Read: Matthew 6:7-13

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (v. 8)

I like to be persuasive. If someone hears my argument but disagrees, I try again with a different approach. As my prayer journals attest, it’s easy to take the same approach with God: to try to pray as persuasively as possible and keep working the angles until we’ve got a clear shot at a ‘Yes.’ But Jesus says this is the wrong way to go about things. The reason for Jesus’ rebuke is a beautiful one: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Maybe if you worship a powerful deity far, far away, you are left to scramble, cajole, or argue your way in. But that is a sad alternative to having a loving Father, who is attuned to all our needs, which is what the Heidelberg Catechism refers to as our “unshakable foundation,” the confidence of knowing that “even though we do not deserve it, God will surely listen to our prayer because of Christ our Lord” (A. 117).

During these final days of Lent, we will travel with Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross, and then to the empty tomb, following Luke’s account. But we will also listen to Jesus’ teaching on prayer as illustrated in the model prayer he gave to his disciples. Viewing the events of Holy Week through the lens of the Lord’s Prayer may seem unusual, but it can help us identify personally with Christ’s suffering and dying for us—even as we learn to pray as he taught us.

Prayer:

Thank you, God, for being attuned to our every need. Amen.

https://woh.org/