Well, good evening, and thank you to the Consistory for inviting me into the pulpit this evening. As always, it's wonderful to close out the Lord's Day in worship and fellowship with you here. I bring you some greetings. As you know, many of you have been praying for us at Missio Vila Nueva. So this afternoon we met over at New Life, as we do. Pastor Juan Arjona was not able to be with us, but he is due to be released from the hospital this evening in about an hour's time, if all goes well. He's had a new round of chemotherapy that's a bit stronger, so he just texted me before the service began asking if we would pray for him. This week he anticipates it's going to be a hard one. It's supposed to hit him pretty hard. He may lose his hair this week, so if you'd keep him in your prayers, that would be wonderful. And this evening, the sermon that I'm bringing to you is actually one that I preached a few weeks ago there at Misión Vida Nueva. I promise not to try to lapse into any Spanish here. We'll keep it in English. But I'm hopeful that it will be useful for us. It just so happens in the Lord's providence that it's on prayer. And I know that Reverend Gordon has been working our way through the catechism. And so hopefully there will be some nice overlap to our consideration of what God's Word teaches us about prayer. One other thing I'd be remiss if I didn't also bring you greetings from the seminary and ask for your prayers there. At Westminster, across town, we continue to work our way through the semester. This week coming up is our spring break, so you can pray for the students that they would be refreshed, but not perhaps too refreshed as they work on essays and get things done. And for those of us who are teaching that we could get caught up on grading and planning as well as we continue to try and study to show ourselves workers who are approved and able to divide rightly the word of truth. Well, let's turn now to God's word in Luke chapter 11, and that's found on page 1033 of the church Bibles. And our text this evening is going to be from Luke 11, verse 1 through verse 13. Hear now God's holy word. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation. And he said to them, Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him? And he will answer from within, Do not bother me. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Thus far the reading of God's own word. Would you join me in prayer? Heavenly Father, we ask that by your Spirit, whom you promised to give us when we pray to you, that you would illumine now our hearts and our minds to understand this word, to embrace it, to be encouraged by it, and to grow in our prayerfulness before you as our loving Heavenly Father. And we ask this in Christ's name. Amen. I want to say this up front this evening. I've listened to a lot of sermons about prayer over the years, and probably coming out of quite a few of them, I have felt discouraged and slightly beaten down sometimes because prayer is hard. I don't think I'm the only one here. I hope, who feels that way, prayer is difficult, isn't it? It is difficult to be regular in prayer. It's difficult to be disciplined in prayer. But I want to say at the beginning this evening, this text is not to discourage us. This text is not to beat us down in any way. This text, and you can see how each of these sections in verses 1 to 13 have to do with prayer. This is a text that's given to us by God to encourage us and to stir us up and to invite us to engage with our Heavenly Father in prayer. So if you leave this evening discouraged, I've done something wrong. But if you leave encouraged, then I've managed to get out of the way and let this text speak to you because that's what I think it is meant to do for us. How faithful have you been in prayer recently? how do you pray? What do you pray for? With what kind of posture do you come to the Lord in prayer? There was someone who commented, maybe not completely insightfully, but truly, on a blog recently. It said, everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer. Prayer is hard. There's a story about Saint Bernard, who lived in the 12th century, And he was evidently riding his horse up a mountain path. And at one point, he saw a farmer working off to the side. And he stopped because he heard the farmer give a loud, indignant sort of grunt, made a noise. So he stopped and he looked at this fellow. And the farmer looked up at him and said, I'm jealous of you. You have it very easy. You don't have to do any hard work. All you have to do is pray. But I have to work myself to death here, trying to clear these stones from the rocky soil and scratch a living down here. You've got it easy. And Bernard looked down at the man and he said, well, prayer is also hard work. Did you know? And the man said, I'm not so sure I believe that. Look at you. You've got this beautiful horse that you're riding on. Look at that beautiful, expensive saddle you're sitting on. You've got it easy. And Bernard said, I tell you what, I'll make you a deal. If you can pray the Lord's Prayer without being distracted, I'll give you this horse. Of course, this story is one of those legends, but I think it's a good one because what happened next was this. The farmer said, really? And so he bowed his head and began to go through the Lord's Prayer. