Jesus’s Response to “Lord, Teach Us to Pray” Went Beyond the Lord’s Prayer

In Luke 11, we find one of two accounts of what we refer to as “the Lord’s Prayer.” It’s important to remember the context for this.

One of Jesus’s disciples had said (verse 1), “Lord, teach us to pray.” So in verses 2-4, Jesus began to teach His disciples a model prayer that most Christians can recite. And we should recite it … often. But I think Jesus also intended to show us a model that we can personalize, focusing on the Father’s will, provision, guidance, forgiveness, and deliverance.

But when most of us get to the end of that prayer and say, “Amen,” we stop there, cutting off an important part of Jesus’s response to how His disciples — and we — should pray.

Everything I say from this point forward is predicated on the fact that you fully understand this model prayer and how it shows us the Father’s heart and character. Everything also hinges on 1 John 5:14: “This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”

Persistence Is Key

In verses 5-9, Jesus continued with His response to His disciples. I’m grateful for our human-concocted chapters, verses, and subtitles; they help organize the text so we can find things. But with them, we sometimes tend to separate parts of the Scriptures that shouldn’t be separated. We must realize that these verses are still in the same vein of Jesus teaching us how to pray.

He shared the story of a man asking his friend for three loaves of bread at midnight. At first, the friend turned him down, but he kept on asking. In verse 8, we read, “I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.”

He then came full circle and connected the story to His disciples’ original request, saying, “So I say to you, Ask and keep on asking and it shall be given you; seek and keep on seeking and you shall find; knock and keep on knocking and the door shall be opened to you” (verse 9, AMPC). Notice this verse in the Amplified Bible permeates with the concept of persistence found in the story of the man asking his friend for bread.

There’s also a closely related parable that Jesus told in Luke 18:2-7 about a persistent widow going before a judge to get justice. After turning her down multiple times, the judge finally said, “Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.’ Then the Lord said, ‘Hear what the unjust judge said. And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them?”

Divine Snub?

We read in Matthew 15:22-28: “A woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to Him, saying, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter is severely demon-possessed.’ But He (Jesus) answered her not a word.”

Wow. Jesus ignored the woman. She could have gone home right then and told all her friends, “Jesus snubbed me!” And her daughter would not have been set free.

But verse 25 continues, “She came and worshiped Him,” (another key point) “saying, ‘Lord, help me!’ Jesus answered and said, ‘It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.’” (That was because she was a Samaritan.) At least Jesus finally acknowledged her, but you would think she would surely leave now and tell everyone, “Jesus compared me to a dog!” But she hung in there and said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Bingo! Then Jesus said, “’O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.’ And her daughter was healed from that very hour.”

The woman with the issue of blood had to press through a crowd to get her miracle (Mark 5:24-34). I don’t think we give this woman enough credit. I remember an incident that happened back in the 80s, when a crowd, waiting to get into a popular preacher’s convention literally tore a door off its hinges to get inside! Imagine how unruly the crowd of desperate people would have been trying to get close to Jesus Christ Himself.

Repetition Is Biblical

Friends had to lower the paralytic through the roof of a house to be touched by Jesus (Mark 2:4). Now that’s persistence! They easily could have taken him home and said, “Sorry man … we tried.” I’ve always wondered how many people went home sick that day when they saw the house was overcrowded.

In Mark 10, we find the story of blind Bartimaeus who sat outside Jericho, and as Jesus walked by, cried, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many warned him to be quiet. He could have minded his manners, but it says, “He cried out all the more” (verse 48).

Years ago, one preacher used to say, “If you pray twice for something, you pray once in unbelief.” (His basis for saying that was Mark 11:24, which tells us we must believe we’ll have what we ask for when we pray.) He was a good preacher, but he was wrong about that because in Bethsaida, Jesus Himself prayed for a blind man twice because after the first prayer, the man only saw “men as trees walking” (Mark 8:22-25). Of course, Jesus’s faith wasn’t flawed; the blind man obviously had doubts at first.

I have four kids. When they were young, they were always asking for things, but they — like all kids — were quite fickle! One day they wanted this, and the next day they wanted that. But every once in a while, they would hone in on something they really wanted, and they asked and kept on asking for it. I think in order to have that boldness, they surely understood that I loved them and wanted only good for them. When I saw they weren’t just being fickle, and it was something they genuinely desired, I would generally make it happen.

The exception in the analogy is that God already knows upfront when we’re being fickle and when we truly desire something in accordance with His will. But sometimes allowing us to have the time to exercise persistence reveals to us a lot about ourselves and whether or not the request is something we really need. Quite frankly, I’m grateful that some of my past fickle prayers fizzled out.

Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. (Galatians 6:9)

Nolan Lewallen is a retired pilot of a major airline who lives near Stephenville, Texas. His two great passions are the Bible and politics. He is the author of The Integration of Church & State: How We Transform “In God We Trust” From Motto to Reality, and Yeshua Is Still the King of the Jews.