The provoking incident for Jesus teaching his followers what to pray and how to pray is that the apostles watched Jesus and listened to his prayers. Nobody had ever prayed like this. His prayers were uniquely personal and profoundly humble. The apostles wanted to know more about prayer. So do we.

"Lord, teach us to pray," they said (Luke 11:1). We have the same plea today. There is a vague sense that we don't pray enough, nor with as much focus as we should have. There is a longing among Christians today to be more effective at prayer.

In Luke 11:1-13 Jesus teaches the content of prayer (vv. 1-4), the necessity to be persistent in prayer (vv. 5-10), and the encouragement to believe that God is faithful in answering prayer (vv. 11-13). We will focus here on the content of Jesus' prayer, b…