“There’s No ‘I” in Pray”
Matthew 6:1,5-8
pMarch 15, 2009
Prayer is a subject about which every single Christian will say, “I believe in it! Prayer is important!” At the same time, it’s a subject about which many Christians will profess, “I don’t do it enough; I don’t do it well; I don’t really pray as I ought.”
Let’s talk turkey for a minute, shall we? We say Red Oak is “prayer-powered”. Are we? Why should we be? See, here’s the thing: I can (and will) talk to you over the course of the next few weeks about how to pray, according to Jesus—but that presumes that you want to pray, that you feel the urgency to pray, that you recognize the importance of prayer in your life. Beyond that, it presumes that you are really growing in your love for Jesus, for the priorities of His kingdom and His church. If I’m not praying as I ought, it’s because, ultimately, I am not loving Jesus as I ought, because those who love Jesus are those who are learning and growing in their desire and ability to pray.
Let’s not get into this trap: “I’m too busy to pray”. That’s a canard, and the honest among us know that it’s a canard. If you’re not praying, your problem isn’t your schedule; it’s your heart, it’s your priorities, it’s your lack of love for Jesus, or your lack of knowledge of Jesus. We are not members of some religion, but we are people who are engaged in a relationship with the God of the universe, a relationship with a Person, or more accurately, a Three-Persons-in-One God—and relationship requires communication!
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m now in the middle of my 20th year of senior pastoral ministry. Actually, because I served as an interim pastor for 14 months prior to beginning my first official pastorate, I’ve been speaking every Sunday morning for 21½ years now. Wow. That’s extremely hard to believe! Here’s what frightens me as I think back on that time—and what sobers me up as I speak even today: how much ministry have I attempted to perform simply in my own power, assuming that whatever talents God had given me would suffice to accomplish eternal results.
“The whole work of the whole gospel of Jesus Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit.”
Ephesians 6 tells us to “pray…at all times in the Spirit”.
Zecheriah 4
And the angel who talked with me came again and woke me, like a man who is awakened out of his sleep. 2 And he said to me, “What do you see?” I said, “I see, and behold, a lampstand all of gold, with a bowl on the top of it, and seven lamps on it, with seven lips on each of the lamps that are on the top of it. 3 And there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left.” 4 And I said to the angel who talked with me, “What are these, my lord?” 5 Then the angel who talked with me answered and said to me, “Do you not know what these are?” I said, “No, my lord.” 6 Then he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. 7 Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain.
I Thessalonians 5 says we must “pray without ceasing”. Romans 12:12 says to “be constant in prayer”. Our topic for the next 6 weeks or so is this: “Lord, teach us to pray.” I am not particularly interested in merely filling our brains with a theology of prayer; that has some value, but I’m more interested in filling our lives and schedules and priority schemes with prayer: more prayer, and better prayer.
Matthew 6 holds up a mirror to us in ways that make us squirm, for the honest among us find ourselves in this chapter (and it doesn’t always feel real good!). It requires self-examination at points, including today’s passage. But the follower of Christ is one who welcomes such critical self-examination, because his desire is to be conformed to the image of Christ. So it’s critical to allow Jesus to be our teacher; today, we go directly to His words in what has become known as the Sermon on the Mount. Note first that He says
I. True Prayer Is Not a Performance - :1,5
Nothing in the Christian life, as a matter of fact, is to be a performance for any audience other than the Audience of One. This is especially important to remember when we pray out loud in the company of others. How does this jibe with Matthew 5:16? The answer is simple: on the one hand, we are allowing others to hear and see the good things that we do in order that God might receive the praise; on the other, here, hypocrites are doing what they do in order that they might receive glory. Which raises an interesting question: is it possible for two people to do the exact same (outward) things, or say the exact same words, and for those words or that deed to be an act of righteousness for the one person and a sin for the other? Absolutely! Which is why it’s about more than our deeds; it’s about our hearts!
