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Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you might ask the Father in my name He will give to you. Until now, you did not ask anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy has been made full.(John 16:23b–24, my translation)
Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door will be opened unto you. Again and again in the Gospels, our Lord Jesus entreats us to pray, gives us the words to pray to Our Father in heaven, and graciously attaches His promises to prayer.
It is appropriate for Mother's Day to fall on this Rogate Sunday, “rogate” meaning “to call upon” God. It is surely a duty of every Christian mother (and father) to pray without ceasing for their children and their spouse. No doubt, the prayers of many mothers have gone up over the years for many children in need. Saint Augustine's mother is a prime example. She prayed for God to convert her heathen, pagan son for many years. Her prayer was answered in the gift of one of the greatest preachers and teachers of the Christian Church.
In extolling prayer on this day, it is not Christ's intention — nor the Church's intention — to say that, in this Easter life, a life of prayer is a new law for us to follow. Christ did not come to be a lawgiver to His repentant flock. Jesus, instead, is assuring us: God hears our prayers and answers them. God wants to hear our prayers. God loves us and cares for us. God is our true Father. We are His true children.
This is the beautiful promise of Christ attached to prayer. “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you might ask the Father in my name He will give to you,” Jesus says.
The foundation and power of all prayer is not in anything you or I do. It is not in the eloquence or intelligence of our prayers. It is not in the length of our prayers. It is not any show that we put on for others that makes our prayers valid — not that we have our hands folded, nor up in the air, nor trying to show we are “in the spirit” of praying. There is no “proper technique” that makes our prayer acceptable.
What makes our prayer acceptable to God is that we are His children. We were made the children of our Heavenly Father in the waters of Holy Baptism where Jesus washed us with His blood, made us heirs of God, and gave us His name, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
It is no accident that, in the very early church during the first few hundred years after Christ and the apostles, the last thing taught to those preparing to become Christian was the Our Father. That prayer is properly the prayer of the baptized, and someone who was not yet a Christian by Baptism was not able to pray the Our Father simply because it was not handed over, not taught, until all else was taught from Scriptures, not until the day of Baptism. Then, coming up out of the baptismal waters, the newly baptized would be quickly taught the prayer that now belonged to them. They could now pray, “in Jesus' name”, because they had His name placed on them. They could now say, “Our Father” precisely because they now had been restored to their Heavenly Father.
In your own baptism into Christ, the same has been done for you. You, too, can now pray in Jesus' name, having been made a Son of God with access to the Father. And being our Father, He promises to hear and answer our prayer.
Praise God that He hears our prayer. There is certainly enough in this life that we need to pray about!
The devil daily prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking all those whom he might devour. He wants the opposite of our heavenly Father. Our Father wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Satan wants all men to be condemned and to reject the truth and swallow his lies.
Satan's power is still very real in this world. He tempts each Christian mightily every day to fall away, to reject his or her baptism into Christ, to ignore the Ten Commandments, to falsely believe that their sins are somehow too great for God to forgive, to falsely believe that they can somehow fix things themselves, to falsely believe that they can make out all right on their own.
If you don't believe this about Satan, simply open your eyes. His power is real and is at work in the world. Look at world events and not just at the disasters of nature or at the man–made disasters and accidents that do so much damage to people. Consider how many perish everyday without saving faith in Christ in this world, how many go to every false god imaginable, from Islam to atheism to materialism to just plain old apathy towards God and His Word of life and love for them. The world is corrupted by sin and the power of Satan and works against God and His Kingdom.
You all still have your sinful flesh as well. We have inherited it from our parents, all the way back to our first parents who fell into sin. You are in danger of perishing from Satan's attack and power. You fall for his temptations. You go to every false god imaginable. You are guilty before God, with no hope of your own to fix things with God.
You and every Christian, indeed, have much to pray for. You are in need of help. Death, temporal and eternal, looms over you and casts a long shadow over you. You are in need of rescue and deliverance.
There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and man, the Man, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony — the martyrdom — given at the proper time. At the proper time, in the nick of time, when the time was right, God sent His Son into the world to take on our life and flesh, to take upon Himself the burden of our sins and our shame. He paid for you to redeem you from the power of the sinful corrupted flesh that you have hanging on you. He paid for you to redeem you from the power of the devil. He paid for you to redeem you from the tribulations of this world. He paid for you by allowing Himself to be martyred, even though He was holy and innocent.
Jesus gave the ultimate testimony — that His life, that everything that God has and is, God meant for your good, God meant to give it to you and for you so that you would have all things in Him. Eternal life, forgiveness of sins, access to our heavenly Father now and forever, all free and without strings attached.
Jesus has given the testimony of His lifeblood, that in Him you might have peace with God the Father. He knows that you have tribulation and distress and heartache and temptation and angst and difficult decisions and family problems and imperfection at every turn. He experienced them all. There is nowhere in this life that you might go, no tribulation in this life that you can encounter, that Jesus has not already gone through and encountered and, most importantly, overcome. Take courage, take heart, Jesus says, I have conquered the world; and the victory remains His now and forever.
Jesus has given you His victory. Jesus has given you His conquering of this corrupted world as a gift in the waters of Holy Baptism. He has made you a fellow Son and heir of His Father. He has broken down the barrier of sin which separated us from God the Father. Now, by faith in Jesus and His Word of promise to you — thanks to Him giving Himself as your ransom — you can pray in His name for all things to the Father. Whatever you ask of the Father in His Name, He will give it to you, in His time, according to His will. If not now, then in the new heaven and the new earth, in the resurrection unto eternal life, we will certainly receive all things from our Father.
So, take God up on His promises to you. Pray without ceasing. Pray for your neighbors. Pray that many would come to receive His precious Gospel and His Holy Sacrament for the forgiveness of sins. Pray that God's Church would be preserved and protected. Pray that you and all Christians would be protected from sin, death, and the power of the devil. In everything, let your requests be made known to God. To dare to bring your requests to God is the best help in every time of trouble. Learn and be ready to say, even as Jesus said, “Thy will, not mine, be done.” (Paraphrased from Giertz, Preaching from the whole Bible, 62–63”
Learn of God's will and of what you ought to pray for by being a daily student of God's Word, daily reciting His Word, daily meditating and making time for study of His Word, and the praying of His Word — taking time for prayer for yourself and for your neighbors.
We can learn from God how to pray. We can learn to pray to our Father in heaven in Jesus' name, as dear children ask their dear Father. We must not forget that there is One who wants to help us and makes intercession for us even when we do not know how to pray as we ought — the Holy Spirit. (Giertz, 63). We must not forget as well that every time the Church — our true, Spiritual “mother” — prays, “Our Father who art in heaven…. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, the Church of all times and places is praying for you, even when you do not have the words to pray, even when you forget to pray for yourself or others.
God gives you this opportunity every week right here in your own Christian congregation — here on Sunday mornings and every Wednesday during the School year when we sing and pray Matins, and at all of the many opportunities He gives us to study His Word and pray as the Body of Christ each week in this place. And just think of the blessing given to our children here. They have the opportunity to freely pray and hear and study God's Word each and every day in our school.
There is life here in Christ — abundant life. May we never take it for granted. May we never just flitter it away and throw it out for no good reason as so many are easily led to do. May we always be moved by God to do everything we can to support and participate in the life of Christ in prayer and study of God's Word in our congregation and her school, for the sake of our neighbors and for ourselves who need that life in Christ, that life as baptized, redeemed children of God who are assured of eternal victory in Him. God the Father grant us all our prayers, now and forever, for Jesus' sake. Amen.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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