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. And then he looked up suddenly and said, and do I get the saddle as well? Prayer is hard. It's very easy to be distracted when we pray, isn't it? And even when we have something as beautiful as the Lord's Prayer given to us by our God to guide us in prayer, it's hard to stay focused. It's hard to pray. Maybe you've had this same experience. But this evening, our text holds out to us three wonderful lessons, I think, about prayer. The first one is this, and it comes to us in verses 1 to 4. The Lord Jesus, in answer to this question from one of his disciples, Lord, teach us how to pray, says, here's the pattern. Here's a pattern that you can use for your prayers. And then in verses 5 to 10, he tells a little story. And that story has at its heart a lesson for us, which teaches us the right kind of posture or attitude that we should bring to prayer. And then finally, in verses 11 to 13, Jesus teaches us something wonderful about the promise of prayer, the promise that is attached to prayer when we go to our Heavenly Father. So there's a pattern, there's a posture, and there's a promise in our text. Do you see why the text, why those sections? The text divides itself. Look at the text. Verses 1 to 4 go together, don't they, with this familiar Lord's Prayer. Then verse 5, there's a clear change, isn't there? And Jesus said to them, which of you? And he begins to move on. And then in verse 11, again, there's a shift in focus. No longer are we asking and seeking and knocking. But now he asks another question, which father among you? So three sections very clearly laid out for us, I think, in this passage. And in none of the sections are the people or the setting described in any detail, are they? We don't know which disciple makes this request. We don't know where they are. And I think the point is, none of that really matters here. The focus of this section is on what Jesus teaches about prayer. That's why Luke has brought all three of these together here in these 13 verses. to focus our attention squarely on the principles that Jesus gives us for prayer. In verses 1 to 4, we get Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer. There's another version, isn't there? A longer version in Matthew chapter 6. But here in Luke 11, we could say it's a kind of stripped down version. These are the basics of the Lord's Prayer. And it comes in answer to that response in verse 1. Lord, teach us how to pray. And the way that Jesus answers gives us a window into what we know was actually true in the first century. Namely this, that rabbis or teachers, Jewish teachers in the first century, made it a practice to teach their disciples how to pray. That's in the question, isn't it? It's in the request. Look at verse 1. Lord, teach us how to pray just as John taught his disciples. John the Baptist had disciples. He taught them how to pray. So one of Jesus' disciples says, Lord, we want you to teach us how to pray. There were many rabbis, many teachers moving around Israel in those days, and they were teaching their disciples how to pray. We know this because we actually have documentation. We know what kind of prayers they were teaching people to pray because near the end of the first century, one of the rabbis, Rabbi Gamaliel II, helped to gather and write down a famous prayer that was used by some of these rabbis in the first century. It's known as the 18 benedictions, 18 petitions that you move through. And if you were a faithful Jew in the first century, or so it seems, many people were praying these 18 benedictions three times a day. And by the way, they would pray them standing up, much like the Jews still do. If you go to Israel and you see Jews standing at the wall to pray, 18 benedictions prayed three times a day. Let me show you briefly how this worked. The first benediction began like this. Blessed are you, Lord God, God of our fathers. And on it goes. And then the second petition continues. You are powerful, Lord, humbling the proud, strong and judging the violent. So it begins by blessing God, and then it moves to highlighting some of God's attributes and praising him for those attributes. And it goes on, it praises God, it petitions God for various things. A few more examples. The sixth benediction says, Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned against you. That sounds a little bit like Jesus' prayer, doesn't it? And the ninth benediction asked God to give rain and to bless the people with a good harvest. So 18 benedictions that the people would pray through. And the scholars who tell us about these Jewish prayers, this Jewish prayer, tell us something else really important for us as we come back to our text and Jesus' prayer in Luke 11. And this is the lesson we learn, that those Jewish prayers, those 18 benedictions, weren't just meant to be memorized and recited by rote. Instead, they were intended to give people a kind of outline or template to use for prayer and within which to improvise their own prayers. So instead of just memorizing it and repeating it, the 18 benedictions was supposed to provide a kind of roadmap. Pray like this. But you can pause and you can unpack these prayers yourselves. Now, I have to say here, of course it's important to memorize the Lord's Prayer. We've got to memorize the Lord's Prayer. And when we get to question 119, which I think is probably coming soon in the catechism, we learn the words of the Lord's Prayer. So children, parents, grandparents, you've got to make sure you memorize the Lord's Prayer. Embed that