Luke 11:1–13

Family Bible Study
University Relations, Samford University; Southwestern Seminary graduate

Keep Praying
Luke 11:1–13
Effective, meaningful conversation, even among the closest and best of friends, can prove to be extremely demanding. Our words not only carry ideas but also emotional content. These ideas and emotions must then be received and processed by those who hear them. A wife comes home after a hard day and responds sharply to her husband’s innocent inquiries. A teacher works diligently to connect with a student having difficulty understanding a new idea. Next-door neighbors for a decade, two friends find it near impossible to speak to one another after the betrayal.

As these illustrations reveal, conversation can be demanding between people who can see, touch and hear each other. Prayer is communication with God, One who cannot be seen, touched or heard audibly. In this context, the expanded teachings of Jesus about prayer can better be understood. The 13-verse passage this lesson focuses on breaks out into three emphases: the disciples request for Jesus to instruct them in the discipline of prayer, the parable encouraging persistence in prayer and Jesus’ teaching regarding the benevolent, loving character of God the Father.

The observation has been made that the only request for instruction the disciples made of Jesus was for Him to teach them to pray. Could there be any doubt that as these disciples watched Jesus pray, they made the connection between the evident power in His life and His regular routine of prayer? From the example of Jesus’ prayer life, the disciples were motivated to ask for training in prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer or the model prayer was Jesus’ response to this request. While the wording is more full in Matthew’s account (Matt. 6:9–13), the same, basic encouragements are given in Luke’s record. Jesus teaches that we should begin prayer with praise to God the Father, plead for God’s Kingdom-will to be done on earth, request for each day’s material needs to be met, address our spiritual need for forgiveness in human relationships and acknowledge awareness for growth in character regarding temptations.

Moving from His instructions about the areas in one’s life where prayer may focus, Jesus speaks of the urgency to be persistent in prayer. A guest arrives from a journey at the late hour of midnight, and the host does not have adequate food in the house to be properly hospitable. He rushes to his neighbor’s home and awakens him to request assistance. The neighbor and his family have bedded down for the night and wish not to be disturbed. But persistence in knocking and asking for help wins out. The neighbor rises to assist for the sole reason of not wanting his family and their sleep to be further disturbed.

Jesus then makes the application that you keep asking, seeking and knocking and you will receive, find and have opened to you what you need from God in your prayer life. Understood another way, in order for any follower of Christ to have a fruitful prayer life, he must invest the spiritual, emotional and relational energy and time for productive results to occur. Communication and conversation with God, whom we cannot see, touch or audibly hear, are demanding and difficult at best, but the promise assures us that if we persist in asking, seeking and knocking, then God’s response will come.

Finally consider the promise concerning God the Father’s benevolent, loving character. Jesus asks what appear to be ridiculous questions, “If a son asks his father for a fish, will you give him a snake? Or, suppose your son requests for an egg, will you give him a scorpion?” The answer to each of these questions is, “Absolutely not!” Well, if human fathers can give good gifts to their children, then by contrast, how much more can followers of Jesus depend on their heavenly Father to give them the good gift of the Holy Spirit when requested to do so?

How could Jesus’ disciples not be motivated and energized to pray after this tutorial in prayer? Similarly how can 21st-century Christians not recognize the urgent need to pray with discipline, persistence and expectancy? If we ask, then we shall receive; if we seek, then we shall find; if we knock, then it shall be opened to us.