It’s never been easier to learn a new skill. Whether it’s picking up an instrument, learning to cook or speaking a foreign language – the information age has put endless resources at our fingertips. Let’s take learning a language as a example. Say you want to learn French or Spanish. There are classes you can attend, apps you download onto your smartphone, podcasts you can listen to, books you can read. All your favourite TV shows – and plenty in your language of choice – are available with subtitles or even dubbing. That’s before we even take into account the ease of travel or the way video conferencing technology makes it possible to connect with others around the world at the click of a button. So many options, so many possibilities. At the end of the day, however, whether it is learning that language or playing the piano or being able to cook a killer spaghetti carbonara, the fundamentals remain the same: we need someone to teach us and we need to put into practice ourselves what we have learnt. Sometimes cliches are correct – that’s why they’re cliches. And the old cliche about practice making perfect certainly rings true.

When Jesus preached the gospel – announcing the good news of the Kingdom of God – He followed it up with direct, specific teaching that helped His new followers apply the realities and practicalities of life under His Lordship into their everyday lives. Jesus was a very spiritual teacher – getting to the heart of a matter with wisdom, truth and grace. He was also a very practical one – showing people what they could do in order to follow in His footsteps. Perhaps no passage of Scripture illustrates this more than the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5-7. It is a much read, much studied, much written about passage of Scripture. (Giants like Dallas Willard, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Roger Aubrey have all written books about it. The Bible Project spent almost a year recording podcasts and videos about it.) And at its heart, the very phrase at the centre of the teaching, are the words that give our current teaching series at All Nations its name: ‘Your Kingdom Come’. 

Kingdom Activity

Those three words sit in the centre of what we often call the Lord’s Prayer. It would be better, I think, to give it a different name, because it is a prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, rather than Him praying it Himself. It is, however, like all of Jesus’ teachings, like the whole matter of prayer itself, intensely spiritual and intensely practical. Any conversation about the Kingdom of God has to include prayer. Prayer is the activity that sustains all other activities. Jesus’ closest companions, the Twelve, followed Him throughout His earthly ministry; they saw Him up close, observing His habits closely. Despite their being His disciples, His apprentices, the gospel writers only record them asking Him to teach them one thing: to pray (see Luke 11). They somehow understood that the secret to Jesus’ success was the way He prayed. They seemed to be aware that they could learn from Him how to pray and that this would likewise sustain them. 

Jesus talks a lot about prayer in the gospels. He tells stories to illustrate that prayer to God is akin to a child talking with his Father or one friend talking to another. He draws parallels between the persistence of widows and the faith God is looking for from His people. He tells His disciples to ask, to keep on asking, and to be assured that everyone who asks receives. 

Taking the First Step

What can we say about prayer that hasn’t been said already? Prayer is a privilege. Prayer is a mystery. Prayer can be as easy as breathing and as hard as day’s manual labour. In prayer we talk with our Father. In prayer we withstand invisible opposition. In prayer we ask, we thank, we complain, we wait. In and through prayer we receive wisdom, obtain promises and get answers. But ask most Christians (and in my time here on earth I’ve asked plenty) how much they pray and the answer tends to be, ‘not enough’. Why do people respond like that? I’m still not entirely sure. But maybe part of the answer is an awareness that we are designed to pray, that as creatures redeemed and in right relationship now with our Creator, praying is something we can and want and ought to do.

So what steps might we take in order to do this, in order to make room for the one activity that sustains all activities? First of all, let’s follow Jesus’ lead and follow his example in not only setting aside time but also setting aside space. For Jesus, this was getting up early and going into the wilderness or sending His disciples off on a boat and then going up a mountain alone or praying in a garden just outside Jerusalem enough for people to know they could find Him there. In other words, prayer needs time and it needs space. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. To pray properly, one of the things you will need to do is work out how and where you can pray to God without being distracted and without being disturbed. For me, I do have a room I can go to and shut the door. In fact, there a couple of rooms I can do that in. But I also have park nearby my house I can go to and pray while I walk the dog (or, rather, the dog walks me). Other people like to climb hills and pray, while Peter found rooftops of other people’s houses a good place to pray (and wait for your lunch to be served). 

Dealing With Distraction

Finding space as well as time (and the time may be as little as five minutes for some of you with demanding schedules or busy family lives) shows that you’re taking seriously your invitation to pray. It shows devotion. It shows you don’t want to be disturbed – which is important seeing as you’re talking to the Creator of the universe. Don’t forget, by the way, that being interrupted while praying is not the unforgivable sin: even Jesus was interrupted by His disciples while He prayed. Be sure to show other grace (and yourself too) if you are interrupted. But then we also have to deal with distractions. The twenty first century world is one overrun with opportunities for distraction. The most valuable commodity today is undivided attention. Phones ping and billboards sing and social media platforms have yet another funny thirty second video of dogs whistling TV theme tunes while juggling steak knives to show you. So if we are serious about praying, then eliminate, even if it’s for five, ten or fifteen minutes to begin with, all distractions. Shut the door and silence your phone. Put ‘out of office’ on your emails if you really need to. The American poet Mary Oliver once said, ‘attention is the beginning of devotion’. There’s much more we could say about developing a fruitful and fulfilled prayer life, but the first this is to make space and find time. And then, you can begin. ‘Our Father…’