LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2013, Page 346

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346

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
Theology and Practice of Prayer: Abbreviations
AE
Ap
KW
LC
LSB
NIV
RSV
SA
SC
WA

Luther’s Works. American ed. 55 vols. St. Louis: Concordia and
Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955–1986
Apology of the Augsburg Confession
The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church,
Edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert. Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2000.
The Large Catechism
Lutheran Service Book. The Commission on Worship of The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod. St. Louis: CPH, 2006.
New International Version of the Bible
Revised Standard Version of the Bible
Smalcald Articles
Small Catechism
Luther, Martin. Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. [Schriften.]
65 vols. Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1912–21.

Copyright © 2012 The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
1333 South Kirkwood Road, St. Louis, MO 63122-7295
Manufactured in the United States of America.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version,
copyrighted © 2001, unless otherwise noted.
Quotations from the Lutheran Confessions are from the Book of Concord:
The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and
Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000).
The SymbolGreek II and NewJerusalem fonts used to print this work are
available from Linguist’s Software, Inc., PO Box 580, Edmonds, WA 980200580, USA; telephone (425) 775-1130; www.linguistsoftware.com.

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Theology and Practice of Prayer

Theology and Practice of Prayer

A Lutheran View

A Lutheran View

Preface ..........................................................................................................5
Introduction .................................................................................................7
Chapter One: What Is Prayer? ............................................................... 9
Prayer as a universal religious practice ........................................... 9
Prayer as defined and described in Holy Scripture ....................... 12
The vital relationship between prayer and the Gospel .................. 14
Common misunderstandings of prayer.......................................... 18
Chapter Two: Why Do Christians Pray? ........................................... 23
Prayer and the “paradox” of Law and Gospel ............................... 23
Why God urges us to pray .............................................................. 25
Prayer and the paradox of influencing an immutable God .......... 30
A final question ............................................................................... 34
Chapter Three: How Do Christians Pray? ....................................... 36
Jesus teaches us to pray ................................................................... 36
The way or manner of Christian prayer ........................................ 38
The words or content of Christian prayer ...................................... 42

Preface
In the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Philip Melanchthon declared
that in the churches of the Augsburg Confession, sermons avoided trivialities
and dealt with central aspects of Christian life. Among them, he specifically
mentioned prayer, “what it should be like and that everyone may be completely certain that it is efficacious and is heard.”1 That prayer should be
identified as a central aspect of Christian life and a topic for preaching and
teaching, and then further defined regarding its manner and its certain efficacy, is no small matter. Consistent with that is a longstanding assignment on
the agenda of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) to
provide a study on the theology and practice of prayer.
One might think that prayer is so common that it needs no study. Christians pray throughout the world in churches, at home and work—or wherever
they are. The generically “spiritual” pray. There is no lack of prayer in Hindu
temples, Muslim mosques, Buddhist monasteries, and animist shrines. Arguably, even the secular atheist, as he inwardly mentions his hopes and desires
to himself, is praying to the only “god” he knows.2 Anyone who cares seems
to know already about prayer. Why bother to study it?
The universality of prayer is the very reason that it requires theological
consideration. All the world prays, but to gods of infinitely different conceptions. Even within Christian groups and churches there are often markedly
different understandings of prayer. The assignment to the CTCR gave two
reasons for a study of prayer: (1) the importance of prayer in Christian piety
and (2) a tendency to speak of prayer as if it were a “means of grace.”3 This

The First Petition: “Hallowed be thy name” ........................... 44
The Second Petition: “Thy kingdom come”............................. 47
The Third Petition: "Thy will be done, on
earth as it is in heaven".............................................................. 49
The Fourth Petition: “Give us this day our daily bread”........52
The Fifth Petition: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive
those who trespass against us” ................................................. 55
The Sixth Petition: “Lead us not into temptation” ................. 57
The Seventh Petition: “Deliver us from evil” ......................... 59
Conclusion .............................................................................................. 62

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The topics he lists include: “repentance, fear of God, faith in Christ, the righteousness of
faith, consolation of consciences through faith, the exercise of faith, prayer (what it should be like
and that everyone may be completely certain that it is efficacious and is heard), the cross, respect for
the magistrates and all civil orders, the distinction between the kingdom of Christ (the spiritual
kingdom) and political affairs, marriage, the education and instruction of children, chastity,
and all the works of love” (emphasis added). Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., The
Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2000), 229. Future references to the Book of Concord will be to the Kolb-Wengert edition (KW)
unless otherwise noted, abbreviating the title of the document and providing article, section,
and page numbers.
2
The atheist chaplain at Harvard University, humanist Greg Epstein, acknowledges this in
Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe (New York: HarperCollins, 2005),
179–181.
3
The expression, “means of grace,” is shorthand in Lutheran theology for God’s Word and the
Sacraments. E.g., see, SA III, 8, 10, KW, 323: “Therefore we should and must insist that God does

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2013 Convention Workbook

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