Friday May 17, 2024
Luke 11:1
“Lord, teach us to pray.”
There is probably not a praying soul who has not prayed thus.
But most of us do not really know what we are praying for when we ask the Lord to teach us to pray. We are completely surprised, therefore, when the Lord fulfills our petition.
He sends us distress. For that is the simplest way to teach us to pray.
He leads us into spiritual distress, hiding Himself from us for a season, thus making plain to us how much our own piety is worth. Our whole spiritual life dries up and withers away: prayer, reading of the Bible, faith, love, repentance, the self-denying attitude of heart, and the willing spirit.
Perhaps He leads us at the same time into temporal distress. And when spiritual and temporal tribulations have overwhelmed us, we feel that our cup is filled to overflowing.
At such a time every sincere soul becomes acquainted with one of the aspects of prayer with which he has not been particularly well acquainted before. He learns that prayer is for the helpless. She learns to prostrate herself quietly before God, often without saying a word. He learns that prayer is to open the heart to Jesus, that He may enter into our every need.
If you are praying the Lord to teach you to pray, you must make it clear to yourself that you are praying for distress and tribulation.
Dare you then pray: “Lord, teach me to pray”?
Well, let us be honest and admit that we are afraid of tribulation and suffering, in fact, that we are afraid even of God.
But neither you nor I will be happy until we have committed ourselves into the pierced hands of the Lord Jesus. And in so doing we will enter voluntarily into the school of prayer which the Spirit has established for people who cannot pray as they ought.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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