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 

9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 

10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 

11 Give us this day our daily bread, 

12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 

13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 

14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 

15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

May the Lord bless the reading and the hearing and the keeping of his Word.

There is a ton we can learn here about how to pray and I want to mention just a couple things:

First, Jesus wants us to pray. This passage is equal parts invitation and instruction. Jesus invites us to pray and he teaches us to pray so that we can get better at prayer. 

Second, Have you ever thought about who you are praying to? Notice that Jesus says, “Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven…” It is legitimate to pray to Jesus or the Holy Spirit. That’s not wrong. But Jesus teaches to pray to the Father. We can get better at prayer by thinking clearly about who we are praying to. 

Third, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done…” There are many things we can pray that fit under this heading. We might pray for Christians who are persecuted in other countries or the evangelistic efforts of our local church. But we also want to pray this personally. This means praying about our obedience. We might pray and ask God how he wants us to obey each day. And we might pray and ask God for help to obey. This is a part of our daily prayer and this is so important for our spiritual health: it is a daily reminder that there is a God, that he cares about how we live, and that he wants to help us to obey his commands by his grace and the power of his Spirit.  

If you would like a really helpful guide to the Lord’s prayer, I highly recommend J. I. Packer’s book, Praying the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a very short book and it is full of wise and warm guidance for how to grow in prayer.

So, let me encourage you to use this prayer as a guide for your prayers this week. Use each piece of this prayer when you pray. But I want to encourage you to watch for two temptations. First, beware of the temptation to feel like you’ve got to pray long, eloquent prayers to be doing this well. A lot of people get discouraged because their prayers don’t sound very good to them. On the other hand, beware of being satisfied with feelings of prayers. What I mean by that is, sometimes we can sit down to pray and we think about praying without really praying. I’m thinking here of C. S. Lewis’s book The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape refers to a Christian as the “patient” and tells his nephewWormwood, 

“The best thing, where it is possible, is to keep the patient from the serious intention of praying altogether. When the patient is an adult recently reconverted to the Enemy’s party, like your man, this is best done by encouraging him to remember, or to think he remembers, the parrot-like nature of his prayers in childhood. In reaction against that, he may be persuaded to aim at something entirely spontaneous, inward, informal, and unregularised; and what this will actually mean to a beginner will be an effort to produce in himself a vaguely devotional mood in which real concentration of will and intelligence have no part.” C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, letter IV.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably had some experience of prayer becoming some kind of “vaguely devotional mood.” But we can learn to pray with a “real concentration of will and intelligence.” This is one of the reasons I keep a journal. I don’t write down a whole lot in my journal, but most days I’ll write a verse or two that served my soul as a way to help me meditate. Then I’ll write the letter P and under that, make a list of things I want to pray for today. I’ll also write a letter T and write at least three things I’m grateful for that day. Then, I actually go through those two lists and pray and give thanks. It doesn’t necessarily have to take that long. 

Some of the best advice I’ve heard comes from my father-in-law CJ Mahaney, short, earnest prayers are best.

So, how are your prayers going? Maybe it’s time for a New Week’s resolution. What if you made a resolution to use the Lord’s Prayer this week? Try writing down your prayers and what you’re thankful for. Then use the Lord’s prayer as a guide for praying those things. 

Maybe, start a conversation with your family at dinner tonight: how are your resolutions going? Anyone want to join you in praying the Lord’s Prayer this week?

That’s all for today. If you enjoyed this episode please share it with a friend and follow us on Apple Podcasts.

This content is sponsored by Trinity College of Louisville. We shape young men and young women for Christ and for the church. Learn more at TrinityCollegeLou.com. Until next time, keep growing!