Learning to Trust, Learning to Pray

This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost on July 26, 2025.

You ever make pork tenderloin at home? It's a long, thin tube of meat. My parents would make that sometimes. I asked my parents, what's for dinner? They'd say "elephant trunk." When I was very little, I kind of believed it. I was a little horrified, but I was like, that poor elephant. Then I learned that that wasn't what that really was. That helped. I felt better after that. But that did not keep me from using that same thing on my kids. We still call it that today.

Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Asking the Right Question

Lord, teach us to pray.

Talk about asking the right question. Asking for the right thing. Asking for the world on a platter. Not asking for all the problems of the world to be made right, but simply acknowledging that John the Baptist's followers had asked him to show them how to pray rightly, and he was willing to teach them. Jesus' disciples say, John did this for his disciples, and it seems good to us to ask you, Lord, to teach us to pray.

What God gives us in response, what Jesus gives us, is what we call the Lord's Prayer. It's a little bit different than how we use it in worship. That's mostly a translation difference. It's also a slight difference in language between how Matthew records the prayer and how Luke records it. Luke is the version we have here.

This is why, for instance, it says, forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. An older version of the Lord's Prayer, an older translation, would have said, forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. But it's all coming from the same original text. It's all the original teaching of Jesus. It's all pointing us towards a reality of what it means to pray in God's will.

Misconceptions in Prayer

Unfortunately, sometimes we get the idea that by asking for something in God's name, we think that we're doing it in God's will. That is not always the case.

You all know I love to beat up on the radio preachers and the Joel Osteens of this world. I'm not going to stray away from doing it again because it's fun! These people who say, if you just ask with the right intention, if you ask with enough faith, no matter what it is you ask, God is going to give you the desires of your heart.

No. Because sometimes the desires of your heart are evil and bad.

In fact, Jesus even says this, Ah, and there's the crux of the whole thing. Because what is it to ask for the Holy Spirit? It is to ask God, take the heart of stone that I have and replace it with a heart of flesh. Take this self of mine, which is always curved in on my heart, myself in sin and doubt and replace it with your living spirit. Make me new.

Which is why I think the Lord's Prayer is such a beautiful thing because a life filled with the Holy Spirit naturally revolves around these prayers.

Breaking Down the Lord's Prayer

Father, hallowed be your name. The Lord's Prayer starts with an expression of praise. God, your name be hallowed. Not just your name be hallowed in some abstract sense, but Luther teaches us in the small catechism. As we pray the Lord's Prayer, we should be thinking, Lord, may your name be kept holy, hallowed among us as it is already among the angels in heaven.

Your kingdom come. Not that we're giving God permission for his kingdom to come as if, God, we got a committee together here at the church. We've given it some serious consideration. We've decided, that we're going to invite you to let your kingdom come. Don't you feel good? No. Because God didn't need to ask your permission. God's kingdom will come whether we like it or not. But Luther says, in this prayer, we ask that it would come in and among us.

In the same way, I mean, he doesn't have the, your will be done, but that's the same idea. We want God's will to be done among us. We're not giving God permission to do these things, but that we want our hearts changed so that among us, God's will is done on earth as it already is in heaven.

He prays, give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins. For we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us and do not bring us to the time of trial.

These are the basics, by the way, that we, if we pray these things, we want God to let us live and be Christians. This is why we love the Lord's prayer so much, because these things are the structure and framework of our life in faith.

Using the Lord's Prayer as a Framework

God is giving us, through his son, Jesus Christ, not just a prayer to recite, although it is good to recite it, but a framework for thinking about how we pray. In fact, in your own devotions at home, I would invite you to take the Lord's prayer as your prayer discipline for a while. It's not easy to do.

You just start off with each piece of the Lord's prayer and you say just that petition, just that piece, and then you think about in what way that needs to be true.

Lord, your kingdom come. In what way do we need God's kingdom to come on earth? And how can I be part of that? Lord, give me guidance and strength in that. As particular examples come to mind, pray those things. Use it as a framework, a template for your own prayers.

Your will be done, not mine. And on and on, this prayer is template. It's fabric. It's a pattern for helping us understand prayer and what it ought to look like.

Understanding Persistence in Prayer

I think also this passage is very misunderstood because frankly, if you look at this prayer and the passage that immediately follows it as Jesus is talking about prayer, we can sometimes get the wrong idea about what persistence in prayer truly means.