This is why Jesus talks, at the end of His Sermon on the Mount, about a group of people who stand in God’s presence one day and point to all the things they’ve done in God’s name—and God says to them, “depart from Me; I never knew you.” Sobering, to be sure, but the point is that it’s not about our works, but about our faith, and it’s not about our faith in itself, but about the Object of our faith, Jesus!
Jesus references the hypocrites whose religious devotion is a matter of an outward show that they put on for their own supposed benefit, playing to the crowd who might see them. And He tells us that they get their reward; they achieve exactly what they’re shooting for, the attention of people. They want to be seen as “spiritual men” in the eyes of others, but the problem is that theirs is a religious show. A hypocrite was one who wore a mask, one who played a role other than his true self. The Pharisees, of course, were a group high on Jesus’ list of people who acted like this, and in our verbiage today even, we hear of “pharisaical” people who act other than they profess.
May I suggest that none of us pass this right by as if we could not ourselves ever be guilty of playing to the crowd? I took the training for Walk Thru the Bible, and had my first seminar yesterday, and can’t wait for this coming Sunday. But here’s what I fight against: “I can do this”. I remember Chuck Swindoll saying many years ago that there was one thing bad about ministry: you can learn to do it. What did he mean? You can forget God, push the right buttons, and do it in your own strength—and in your own pride, for your own purposes and not for God’s. Please, God, deliver me from that! I can’t preach in my strength or for my glory; I can’t deliver WTTB seminars in my strength and for my glory. And you can’t do what you do for those reasons either!
Further, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool God anytime.
Ultimately, we have a choice presented to us in this and everything: do I live to please God, or do I live to please man (including myself)? It’s really that simple. I can’t serve God and money, Jesus says later in this chapter, and the fact is that I can’t truly serve God and anything else at the same time; I don’t and can’t have two masters.
Notice something else: there is nothing wrong, and everything right, with seeking the reward that comes from God. Christian faith is not about so-called “altruism”; in fact, if you trace the roots of that concept back to its inception, you find that it flows from decidedly non-Christian springs! We are encouraged to seek the rewards that God offers; as John Piper would put it, God wired us to seek our own pleasure and satisfaction; what we need to learn, he says, is that we find our greatest pleasure in yielding ourselves to God and seeking His glory! And so our praying, far from being some performance for man, is directed to God for His glory.
II. True Prayer Is a Matter Between God and You
- :6
Now…is Jesus making a rule here? Is He saying that the only appropriate place to pray is in your closet? When we moved into our home in Mercer, PA, a home built in the closets were tiny, and only maybe a foot deep, if you can believe that. “Jesus, I’d love to climb in my closet to pray, but I won’t fit!” No, He’s not giving us a rule; that’s not His style anyway, is it? What He’s doing instead is teaching us a principle, and it’s this: far from being a spectacle to be gazed on by others, or a competition between people, prayer is ultimately one person speaking with Another. It’s a matter between you and God, a conversation on the basis of Jesus’ blood which washes away our sins and establishes that relationship.
The issue here, then, isn’t a matter of the place of prayer, but rather a matter of heart attitude toward praying. The “closet” represents that place where we can shut out the world’s distractions and focus ourselves on God alone. When I pray, I shut out myself, not concerning myself with my appearance or the sound of my voice, the beauty of my words or anything else; I rather concern myself with God, His kingdom, His glory, His will, His purpose.
Which raises an important point: we are a distracted people. Early in the twentieth century, predictions were made about the advances of technology and science, and how much simpler these things would make our lives. And there’s certainly a lot of truth in those things, but one way in which such predictions were dead wrong was that it was suggested that we’d live lives of tremendous leisure, that we’d have lots more time to do all the things that we’d like to, but couldn’t because of being so burdened by work. There’s even some level of truth to this, but we’re still busy, busy people, in some ways busier than our forefathers. And there are so very many things vying for our attention as well. Heaven forbid we miss out on our entertainment, entertainment becoming a central feature of our lives. But prayer is crowded out—which is why it takes discipline for us to “go into our closets” and pray. True prayer is a matter between God and us.
