Teach Us to Pray

Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." (Luke 11:1)

I find it very interesting to note that in the Bible Jesus’ disciples only ever ask him to teach them how to do one thing.  We read in Luke 11:1 that “Jesus was praying in a certain place” and when he had finished, the disciples come to him and say, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”  I find this incredibly fascinating that they do not ask Jesus to teach them how to perform miracles or how to cast out demons or how to properly interpret the Old Testament or anything else for that matter. In the three years Jesus spent with his disciples they only ask him to teach them how to do one thing--how to pray.  Clearly the disciples understood the value of prayer on a much deeper level than we do today. Far better than we do, they seem to grasp more fully the power of prayer, the propensity of God to answer prayer, and their utter dependence on God. Paul Washer once rightly stated that “most of us do not pray as much as we should or as much as we would like because we do not fully realize how much we need God.”  If we realized just how much we truly need God, we would pray far more than we do. But ultimately pride gets in the way. We find the time to eat three meals a day because we know we need to. We find the time and the resources to drink water every day because we know we need to. We find the time to put in 40 hours a week at work because we know we need to. But we cannot find the time to spend an adequate amount of time in prayer every day because…