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Kingdom Communication: Pray Then in This Way
Matt 6:6-14
Sometimes, we use ignorance as an excuse for not beginning. We don’t know how to do something, so
we are afraid or unwilling to do it. Everything from employment to exercise tends to operate according to Newton’s Law that things at rest will stay at rest unless operated on by an outside force. The word for this is “inertia.” The word literally means “not moving.” The first step to doing anything is to overcome the natural immovability that we all seem prone to. So, we come up with motivational slogans like “Just Do it.” Starting to do something is one of the hardest parts.
Once we have overcome the initial inertia and have started our lives going in a specific direction, the natural next questions are “Am I doing this right?” and “Am I headed in the right direction?” Few choices or actions that we make are perfect from the beginning. Most require some midcourse corrections as we come to fully appreciate where we are headed and what is required of us.
Prayer is one of those things. We know we are supposed to. Maybe we even feel an urge to. But we often fail to do it for a wide range of reasons and excuses. What do I say? How do I know God hears me? How do I hear God? The first answer to many of these questions is simply, “just do it” and see what happens. If prayer really is communication with a personal, living God who desires to be in relationship with you, then do it and see what happens.
But eventually we start asking, “Am I doing this right?” We ask like Jesus’s disciples ask in Luke 11:1, “Teach us to pray.” The teaching that Jesus gives in the Sermon on the Mount serves as good guard rails for our prayer life.
The Wrong Way to Pray
The first instructions Jesus gives about praying is what not to do. He gives two incorrect ways of praying, one from the Jewish world, one from the Pagan.
Don’t pray to get man’s attention (vv. 5-6)– One distortion of prayer is to use it to demonstrate how pious and religious you are. Evidently, some people in Jesus’s day would seize very opportunity to pray publicly in the synagogue and on the street corners. The problem isn’t they are praying publicly, but they are doing it to be seen by men. They are showing off, performing. Their focus isn’t on God but on who sees them praying. Jesus tells a parable about such people in Luke 18:9-14: “9 And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and was praying this
to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Jesus commands us not to use prayer to exalt ourselves in the eyes of others. If you pray hoping other people will hear and be impressed by your words, you are a hypocrite, literally an actor, a performer.
Don’t pray to get God’s attention (vv. 7-8) – Jesus next addresses a pagan problem with prayer. Many pagan religions taught that the first thing worshippers had to do was to get the gods’ attention. The bigger the sacrifice, the more likely a god would notice. The more words you use, the greater chance that one of the gods will hear you.
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