in your heart, in your mind, so the Holy Spirit can bring it to mind. But just memorizing it isn't enough. If we're to learn the lesson of the Jewish way of prayer in the first century, that Jesus' prayer seems to fit so nicely into. Instead, we should see Jesus' prayer similarly as a pattern of prayer, an outline for prayer. He's giving us these petitions so that we can take them and take hold of them and then pray our own prayers on the basis of these petitions. How many petitions are here in our text? Look at the text in verses 2 to 4 with me. How many are there? By my count, there are five here. So if we're thinking in a first century sort of way about the prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples, we should see each of those very brief petitions as giving us something to begin with, but not to end with in our prayers. Do you understand what I mean? That when we pray any of these petitions, it's as if we open a door that leads us on into space where we can pray more along the same lines. Now, I have to say, this isn't just my understanding. It's not just the understanding of some of these scholars I've referred to. Guess who else understood this really well? Martin Luther. Martin Luther understood this very well. And one spring day in 1535, Luther needed a haircut. And so he went to the barber. And his barber's name was Peter Beskendorf. And maybe you've heard about this. Peter's cutting Martin's hair. And he asks Martin, Martin, I have a question for you. I need your help. And Martin says, what can I do for you, Peter? Peter says, I'm having trouble praying. It's really hard to pray. Can you help me, Martin? I try to focus my mind. I try to pray, but I'm really struggling. And Martin said, Brother Peter, I can help you. And he goes home after the haircut's finished, and he sits down, and he writes a little book. A little book called A Simple Way to Pray. You can find this in a bookshop. You can find it online now as a PDF, in fact. And what Martin Luther says to Peter Beskendorf in this little book, A Simple Way to Pray, is exactly along the lines of what I'm suggesting we should think of here with Jesus' prayer in Luke 11. Here's what Martin wrote in the introduction to that little book. He said, Peter, I'll tell you what I can tell you. Here's what I do myself, and I pray that you can do better and everyone else can do better too. And with that, he begins to give Peter some advice. He says, the first thing you might want to do, actually, even before you turn to these petitions, is to warm up your heart. And do you know what the best way to warm up your heart is? Open this book. Maybe turn to a psalm. Maybe go to God's law in the Ten Commandments. Maybe go to the words of Jesus, Peter. And let that stir your heart and warm you up so that you are ready and focused and in a mindset where you can pray to the Lord. And then having done that, take the Lord's Prayer. He says we could do the same thing with the Ten Commandments. We could do the same thing with the Catechism. But he says take the Lord's Prayer and petition by petition. Use it to begin your own prayers. And Luther gives Peter some examples. Here's how it works. Look at verse 2 again. What's that first petition? Father, hallowed be thy name. What did Luther say? He said, well, remember what hallowed means. Hallowed means holy. God is holy, and we should sanctify his name. So this is what Luther writes. He says, yes, Lord God, beloved Father, may your name be holy, both in us and throughout the world. Destroy, root out abominations, idolatry and heresy. Work against all the false teachers and those who dishonor your name and in scandalous ways take it in vain. Do you see what Luther is doing? He takes that idea, the big idea in the little petition. Lord, hallowed be thy name. And then he begins to expand on it. If God's name is to be holy, Luther says, then it needs to be holy in my life. Maybe I could pray this way. Lord, would you please subdue me to your will? Would you help me to bless your name, to sanctify your name as I try to live and praise you? And Luther says, think about this in worldwide terms. We want everybody to sanctify the Lord's name. So Peter, pray that all the nations would come to the Lord in faith and begin to sanctify his name. It's a little pattern, Luther says, that we can then make our own. What about verse 2b in our text? Thy kingdom come. How should we pray this if we're thinking along these lines? Well, you might begin by praying that God's kingdom would come more and more in your own life, that you would be more and more a faithful subject to your king, that when you want to do the thing that goes against the revealed will of your king, that the Lord would subdue you to his will. You might begin to pray that the missionaries who we support would be able to take that gospel of the kingdom out. And when you say, thy kingdom come, Lord, you think of Mike Brown in Italy. You think of others that we support and you pray, Lord, would your kingdom come there as well as here in Escondido? So you see how this works. Each petition gives us a big idea that's a pattern and then we can make that our own and pray along the same lines. And don't forget, we're not going to go through each petition this evening, But don't forget the fourth petition that's here in this prayer in our text. Look at verse 4. Forgive us our sins. I don't know about you, but for me, it's far too easy for me to remember