NOTES for Luk 11:2

In answer to the disciples' request that He teach them to pray, the Lord Jesus Christ offers them the prayer "Our Father" and adds a brief instruction. The very brevity of Christ's answer to such an important question is striking. In modern Christianity, talk about prayer is always far more expansive than what the Lord said. And in His words several fundamentally important points can be identified. First of all, the Lord says nothing to the disciples like, "You cannot understand this now," as He sometimes says to them and especially to the Jews about the mystery of the Incarnation. His recommendations are fairly simple and practical, and He does not turn prayer into an esoteric action available only to the chosen and initiated and closed to outsiders.

The Lord proposes that they address His Heavenly Father with reverence and ask for the fulfillment of His will and His design for the world. He also offers a very brief petition for daily needs, a request for forgiveness, the ability to forgive, and protection from evil. And then, in His explanation to the disciples, He speaks only of persistence and humility in prayer. Everything else about which volumes have been written, in essence, has less to do with prayer than with gathering our fragmented personality into one whole.