Oswald Chambers: Prayer - A Holy OccupationSample

One of the disciples said, “Lord, teach us to pray.” The disciples were good men and well-versed in Jewish praying, yet when they came in contact with Jesus Christ, instead of realizing they could pray well, they came to the conclusion they did not know how to pray at all, and our Lord instructed them in the initial stages of prayer.

We become conscious not only of the power God has given us by His Spirit, but of our own utter infirmity. We hinder our life of devotion when we lose the distinction between these two. Reliance on the Holy Spirit for prayer is what Luke is bringing out in this verse. It is an unrealized point. We state it glibly, but Luke touches the thing we need to remember: the truth of our infirmity.

Reflection Question: Do I allow myself to get close enough to Jesus so that He can reveal to me my infirmities?

Quotation taken from If You Will Ask, © Discovery House Publishers