Date: 3/7/09
Prayer Series 1
How Not To Pray
I first want to start this series of prayer off in the right way
Lets pray and ask that God would open our minds and teach us something new
Okay, with that out of the way I first want to enter into this teaching of prayer with what I believe the principle of prayer is:
Ephesians 3:12
12In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.
To me this is the important principle
We can now approach God in our times of worship and prayer with freedom and confidence!
We have freedom to come before God through His Son Jesus Christ
How many of us do this as a regular part of our day?
How many of us are truly approaching the throne of God on a daily basis with confidence
I know that other than my bedtime prayers I am quite lacking in this area
But we need to remember that it is through Jesus Christ that we have this freedom to approach God through prayer
What We Ought Not Do
Jesus Christ gave us some great advice on this topic of prayer
Tonight I want us to begin this series on prayer with what that which we should not do in prayer
Who better to learn how we should/should not pray than our very own Savior
I am going to break this Scripture down and take it a little bit at a time so brace yourselves and lets get underway!
Matthew 6:5-13
Prayer
5"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.
One of the issues that Christ was dealing with here were those that did their actions whether it prayer/worship/sacrifice to receive the praise of man
As I understand it they prayed in such a way that all could hear them praying and they were looking for their praise of man
Prayer is not meant to glorify us or bring us anything but closer to God
This Scripture does not state that it is wrong for us to pray aloud in open assembly
This Scripture does however tells us that we are too examine our hearts
Why are we praying the way that we are?
Is it to glorify God and bring ourselves and others closer to God?
Or is it so that people will look at us and think that we are super spiritual?
6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Often times are prayer is meant to be something of intimacy
That is not to say that when we pray in the assembly that we are acting contrary to what Christ is telling us
However the point here is that prayer should be something that is between you and the Lord
I especially like how Jesus gives us a promise at the end of this verse
If we bring our requests before God in such a humble way then He will reward us
7And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.
Here Christ is telling us that when we pray we need to stick to the point that we originally were seeking God’s hand in
There is the tendency to ramble on and begin praying for things outside of what needs to be prayed for
God wants us to stick to the point
Part of the reason for this comes back to the issue of pride
Mankind loves to hear themselves talk and hear how intelligent they sound
Because of this we tend to use more words and pray for more things
Not because we need prayer in these areas but because we feel righteous and spiritual by doing this
This does not mean that all long prayers are forbidden as we see even Christ praying all night Luke 6:12
It again goes back to the same principle that those who prayed aloud on the streets
What is your heart and why are you praying?
8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
This might be misleading to some as they think “well great you see I don’t need to pray because God already knows my needs before I ask Him”
This is not so
Prayer is not only important it is necessary in the eyes of God
It is our act of prayer that shows our need for God
God wants us to need Him and He wants us to show it
It simply is that God wants us to bring the requests to Him and then leave it alone and let Him do what He does best, take care of you and I
9"This, then, is how you should pray:
" 'Our Father in heaven,
I don’t want to get too far into this next part of Scripture as we really get a first hand look at what our prayers should consist of
However, because earlier topics I feel that it is important to look at the first part of this reading
Notice that the prayer starts our with OUR
This shows us that we are not to only pray for ourselves and that we are not to always pray alone
In fact later in Scripture we will see that Paul tells us to go to the elders and receive prayer
But the one thing that I want us to get out of this is that our prayers are not only for us
We are to be praying for our family of believers and even unbelievers
That is why Christ uses the word OUR