BIG IDEA:
All believers can pray effectively by following the instructions Jesus gave us in Matthew 6:5-13.
1. Pray secretly. (v. 5-6)
2. Pray concisely. (v. 7-8)
3. Give God honor. (v. 9)
4. Submit to God’s will. (v. 10)
5. Recognize your dependence upon God. (v. 11)
6. Ask for and extend forgiveness. (v. 12)
7. Ask for protection from temptation and evil. (v. 13)
INTRODUCTION: Last week The Advertisement taught us that God wants to bless us with
• Intimacy with Him.
• Wisdom and understanding
• Power for the miraculous
• Peace and joy for the ups and downs of life
All these are possible through developing our mode of communication with him – prayer. We ended the service with a chance to “sign up” like we would for a cell phone plan, by letting God know we were willing to pay the price. If you missed last week – I encourage you to use the “commitment card” in the program if you would like to, and check out last week’s message online or get a CD.
Now, moving ahead, I want you to remember the time you received your latest cell phone. It came with all sorts of bells and whistles, but you didn’t know exactly how to use it. That’s what the manual is for. The same is true of prayer – God not only allows us to use it to communicate with him, he gave us a manual for to use it! Today we’re going to look at one of the major teachings on prayer that Jesus gave his disciples, so we can learn how to “use” prayer to communicate more effectively with God.
1. Pray secretly. (v. 5-6)
Matt. 6:5 “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.
Matt. 6:6 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.
Luke 5:16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
Jesus made it a practice to get alone with God, and he encourages his disciples to do the same.
Don’t brag about it. Don’t try to look good. Just get alone with God and pray.
Jesus says God will reward those who pray secretly to him. What is the reward? Time with God itself is the reward. As Hank Hannegraff writes in The Prayer of Jesus, “The tragedy of contemporary Christianity is that we measure the success of our prayer life by the size and scope of our accomplishments, rather than the strength of our relationships with God.” (ch. 2, p. 10)
Again – the reward for those who pray secretly is not so much in gaining answers to requests, but in a deeper relationship with their Creator.
2. Pray concisely. (v. 7-8)
Matt. 6:7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.
Matt. 6:8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
This principle needs to be heard – for it is freedom! I’ve known so many people who think that in order to pray they have to use fancy words, or long sentences, or in-depth paragraphs. But Jesus says – you don’t need to use lots of words. Your Father knows your heart and he knows what you need before you say it. So just ask Him, simply and in faith.
APPLICATIONS:
• Avoid using, “spiritual filler”, such as repeating Jesus’ and God’s name over and over.
• Avoid preaching to others while you are supposed to be praying to God.
Keep it simple. Keep it direct and to the point.
TRANSITION: Now that Jesus has given some general instructions about how to pray, he gives his disciples a model prayer. Here he says, “This is how you should do it!” Let’s read the whole model prayer, and then break it down to see exactly how Jesus wants us to use this communication mode with the Father.
Matt. 6:9 “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
Matt. 6:10 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Matt. 6:11 Give us today our daily bread.
Matt. 6:12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Matt. 6:13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’
What does Jesus’ model prayer teach us about praying? Our starting place is to…
3. Give God honor. (v. 9) “Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name.”
The starting place for effective prayer is the place of “hallowing” of God’s name. But what does that mean?
hal•low
1 To make or set apart as holy.
2 To respect or honor greatly; revere.
To “hallow” God’s name is to respect and honor God. We demonstrate this by recognizing, in prayer, that He is mighty, awesome, holy. It is approaching God with the attitude described throughout the scriptures as “the fear of the Lord”.
Though we are invited to come into the presence of the Lord boldly (Heb. 4:16) we are not to come without an attitude of reverence for who He is.
ILLUSTRATION: How would you feel coming into the presence of the President? You would not do so lightly. And you would not address him as “prez” or “George”. You would call him, “Mr. President”, and you would probably be incredibly self-conscious.
Remember this the next time you come to God in prayer, and honor him with your attitude and speech.
The model prayer goes on from this attitude of honor, and continues…
Matt. 6:10 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
4. Submit to God’s will. (v. 10)
When we follow Jesus’ instructions, praying that His Kingdom come, and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, we are placing ourselves in a place of servanthood under Him.
This is a prayer of submission, in which we surrender our ideas of what is best into the hands of Him who KNOWS what is best.
