• Reading: Luke 1:11-13; John 16:23-33

As Jesus teaches us to pray, He reveals to us the heart of God. God is neither a vindictive tyrant or an arbitrary overlord. He is our loving Father who desires that we trust His promises and call upon Him for all our needs of body and soul. This is why He not only commands us to pray to Him, He even teaches us how we are to pray and promises to hear us.

As Martin Luther said, "we should be incited and drawn to prayer because in addition to this commandment and promise God anticipates us, and Himself arranges the words and form of prayer for us, and places them upon our lips as to how and what we should pray, that we may see how heartily He pities us in our distress, and may never doubt that such prayer is pleasing to Him and shall certainly be answered; which is a great advantage indeed over all other prayers that we might compose ourselves. For in them the conscience would ever be in doubt and say: I have prayed, but who knows how it pleases Him, or whether I have hit upon the right proportions and form? Hence there is no nobler prayer to be found upon earth than the Lord's Prayer which we daily pray, because it has this excellent testimony, that God loves to hear it, which we ought not to surrender for all the riches of the world."