As an example of shameless persistence in prayer, we thought last week about George Muller. 

He is well known as a man who started orphanages in the 1800's in Bristol for over 10,000 children in his lifetime. And he was a great man of faith, especially when it came to financing his work. There are stories of him sitting the orphans down to eat and praying, giving thanks for the meal while not actually having any food, and not knowing how it would work, but as he finished praying, discovering something was delivered from somewhere that had food left over from something or other...

But we thought of a different example from his life, where he shameless persisted in praying for five friends who really needed Jesus Christ in their lives. He was about 40 when he determined to pray for these 5 particular friends. After a number of months, the first one turned to Jesus in all his need. Another ten years of raying passed, but then two more became followers of Jesus. The next friend took 25 years (Muller now 65) before he came in all the mess of his life to be restored by Christ. And for the last friend, Muller carried on praying til the end of his days at the age of 92... 52 years of praying. he never saw change come in that friend's life, but not long after the funeral, he too discovered the wonder of reconnecting with his Maker.

Now that's an example of committed, believing, shameless persistence in prayer!

Getting Real: Living Confidently as Followers of Jesus.

That's what we are thinking about at the moment in Urban Life when we meet together on Sunday mornings. We are spending the month in the gospel of Luke. 

Last Sunday we were thinking about prayer and just how important it is to the Christian life. It's way more important than we generally think it is. Just watch Jesus!

Watching Jesus is part of what we have been doing as we read through Luke. Seeing him as in a fly-on-the-wall documentary. What does he do? How does he speak? How does he relate? What does he say?

One of the things that is noticeable as you go through the gospel is how often he disappears off somewhere to pray! It is such that by the time we get to chapter 11, we find he does it again and his disciples (who are no strangers to a praying culture) say 'Lord teach us to pray!'. Why would they say that? 

They must have seen something different about the way he prayed. As they overheard him and watched him, they wanted to pray like he did. An authentic powerful prayer life is something very attractive. I think we would be asking the same question. Maybe we do. Maybe we should! 

Lord, teach us to pray! 

What does he say?

In the verses 1-13 of Luke chapter 11, Jesus gives us two things. 
An Agenda for Prayer
An Attitude for Prayer

So here it is. Read it here

The Agenda in v2-4 is what is sometimes called the Lord's Prayer. The agenda is to pray for God's honour and glory as his name is kept holy and his kingdom comes, and also to pray for all our needs, both physical and spiritual. We need him for everything, from food and clothing and for strength to do the right thing and fight temptation.

The Attitude in v5-13 is shown in a couple of stories, which together tell us that God wants us to pray with a SHAMELESS AUDACITY and to go on praying trusting in his goodness and timing.

So go pray!

As we spend a few weeks in our series 'Getting Real: Living Confidently as Followers of Jesus', this song has become a bit of an anthem. And it gets into your head too, which in turn becomes a great prayer to have rolling around your mind at odd moments of the day.

Listen to this:

Getting Real is the theme of our series for the next few Sundays as we remind ourselves about the reality of what and why we believe, and WHO we believe. It's mostly going to be based in the gospel of Luke.

You can read the gospel of Luke online here

That's chapter 1, but as you click on from the bottom, you can read all 24 chapters. Its quite long, but we are going to be trying to read it through ourselves during the week, between Sundays, during the month of September. 

This coming weekend, we are thinking about 'Knowing Certainty' looking at what Luke writes in those first 4 verses of chapter 1.