to pray this prayer when I am praying. It's much easier for me to begin by asking the Lord to meet my needs. To begin with requests that are real, that are sometimes urgent. And to get to amen and not to remember to pray, Lord, forgive me my sins. Forgive us our sins. It's too easy to forget this, but we shouldn't forget this. That should be something that is a reflex built into our prayer life. That whenever we pray, not just from rote memory, but from instinct and habit and from the heart, we say, Lord, forgive me my sins. And even more than that, again, if we take this as a beginning, but not an end to our prayers, we should get specific. So the language of the Westminster Standard says this. When you confess your sins to the Lord, what do you do? You confess particular sins particularly. Do you see what that's getting at? Not just, Lord, forgive us our sins, and on we go, but perhaps pausing and saying, Lord, forgive me my sins. Now let me tell you what those sins were today. Lord, forgive me for not praying. Forgive me for not opening up your word today. Forgive me for speaking in anger to my wife or for being so impatient and blowing up at my children. Forgive me for cheating on that exam. Forgive me for not telling the whole truth to my teacher. Forgive me for stealing time from my employer, whatever it might be. Forgive me for my particular sins. And I want to confess those particularly before you. Don't forget the fourth petition as you come to the Lord in prayer. Lord, forgive us our sins and don't forget the sweetness that follows because when we remember to ask the Lord to forgive us, we also then claim that promise of forgiveness that he holds out to us, that he will forgive us, that he has forgiven us because of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, our crucified and risen Lord. And just one last thing here on verses 1 to 4. Do you notice the movement here from verse 2 through to verse 4? Do you notice the direction of travel, how it begins? It doesn't begin with us, does it? It begins with God. Father, hallowed be thy name. And then where does it go? Then it moves to the world. Thy kingdom come. And only then does it come around, forgive us our sins, give us our daily bread to us. Begins with God, moves to the world and to others around me, and then finally comes to rest on me. It's not to say that my needs and my requests aren't important, that your prayers for yourself are absolutely not. The Lord wants to hear those. But do you see this direction of movement from God to the world to ourselves? That's something that Jesus is teaching us to here in this pattern of prayer that we see in verses 1 to 4. But then there's a shift. Do you see it there in verse 5? After Jesus gives us this pattern for prayer, he tells a story that teaches us the posture that he wants us to adopt in prayer. And he doesn't just tell us this. He shows us it with a story. What's the story? The man goes at midnight. He goes to his neighbor's house. He's knocking on the door. Why? He doesn't have what he needs to entertain the friend who's come to visit him. And behind that closed locked door, you hear a groan. What? It's late. It's the middle of the night. What are you doing? I'm in bed. My kids are in bed. Go away. I can't help you. But the friend won't take no for an answer, and he keeps knocking, and he keeps knocking, and he keeps knocking. And he finally gets an answer to his request. Why? Because what does the text say in verse eight? Because of his impudence, I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence, he will rise up and give him whatever he needs. I don't know about you, but I, I hate asking for help. I hate asking for directions. I hate asking for help. But sometimes we have to do that, don't we? And the more urgent the need, the more urgently we need to ask for help. When we were first living in London, we didn't have a car. We didn't really need a car because we were there in the city. We could walk. We could take the bus. We could take the train. But my wife, Kathy, was pregnant with our youngest daughter, Mary Cordelia, and it was coming up to her due date. And this was child number seven. And we knew that we were going to need to get to the hospital quickly. And so I realized i'd put off getting a car too long we we didn't have a car and so we had made some plans but guess what happened there it was middle of the night we got to get to the hospital and we got to get to the hospital very fast or this isn't going to be pretty and so i get on the phone and call our neighbor across the street and i wake her up and i i don't exchange any pleasantries i say we've got to go it's time we got to get to the hospital and she said i'm coming So we got in the car and we made it. It was an urgent situation, and I wasn't polite. I was insistent, and I was urgent in my request. And that's the point that Jesus is making here in verse 8. This term impudence, it's striking, isn't it? When I hear impudence, it's not a common word for us to use, impudent or impudence anymore. When I hear that, I think, okay, if I have an impudent student, and none of my students here are impudent, so I'm not looking at you. But if I did, I think when I hear impudent, I'd be thinking of someone who's a bit pushy, a little bit pushy, maybe even a little disrespectful, a little bit arrogant. That's what I think when I hear impudent. But many translations will also have in the footnote, there's