Motivation to Pray from Luke - Part 1 of 2
Rick Ramunno • June 9, 2020
As Luke wrote about Jesus, he seemed to highlight aspects of prayer that the other gospel writers didn’t emphasize as strongly. This particular gospel is soaked with reasoning and explanation from Jesus as to why we should be so motivated to pray! There is nothing better than waking up in the morning with a genuine desire to seek God in prayer. Now, I will admit that this is not always my state of mind. However, when I struggle to find the will to pray, Luke’s dialogue always seems to motivate me to fight for a heart that genuinely wants to spend time in prayer! I believe that his words will motivate you as well. So, if you feel the need to renew your motivation to pray, crack open your Bible and dive into these passages!
We will look at two motivations for us to pray daily. I will post one this week and add another one to the blog next week. Feel free to read this passage, then read the response below. I would encourage you to read these scriptures alongside commentaries. I have provided some quotes and footnotes from my own study on Luke from different sources. A great free academic resource for deep bible study is https://www.blueletterbible.org/
Luke 11:1-13
Motivation 1: A Friend and a Father
In this excerpt, Luke sheds some light on how our view of God affects our motivation to pray. In verses 5-8, he presents an illustration to his followers to help them develop a greater understanding of prayer. Jesus offers a story of a man who went to his neighbor late at night to plead for bread. He tells his disciples that the friend will not get up to give bread simply because of their friendship, but because of the shameless audacity of knocking on the door late at night.
His friend WILL provide everything that is needed! This man was very bold to go to his neighbor and friend in the middle of the night but this shouldn’t be a surprise to us. We too can be surprisingly bold with the friends with whom we have the deepest relationship! Just the other day I was quite bold in my dialogue as I tried to persuade my roommate to go on a run with me. Jesus here was using this story to lead his disciples to be bold in their own friendship with God through prayer. Then, Jesus goes from emphasizing how we get to view God as a friend when we pray to focusing on how we should pray like we are talking to our Dad.
In verses 9-10 Jesus encourages his disciples to ask, seek, and knock. God will certainly follow through for his children! In 11-13, Jesus helps us to put more trust in God by showing us that he is way better than our earthly Dads! We all have varying experiences with our own fathers and father figures. Luckily, the kind of father we get in God is one who, from these passages, wants us to take good care of us. And not only that, he even takes pleasure in giving us what we ask for! We should be confident that God wants us to tell him what we specifically want.
I like how Schweizer puts it, “Both parables appear to state the obvious - but only on the assumption that God is “Friend” and Father” to humankind.” Therefore, it is vital to our prayer lives that we are motivated by the fact that, as we pray, we are talking to a very close friend as well as our father! This mindset opens the door for us to pray very bold and very specific prayers.
Question: How do you view God? How do you think your view of God shapes your desire pray?
Eduard Schweizer, The Good News According to Luke, (Atlanta, John Knox Press, 1984), 193.