Because here comes a story that he says. It says, suppose one of you has a friend and you go to him at night and you say to him at midnight, "friend, lend me three loaves of bread. I have nothing to set before him."

If, by the way, if you knock on my door in the middle of the night and you say, give me three loaves of bread, I'm likely to slam the door in your face. This is not an emergency. But in that culture, it was because to not be able to provide hospitality to someone who is coming to visit was of terrible embarrassment.

This man's already in bed with his children. Keep in mind, this is probably not a mansion. This is probably not a house like you and I inhabit today. This is probably a hundred square feet, maybe a 10 by 10 room. You can hear the front door from bed and carry on a conversation. He's in bed with his wife and his children all clustered around him under the same blankets.

To get out of bed to do this is not just to inconvenience the master of the household, but it's to wake up the whole family, the little kids. This is not just a minor inconvenience. This is a major imposition.

He says, "my children are in bed with me. The door is already locked. I can't get up and give you anything. Go away before you wake the baby."

Jesus says, I tell you, even though he won't get up and give him anything because he's his friend, at least because of his persistence, he will get up and give him whatever he needs. In other words, if you stand at the door, and you knock loud enough, you're going to wake those kids up anyway. The guy's going to have to get up. When he does get up, well, he's going to make you go away any way he can.

The sad thing, though, is that people hear that, and they hear it coming from the lips of Jesus, and they draw entirely the wrong conclusion. They think that prayer is this thing that needs to be done repeatedly, over and over and over and over and over again, because God will not be stirred to get up and do anything for you unless by your obnoxious persistence, you force him to do something. That is simply not what this story is about.

We know that because if you keep going a little bit further, ask, and it'll be given you. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you. This is what God is like. The one who asks, receives. The one who searches, knocks, the door will be opened.

God is not just your neighbor whom you need to borrow a cup of sugar from at three in the morning, because your neighbor is probably going to be mad at you for asking, and he probably doesn't want to give it to you, and you might damage the friendship by even trying to ring his doorbell. But God is not like that. God is better than that. Everyone who asks of God receives, and everyone who searches finds, and everyone who knocks the door will be opened.

God's Generous Nature

The reason we know that that persistence is not what God is demanding is because of exactly what follows here in Jesus' teaching. He says, if anyone among you, if your child asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake instead. No, that's stupid and dangerous. You wouldn't do that. You know how to give a good gift. You're not evil. You're not evil and malicious and waiting for the magic words or looking to manipulate.

You're not like one of those pagan gods like the people around the people of Israel would worship who are capricious and arbitrary, and they're just looking to mess with you, and you better ask just exactly for the right thing, or they're going to mess with you about it.

You ever heard somebody say, don't pray for patience, because if God answers your prayer, he's going to give you situations where you have to be patient? I've said that in joking. Don't pray for strength, because he's going to give you situations where you have to be strong. I'll tell you the truth. That is not the way that God is working here.

God is not looking to say, ha ha, you asked for something dumb. I'm going to give it to you. God is not a genie from Aladdin or from the Arabian Nights stories. You ask the genie for something, but you don't phrase it exactly right. Then he gives you a curse instead.

God is not a trickster God who is looking to ruin your life. God wants you to ask. He invites you to pray, and it's enough to simply ask God for what you need as if you are merely speaking to your own earthly parent. A good parent who knows what you need and knows what you mean, and asking once should be enough.

Not because all earthly parents are good and would have done that well, but because God is a better parent than any of our parents. That a child asks for an egg will not be given a scorpion. One who asks for something good will not be given something bad instead.

God loves us, cares for us, desires us to have relationship with him. Most of all, he says, if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, if you know how to take care of your kids, if you know what good parenting looks like, even if you're not a perfect parent yourself, if you know that, imagine how much better God's giving is for those who ask. He loves you and will give you what you need.

Much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. In other words, the thing that you and I need to be asking for more and more every day, persistently, is for faith. Faith to endure. Faith to trust the promises of God made real in the person of Jesus. Faith to trust his word and to follow its guidance and leading. Faith to trust that on the cross it is finished and the work of salvation is accomplished, not in our own choosing and doing.

For we are evil, as he says, but his son Jesus is good, and he makes atonement for our sins. God wants to bless us in prayer, not necessarily with earthly blessing, but with the heavenly blessing that comes from knowing Jesus Christ our Lord. And may you trust him in faith to the end of your days. In Jesus' name. Amen.