another way this could be translated. It's not that impudent is wrong, but another offering they give us is persistence, because of his persistence. That's why the man's request will be heard and met. And I like both of those. I think those are both helpful for us to think with. Because this term that's used here is not a very common term in the New Testament or elsewhere in the first century. Impudence, persistence, we could even say brazenness. This is the kind of person who is shameless in their request. It's the kind of person who is demanding and they're unembarrassed about it. They don't really care what other people around them think. They are so focused on the urgency of this need that they are willing to look silly as they go for it and persistently ask for what they need. It's the urgency of necessity that Jesus is telling us about here. He says, when you pray, this is the posture to adopt. You come to the Lord urgently. You realize that this need, this request, this prayer is one of urgent necessity. And you hang on with persistence and tenacity. You don't give up. You keep asking. You don't stop knocking on that door, even when you hear the groan behind the door, as it were. You keep on knocking and asking. This is an important lesson for us from this text this evening. that we should be praying in this way that this is to be our posture before God in prayer and I think this implies some wonderful things that we need to understand it means first of all there is no request and I want you if you are a boy or a girl or a young person in school I want you to hear this too because the Lord Jesus is not just teaching grown-ups how to pray here he's teaching all of us kids included how to pray and one of the things he teaches us is that when you have something that you need you should take it straight to jesus straight through jesus to the father in fact and ask him to help you there's no request that is too small or too insignificant there's also no request that we could make that's too bold too big it means i think that there's there's never a time that we come to god in prayer and he says sorry it's just not a convenient time for you to be asking me this. That's never going to happen. It's never going to be the case that you come to God in prayer and that you find your Heavenly Father saying, do you know what? You've asked me that. If you've asked me that once, you've asked me that a thousand times. I don't want to hear that right now. Now that might be something in our impatience as parents we say to our kids, but that is never something that our Heavenly Father is going to say to us. On the contrary, he says, bring it back urgently. Come, bring that request to me. Let me hear it again. So you need to think this evening, what is it that you need to be praying about? You know your needs. I don't know your needs. What are your needs that you need to bring urgently to God in prayer? And to adopt an approach to prayer maybe that doesn't waste as much time. I know that for me, I'm often finding myself saying after a conversation, I'll be praying for you, brother. I'll be praying for you. Well, what if instead we said, do you mind if we just pray right now? Let's take this to the Lord right now and we can pray briefly together. Or I get a text or an email and I respond, I'll be praying for you about that. Well, sometimes I forget to do that and never come back to it. What if instead I made it a habit that this was something that deserves urgent prayer? And as I'm sending that message right then and right there, I could pray for this person. I could pray for that. Parents, I want to challenge you here. I told you this isn't a burden that I want to lay on you. It's a wonderful offer from the Lord inviting you to pray. But I do want to encourage you, to urge you even, that you need to be praying with your families. And grandparents too among us here. You can help in this way. Life is busy. And if you're like our family, getting out at the door in the morning before work, before school is busy. But what if we were able to even briefly pray each morning with our families and model that for our kids? What if around the table every evening we did this? We adopted this posture of prayer and we brought things urgently to the Lord. together and what what would we pray for well there's so many things aren't there but we could be praying urgently that the holy spirit would help us help us to grow in our own trust in the lord jesus christ help us to fight against our own sin we could we could urgently be praying that that this world and the enemy of our souls would not win the battle for our kids that is an urgent prayer that you need to be praying that we need to be praying together but that the Lord instead would guard them and hold on to them and root them deeply in their love and knowledge and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So many things that we could be praying for, but we need to be praying urgently in our homes with our kids. These things are urgent. At the end of the day, what if we close the day in prayer? What if, and I'm speaking to myself here, scrolling through the news was not the urgent thing? What if the newest thing on Netflix or Disney Plus, great as that might be, was not the urgent thing, but the urgent thing was to bring these requests before the Lord in prayer? This is the posture for prayer that the Lord Jesus teaches us, a posture of urgency and tenacity. And