Learn From Jesus How to Pray

In prayer we look to God as our Creator. We admit that we are creatures in need. As soon as we feel no need to pray we declare that we have no need for God. Throughout our lives we will constantly be in need of Him. In prayer, we put to death our own will, and ask God’s will to be done in us, to us, and through us. 

 

During this season of Lent, we take our eyes off of ourselves and we set them on Jesus. We sing, “Go to dark Gethsemane, all who feel the tempter’s power; your Redeemer’s conflict see, watch with Him one bitter hour; turn not from His griefs away; learn from Jesus Christ to pray” (Lutheran Service Book #436). Jesus asked his Father in Heaven to help Him in His time of need saying, “Not my will, but Thy will be done.” He desired that the will of the Father would be done in Him, to Him, and through Him.   His will was that Jesus would drink from the cup of wrath that we deserve because of our transgressions.

 

In prayer we look to God as our Redeemer. We trust in His promise that because Christ drank our cup we are the redeemed. Because of the new man in us we can joyfully say with Jesus, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Yet, as long as we live on earth, and because of the old man in us, we ask, “Forgive us our trespasses” knowing that it is His will to forgive.