When You Pray

Pastor Michael Wheatley, February 12, 2012

Background. I expect that you pray. I expect that you have some questions about prayer. Most people do. The New Testament records a number of Jesus' prayers. They are instructive in and of themselves. This Sunday the sermon will consider some of what Jesus said about prayer. One doesn't need to teach on the subject when people are doing it "right." But, that was the problem. Some were way off base. Unfortunately, they were the ones who were the most influential and most visible, and who were in the best position to lead or mislead the people. What Jesus taught in these few verses was intended to correct some long-standing bad habits. His intention was to lead the people into a more satisfying experience of prayer.

Scripture—Matthew 6:5-15. 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. But 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. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.  This, then, is how you should pray:

For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Sermon. This morning we will take a look at prayer. Under the heading of religious practices, prayer is at the top of the list as the most common of all. It’s also one around which there are more than a few questions. So today I hope we can answer a few. More importantly, I hope this will simplify prayer and make prayer a larger and more enjoyable part of your relationship with God.

This is how we will do it. There are five questions we will explore. They are: What is prayer? When is prayer? Where and how is prayer? Are there any set prayers? Three of them have one-word answers. One has a two-word answer. One is more involved. For example, what is prayer? The answer is conversation. When is prayer? The answer is anytime. Where is prayer? The answer is anywhere. How? That one is more than one or two words. Are there any set prayers? Well, yes and no. However, one-word answers won’t be adequate or satisfying. We need to fill it out. That’s what we will do.

The first question is what is prayer. The essential answer is conversation. Prayer is simply conversation with God. However, we can see from what Jesus said that not everyone saw it that way. For some, prayer was a way to showcase their religious superiority. It was Madison Avenue. It was designed to shape public opinion, to make the person praying look good. Jesus threw in the word “hypocrite.” These people were nothing more than actors on a stage. They made certain that at the set times of prayer, it would be impossible to miss what they were doing. Remember that the practice of prayer at the time of Christ was standing up and speaking out loud, with eyes open. People would hear what was said, and the prayers were meant to be heard by people; they were meant to impress. There was no conversation with God. It was all theater.

I mentioned this some years ago. I have a friend. He was the pastor of a local church that had a Wednesday evening prayer service, which is common in some traditions. One day he came in and said it’s over. No more Wednesday evening prayer service, because it was no longer prayer. It was no longer conversation with God. It had become, under the guise of prayer, sometimes gossip, sometimes lecture, sometimes revenge, and designed to create guilt. Under the guise of prayer, people were talking to one another and God was out of the picture.

On the other hand, as Jesus went on, some people had made prayer something by which they intended to manipulate God to serve their own purposes. Jesus mentioned the babbling of the pagans. Their prayer was a bit like a magic spell that put God under one’s control. It could be something as simple as evoking the correct name of God. It is like a PIN number for your ATM. Somebody finds your card, but they don’t know the PIN number, so they enter every possible combination in the hope of hitting the right one and thereby gaining access to your account.

Then Jesus said says something so interesting. He says your Father in heaven knows what you need even before you ask him. This does two things. It raises another question—why pray if God already knows? And it frees us to simplify our prayer life. Let’s consider the second item first.

I have friends who pray. For them, prayer is conversation with God. Their prayers are not meant to manipulate or control God. Their prayers aren’t a stage production for the benefit of the people around them.  However, there is this one slight flaw. It appears that they believe God is finicky. Their prayer betrays a conviction that we must be meticulously precise in prayer or we leave God with an escape clause. Let’s put together this scenario. A person asks God to heal Uncle Albert. God doesn’t. So this person asks God, “What’s up? You didn’t heal Uncle Albert.” God says, “Well, you didn’t ask when.” So what happens is that for people like this, their prayers are detailed and precise, plugging every possible loophole, leaving God no possibility of escape.

Prayer becomes a burden if you have to say the right thing in the right way. That’s the last thing Jesus wants. God, loving us and wanting the best for us, does not want prayer to be a semantic contest. Turn the page over. There Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Then he says, if we who are so terribly flawed know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our heavenly Father give freely to us, his children? So, in our prayer, in our asking part of praying, just ask. Don’t sweat the words. If you leave anything out, God by the Holy Spirit will be the one to put it back in. He can and will perfect your prayer.

So back to the first question: why pray at all if God already knows? It is a puzzle to me, except to say, we are to ask because he tells us to. The Bible says we don’t have because we don’t ask. The Bible says the prayer of a person in a right relationship with God accomplishes a lot. Prayer does things. It’s a faith issue as so much of life is. Do we trust God enough to do what he says, especially when things don’t make sense?

Also, why pray? This leads us to answer another part of the what-is-prayer question. If our prayers are only asking prayers, we are missing a lot. Imagine your relationship with your closest friends. What would those relationship be like if the only time you talked to them was when you asked them for something? You never thanked them. You never praised them. You never took the time to listen to them, never dumped on them, never poured out your heart, never complained to get something off your chest. Prayer is more than asking. Prayer is conversation with God. It includes asking, praising, thanking, complaining. They are all part of what makes a relationship a relationship.

