Commentaries:
Jesus' simple introduction, “In this manner, therefore, pray,” indicates that He intends the prayer to guide His disciples in their everyday prayers. (In fact, the verb “pray” is present tense, imperative mood in Greek, suggesting habitual performance.) It is a kind of outline or model on which they can hang their own words as their circumstances warrant.
Generally, the outline provides a primary focal point of prayer: the Father Himself. Praise and honor of God begins and ends the prayer, forcing us to acknowledge the Eternal God's holiness and power. We should never forget that the One listening to our words is the Almighty, Ever-living Sovereign of the universe and that we live and act by His grace.
After this, Jesus points to every Christian's goal: the Kingdom of God. It is God's goal, too, the height and culmination of His purpose for humanity. For millennia, the Father and Son have been working (John 5:17) to bring it to pass, first on earth during the Millennium and Great White Throne Judgment, then for eternity throughout the universe. It is God's will that we cooperate in making it happen, so we must ensure it is top of mind as we pray.
Christ places our personal needs in the middle of the prayer, covering daily needs, forgiveness, and help with trials and Satan's opposition. God realizes that we are still fleshly beings who need constant physical and spiritual maintenance and frequently fail to live up to His standards. We can take our needs to Him in prayer to receive the help we need, whether food for the table or a respite from the Devil's attacks.
Jesus never intended His model prayer to cover every situation or problem. For instance, He leaves out praying for the church or the healing of the sick. But it does give us our priorities: God Himself, His Kingdom, and doing His will. If we keep those things in mind, our prayers will grow in spiritual maturity, and our lives will better represent our Savior before the world.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
The Model Prayer (Part One): Introduction
We all have or had physical fathers to honor, but as Christians, we sometimes fail to honor our far greater Father in heaven to the degree He justly deserves. Our spiritual Father is more important by far than our physical fathers because He is the One who not only provides for us and gives us so many blessings, but He is also the One who has called us out of this world and given us the opportunity to fulfill our incredible, eternal potential as His sons and daughters.
Jesus says that we are to hallow the name of our Father in heaven. The word is hagiazo in Greek, and it means "to make holy," "to sanctify," or "to set apart." Another definition, however, perhaps applies better to our subject here: "to show a difference from the common." We all have our common human fathers. They are all men—some better, some worse, but still every one of them human—yet we have only one truly holy Father. He comprises an entirely different category from our ordinary human fathers.
Despite being made in God's image, our physical fathers are nonetheless created beings, full of flaws and deficiencies. As a father myself, I count myself among those full of flaws and deficiencies. Yet, we have a heavenly Father who is vastly different and uncommon—a great Father who is so much more and better than any man, any father, no matter how great he may be.
Even so, we should not focus exclusively on God as a father. Instead, we need to consider the wider concept that we have a God different from the common because this relates to how we generally view God in our everyday lives—in our everyday relationship with Him—because He is not just a father.
Of course, that is how He is introduced to us by Jesus Christ, one of whose purposes in coming as a man was to reveal the Father (John 1:18). However, just as a human dad engages in more than parenting, "Father" is just one of God's hats, so to speak. One's dad is a father, certainly, but he may also be a carpenter, a plumber, a salesman, a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker. He may also be a hunter or a fisherman, and he may be a ballplayer, a golfer, a tennis player, a card player, or a sailor. He might like to tinker with cars, or he could be a skeet shooter. He may be a poet, a playwright, a stamp collector, a gardener, a model railroader, or a skilled carpenter. He may fly planes for a living and skydive occasionally. Throughout a long life, he may do a few or many of these things.
For the same reason, God is not a one-dimensional figure either. He is not just a wonderful Father, but He is also a Designer, Creator, Life-giver, Law-giver, Provider, and Supreme Judge. He is sovereign over all there is. He gives, reveals, works out prophecy, answers prayers, and heals sickness. He works in world events, in church events, and in individual lives, calling, forgiving, granting repentance, justifying, sanctifying, and ultimately glorifying. One may have never thought of Him in this way, but He is undoubtedly the universe's supreme geologist, biologist, botanist, chemist, physicist, mathematician, linguist, historian, writer, and author—among multitudes of other areas of expertise.
When we look at God as though He has only one job or is interested in only one narrow aspect of life, we lose sight of how wonderful He is, how expansive His mind is, how talented He is, and how intelligent, creative, and powerful He is. We have a truly exalted and almighty God who will not be pigeonholed into one little niche that we have labeled and defined as "God." He is so much more! His mind is so majestic and His power so wonderful that our little minds cannot grasp their magnitude, but we must do our best to understand as much of His greatness as we can so that we can truly know Him, what He is, and what He does.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
The Unique Greatness of Our God (Part One)
This passage is devoted to one major objective: to instruct us concerning our perception of God the Father.
- He is not a reluctant stranger who can be bullied into bestowing His many gifts simply because of our many words. That is not the issue for being persistent.
- He is not a malicious tyrant who takes vicious glee in the tricks that He plays on His subjects—by giving a scorpion rather than an egg.
- He is not an indulgent grandfather who provides everything that is requested of Him. He does not spoil His children.
- He is our heavenly Father who graciously and willingly bestows good gifts when they are needed in answer to prayer.
The key is "good gifts when they are needed." God's good gifts may come a little bit at a time. Sometimes, we are not even aware that it is occurring, yet He has been supplying the very thing that we asked for. Somehow or another, we are not sharp enough spiritually to see it.
The parable clarifies one aspect of why we must be persistent in prayer, but there is another that deals with our perceptions of God's power and His purpose and how our requests fit into them. Unfortunately, we often misunderstand God's role as Creator and tend to think of Him narrowly as being our Benefactor. He is both Benefactor and Creator. However, we tend to emphasize the Benefactor aspect, while He tends to emphasize the Creator aspect. So when we feel a need, and our desire is great because we feel that the need is urgent, we want our desire filled immediately because we see it as the answer.
We may be absolutely correct that it is the answer and that what we are asking for is good in God's eyes—it is according to His will. However, there is more to our request from God's point of view. He lives in a different timeframe than we do; time does not mean the same thing to Him as it does to us. In addition, His perception of our request is different because He is looking at it from the vantage point of His purpose rather than from our limited goals, which are often to have relief, strength, a gift, or power so that we might be able to serve Him better. The request may be good and entirely justified, but God is still looking at it differently than we are.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Prayer and Persistence
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing Luke 11:2:
Matthew 6:5-8
Matthew 6:9
Matthew 26:39
Luke 11:5-13
