Prayer was never intended to be an abstract occupation, but is the most personal way we relate to God. In Luke 11:1-13, Jesus’s disciples come to Him asking to be taught how to pray. The prayer He teaches them (the ‘Lord’s Prayer’) is addressed to a personal God, our Father. God is not an idea, an entity, a mystery, but is One to whom we can relate using the vocative case (which simply means we are speaking directly to Him, rather than talking about Him.) Most of the verbs in this prayer are in the imperative form (giving commands.) At first glance, this seems rather odd. Who are we to give orders to God when we pray? Yet as we look at this prayer, we see verbs which are directly addressing God (‘give’, ‘forgive’, ‘lead us not’) in terms which are quite unlike the usual ways we approach those in authority over us (where our requests are more obliquely phrased: ‘I wonder if you wouldn’t mind…’, ‘Perhaps you could help me by…‘)
Eugene Peterson says ‘by using nouns in the vocative and verbs in the imperative, Jesus gets us involved personally in the action of the God who acts personally in our lives. Prayer is action.’ (‘The Word Made Flesh’, P 50) As we approach God as a loving Father (and the parable Jesus goes on to tell His disciples illustrates God’s willingness to give to us and the love He has for us), we don’t have to ‘hedge our bets’ using oblique phrases; we are encouraged to ask Him directly for all we need. This is made explicit in Luke 11:9-10 (‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.‘) The Message version paraphrases this as ‘Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in.‘ Using the imperative can indeed seem presumptuous or even arrogant, but when viewed in the context of a loving relationship, it is not a case of us ordering God about. Rather, it is a case of us being encouraged by God Himself to approach Him directly with confidence, assurance, boldness (see Heb 4:16), secure enough in our relationship to use language simply. Many of us spend our adult lives obscuring what we mean because we are afraid to say what we really think; we call this being polite, but it usually only results in obfuscation! God encourages us to approach Him with virtually the simplest form of language there is: a direct petition, made directly, not prettified but using the most basic of language.
Help! Save! Protect! Give! Forgive! Rescue! Deliver! These are the verbs we use in prayer. Even the longer phrases in the Lord’s prayer (‘hallowed be Your name’, ‘Your kingdom come, Your will be done’) are direct requests. Let’s remember we can approach God directly and personally and that we don’t have to hide our meaning from Him. This section on prayer ends with the words ‘If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!‘ (Luke 11:13) God is more willing to give than we are to receive. He simply invites us to approach Him directly, coming to Him because we recognise our neediness and our inability to meet those needs by ourselves.