We could spend time on the listening part. This is a significant weakness in most everybody’s prayer life. We’re busy. We feel compelled to be efficient with our time. There are things to do, places to go, people to see. Listening to God? Who has the time? And how unfortunate—the things we miss because we don’t stop to listen, to cultivate the discipline of listening to God. Because we do not listen, we leave God out in a lot of ways. We miss way too much, and then we complain saying God didn’t speak. Learning to listen takes time. It takes time to cultivate a good vineyard, a good professional football team, a good anything. Prayer is no different. So don’t complain that God doesn’t’ speak until you have first given the time to developing a listening ear that will hear when he does. And he does. This is why we say prayer is conversation with God. It’s a two-way street.

Let’s move to the second question. When can you pray? The answer is anytime. There are no set times. There is nothing wrong in creating some so long as prayer is not restricted to them. You are free to pray anytime.

Where can you pray? The answer is anywhere. There are no sacred places where you must go to talk with God. They don’t exist. You are free to pray anywhere.

What about the how of prayer? For example, is there a special prayer language? The answer is yes. What is it? It’s called the vernacular. It means that our special prayer language is our normal everyday speech. Do this for me. Pull out your bulletin. Do you see where we’ve printed out the Lord’s Prayer? Look at the language. When was the last time you asked your kids, “Where art thou? Art though still at the mall?” Oh, but some might object, we’re talking to God. This is how people talked with God a couple of hundred years ago. But know this: this is also how they talked with their dentist. Back then “art” and “thou” were the common vernacular. On the other hand, if that’s how you were raised, go with it. If that is how you are used to praying, pray that way. But typically, when you pray, just talk with God. Don’t worry about the language.

Also, Jesus said when you go to pray, do it in secret. Go into a room, close the door, and then pray. On the other hand, Jesus often prayed around people. The early church had its prayer times together. So how do we resolve this? Think about it this way. A few verses earlier, Jesus was talking about giving to the poor. He said, do it quietly; do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Well, that is impossible. But his point is this. It has to do with motivation. Are you giving to the poor so people will notice you, praise you, or think highly of you? Don’t. Give to the poor because there is a need, because it’s the right thing to do, because it is what God wants. At the time of Christ, there were not a lot of choices as to where one could pray. Homes were single-room structures. There was no closet to step into where you could be alone. Really, Jesus’ audience would have chuckled at the notion of going into a closet. They had none. They didn’t have their own private rooms. But they would have understood him. Prayer is not an instrument to win friends and influence people. It is conversation with God.

I’m going to finish by combining the rest of “How do we pray?” with “Are there any set prayers?” Are there any set prayers? Yes and no. Yes, there are set prayers. Some people use prayer books. They are fine as long as it is their conversation with God. Is the Lord’s Prayer a set prayer? No, it’s not.  So what is it? It is a model for prayer. It’s a framework around which prayer can be built. Remember what Jesus said about pagans and their babbling in prayer. It was thoughtless prayer. The Lord’s Prayer becomes thoughtless when it just rolls off the tongue rather than bubbling out of the heart.

Let’s look at the construction of the Lord’s Prayer. The first section is in three parts: God’s name, God’s kingdom, and God’s will. The second section is in three parts: our need for daily bread, our need to forgive, and our need to escape the influence of evil in the world. If we are praying, asking only for God to meet our personal needs, we are left with a lot of room to grow in prayer, because what about God’s name, God’s kingdom, God’s will, temptation, and our need of help to forgive?

We pray, “Hallowed be thy name.” But do we hallow God’s name? Do we treat God’s name as holy? Or do we use it casually, for example, by saying, “Oh God,” or “Oh, Christ,” or typing OMG without thinking. They are just careless expressions. To hallow God’s name is to treat it with dignity, as something sacred. We say, “Hallowed be your name.” Do we? Do we hallow him in our behavior and not just with words? Is God honored by what we do? Long ago a Jewish scholar suggested that if Jews must sin, they should first go to a place where no one knew them as a Jew. Pretend you are Gentile, so that in your sin you will not discredit God. There is something to be said for that when you consider Christians in their Sunday best going out to eat after church, treating their servers poorly. Or Christians, with prominent bumper stickers saying how much they love Jesus, who drive with rage, with no thought to hallowing God’s name. I’ve seen it in myself—behavior with no thought of hallowing God’s name. There have been times I’ve been better at profaning it.

Does our prayer reflect a concern for God’s honor, God’s kingdom, God’s will? How much do our prayers reflect our values? The Lord’s Prayer is as much a reminder of how to live, as it is a prayer to God. As in everything Jesus said, the Lord’s Prayer has a way of simplifying things, helping us to get away from the complicated mess of being concerned only for ourselves.

Maybe you have other questions about prayer and I didn’t cover them, or did, but it wasn’t satisfactory. Write them down. Get them to me and I will see what I can do. The bottom line is this. Prayer is conversation with God. Enjoy it as you would with any other person. He wants to hear from you.