III. True Prayer Isn’t a Matter of Style - :7
Pagans pray on and on, imagining that their prayers will be effective on the basis of their lengthiness, that the longer they pray, the better chance they have of having their prayers heard (I Kings 18:25-29).
There is nothing wrong, per se, with long praying; I encourage it! Yet, some of the most effective prayers in Scripture were short ones.
And the bodily position isn’t important either—though I will say that kneeling can be an effective physical reminder of our place before God’s throne. But in the Bible people are recorded as lying prostrate on the ground to pray (Numbers 16:22), kneeling (II Chronicles 6:13), sitting (II Samuel 7:18), and standing (I Samuel 1:26). There’s no magic position, no magic words, no style that God honors more than another. Rather, the critical issue is coming to God as Father, in the name of Jesus, as a child seeking relationship.
Some of our Catholic friends place great stock in praying the Rosary; every now and again, you’ll see a bumper sticker like I saw the other day advising us to do just that: “Pray the Rosary”. We can turn prayer into the rote repetition of phrases (“now I lay me down to sleep…”; “God is great, God is good”), and if we bypass our minds, we are missing the point of prayer, because
IV. True Prayer Engages the Intellect - :7
Pray knowledgeably. Sometimes our prayers are so vague and vanilla, so bland and boring, that it makes me wonder if we’ve bothered to engage our brains. “Lord, bless the missionaries”. Folks, that lazy kind of praying is a disservice to prayer; “the missionaries” didn’t go to the mission field to be blessed (they could have stayed home and gotten “blessed” just fine!).
Can I gently suggest something that might surprise you? Last Sunday, I worshipped with my fellow Walk Thru trainees in a church affiliated with a mainline denomination—and there were some things with which I was pretty uncomfortable, theologically. This particular denomination is known for its theological liberalism; let me give you one example and see if you catch it. In both services, they had a lady reading the Bible passage for the day read beautifully, but she prefaced her reading with these words: “listen for the Word of God.” Notice anything off about that? I’d never say that; it flows from an understanding of the Bible that says the Bible contains the Word of God. Even that may not sound bad to you ‘til you understand what’s meant: I say, “listen to the Word of God”, believing that every word in this book is God’s Word to us. The mindset that says “listen for the Word of God” suggests that the Bible is only God’s Word as it speaks to us…and thus, one has to “listen for” it.
But there’s one thing that I liked more than I’d have thought I would, something that I’ve never particularly been a fan of. Ready? At least 2-3 of the prayers offered that day were written prayers. The folks who wrote their prayers put a lot of thought, and creativity, into them—and I appreciated that they took the time to pray knowledgeably and with effort and forethought, because prayer involves the intellect. Finally,
V. True Prayer Recognizes God’s Sovereignty
- :8
God knows what you need before you ask; you’re not informing God of anything He doesn’t already know! Pagans live in fear and distrust, thinking that they have to bargain with or cajole God into something He doesn’t want to do. But the analogy of child/Father fits so beautifully here; God is “our Father”, as we’ll see next week, and even though He does know what we need, the situation is similar to earthly parents and children. I know what my kids need, much of the time, far better than do they. But they need to ask; they need the relationship with me as father. So it is with us in prayer to God!
God knows what we need—and that enables us to understand as well when God doesn’t answer our prayer to our liking. If the promise that we’ve meditated on the past couple weeks—that God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose—then we can pray confident that a sovereign, in-control God will give us what we need—and deny us what would harm us. True prayer recognizes God’s sovereignty.
So what do we do with this message?
Applying It
• Make prayer a priority in your life.
What excuses are you making about your time schedule or your busy-ness?
• Find your “prayer closet”.
What time/place suits your schedule?
• Consider how to pray more knowledgeably.
How can you avoid the trap of simply praying the same thing every time you pray—and things that don’t add up to knowledgeable prayer?
TalkAbout
• Other than the (false) idea that “I don’t have time to pray”, what are some other hindrances to prayer in the lives of Christians?
• If true prayer engages the intellect, what are some ways we can pray knowledgeably rather than ignorantly?