then more briefly, this final section, verses 11 to 13. This is the last section. It's also the sweetest section. This is the sweetest section, I think, of our entire text this evening. Because in this section, we get a promise that motivates us, if nothing else will, to pray to our Heavenly Father. These verses, 11 to 13, remind us who our God is. Who is God? Well, if you have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, then His Father is your Father. If that's not true of you here this evening, then none of these things are actually true for you. And what you need to do is to repent of your sin, to turn to Jesus by faith, and then enjoy this kind of access and this promise of response to our prayers. But for those of you who have placed your faith so firmly in the Lord Jesus Christ, you need to remember who God is. He's not in heaven frowning down upon you. He is not a miser who grudgingly opens up the checkbook and occasionally does something for you. These verses tell us that our God is a generous, loving, kind, heavenly Father. That's the key here. Look at verses 11 to 13 and notice the repetition of the word give. Do you see how many times? Verse 11, we'll give. Verse 12, we'll give. Verse 13, give. Give. Four times the focus here is on the fact that our Heavenly Father is a Father who loves to give generously to his children when they bring their requests to him in prayer. He loves to give in answer to our prayers. We know this too as parents, don't we? It's a joy when we can give gifts to our kids. I remember still one of the best gifts I was ever given by my dad. I was 14, 1990. It was Michael Jordan on his way up. I was a Chicago Bulls fan. I'd grown up in central Illinois. And my dad managed to get tickets to a Bulls-Pistons game. And we drove. He probably couldn't afford it. I know he couldn't afford to take the time. It was a six-hour round trip plus the game time from where we lived. But it was awesome. It was great. And he gave me that gift. He was a generous father. How much more generous is our heavenly father? And what does he give us here, Jesus says? There's a parallel passage in Matthew 7, verse 11, that says, our heavenly father loves to give good gifts to his children. And that's absolutely true, and Jesus said that. But what does Jesus say here, according to Luke? Do you see what Luke puts his finger on? What's the gift? He's a heavenly father who loves to give the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Why the Spirit? Because that's one of the greatest gifts that our heavenly father has given us. He has given us his own spirit, the spirit of Jesus Christ. This is the spirit he gives when you pray to him, when you're suffering, when you are going through trials and afflictions. And this spirit comes to you as the spirit of comfort and consolation. This is the spirit that the Lord gives you in answer to prayer when you say, I don't know what to do. Help me, Lord. I don't know what the right thing to do here is. I don't even know how to negotiate this situation. I don't know how to respond here. And he gives you his spirit who is the spirit of wisdom. This is the spirit, the same spirit by which Jesus was raised from the dead so that when you pray, Lord, help me. Temptation is strong here. I don't know if I can hold out. I'm going to slip back into my sinful habits. Help me. And the Lord gives you his spirit with resurrection power to help you to resist that temptation. And this is the Holy Spirit who seals to us the benefits that Christ has won so that when we say, Lord, forgive me my sins, he answers with his spirit and we know that we're forgiven for the sake of Christ. What a beautiful gift the Holy Spirit is and what a generous Heavenly Father who gives him to us. So, brothers and sisters, we know that Bernard was right, don't we? Prayer is hard. It is hard. But when we ask the Lord to teach us how to pray, he answers. And his answer is a wonderfully encouraging answer because he gives us a pattern for prayer. He gives us an urgent posture to adopt before our Father in prayer and he gives us the promise that our Father will answer that prayer that we pray with his own Holy Spirit. And so question 116 that we heard last Lord's Day evening from the catechism, question 116 and its answer are rooted among other texts, are rooted in this text, Luke 11. Listen to the answer. Why do Christians need to pray? Because prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness that God requires of us. And, and here's where the catechism looks to Luke 11, and because God will give, God will give his grace and his Holy Spirit only to those who continually and with heartfelt longing ask God for these gifts and thank him for them. continually and with heartfelt longing. And that's how Jesus teaches us to pray. May we enjoy that invitation to prayer this coming week. And brothers and sisters, let's not just learn about prayer this evening. Let's go out and let's do it. Let's be a people of prayer. Let me pray as we close. Our gracious Father, we thank you for your precious word. And we thank you for this teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we thank you for the great privilege we have to come to you as a loving and generous Father. Teach us to pray, Lord. Help us to pray. Forgive us when we don't, and pick us up and invite us into your presence again. And we ask all of these things in Jesus' name, asking forgiveness for our sins. Amen.