We have an example of Jesus actually praying this way as he agonized in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane just prior to his arrest:
Matt. 26:39 [Jesus] prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
Jesus here shows that he completely trusts in God’s will, even though he senses it will be the most difficult thing he has ever faced. He demonstrated that he would rather suffer and be in God’s will than be spared and outside of God’s will.
And it is this type of prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples to pray as well.
TRANSITION: The next phrase in the model prayer says: Matt. 6:11 Give us today our daily bread. From this we learn the next principle for effective prayer:
5. Recognize your dependence upon God. (v. 11)
In Jesus’ day, the majority of the population worked for a daily wage. There was no “monthly paycheck” paid directly into someone’s bank account. Workers were paid at the end of each day for that day’s work.
There also was no “wonder bread” that would keep for days (weeks?), but bread was made daily in order to be fresh and provide sustenance for that day.
So in praying “Give us today our daily bread”, Jesus is instructing his disciples to recognize their dependence upon God to receive the necessities of life.
In our age it can be quite commonplace to feel self-sufficient about our needs. But Jesus instructs us to pray in such a way that we are ASKING for God to provide our basic needs.
When we do this (RECOGNIZING God as the giver of what we need and ASKING for Him to provide what we need) it puts us into a place of faithfulness and thanksgiving for all God is doing in our lives.
ILLUSTRATION: Going to Africa made me more thankful than ever for the modest home we enjoy, and the bountiful provision of all our needs that God has provided. But here in the model prayer I’m reminded that I should never take for granted that I will have my needs met.
TRANSITION: So in prayer we begin with an attitude of honoring God, then we affirm our submission to his will, and remember our dependence upon God for our daily needs, asking Him to provide them. The prayer continues…
Matt. 6:12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
6. Ask for and extend forgiveness. (v. 12)
Effective prayer includes the realization that we are sinners in need of forgiveness.
ILLUSTRATION: We teach our kids that when they have disobeyed us in some way, that the most important thing they can do is come and apologize for what they’ve done and receive our forgiveness. Why? Because without this interaction a break remains in the relationship. We are more than willing to forgive them, and we long to hold them close and talk to them about what happened and express our love to them – but THEY will not be ready to receive it until they ask for forgiveness.
So it is with our relationship with God. In one sense we know that Christ’s blood has made payment for ALL our sins, and so we don’t need to continually ask that God cleanse us of our sins. But in order for our relationship to be close and for us to experience God’s love we need to “take care of business” with Him, and make sure that we confess our sins to Him and ask for his forgiveness.
But more than simply instructing us to ask for forgiveness from God, the model prayer instructs – or rather assumes – that we will forgive others for the things they have done against us.
Put plainly, unforgiveness is a cancer in our soul that prevents the full work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Jesus knows this, and it’s why elsewhere he taught that if a person came to bring an offering to God and realized there was an offense between that person and another, they were to leave their offering and go immediately take care of it.
If you want to have an effective and fruitful prayer life – you will have to give up any grudges you have against others, and allow the healing power of God to help you forgive those who have hurt you.
TRANSITION: Finally Jesus concludes his model prayer with instructions to…
7. Ask for protection from temptation and evil. (v. 13)
Matt. 6:13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’
One last time in this model prayer we are reminded that we are in complete dependence upon God. We remember that without his help, we will find ourselves surrounded by temptations that will seduce our heart away from Him.
We are reminded in this last phrase of the prayer, that we are truly in a spiritual battle – and Satan, the evil one, wants to take you out of the battle with temptations and other evil he will try to introduce into your life.
ILLUSTRATION: Many of you made commitments last week to work on developing a deeper prayer life through doing any number of things from doing the 40 day devotional, to attending small group, to fasting. My guess is that if I were to sit down with all of you who made a commitment I would hear many stories of all the things that made your lives complicated this week: how temptations seemed to be stronger, or how your mind seemed even more prone to wander.
As we pray – we must consider the fact that we have an enemy and we need help overcoming his schemes. And we need to ask daily for the spiritual help we need to keep in step with God’s ways in our lives.
CONCLUSION:
Phew! That’s a lot of info about prayer in just a few short minutes. Let’s do a quick review.
• Pray secretly. (v. 5-6)
• Pray concisely. (v. 7-8)
• Give God honor. (v. 9)
• Submit to God’s will. (v. 10)
• Recognize your dependence upon God. (v. 11)
• Ask for and extend forgiveness. (v. 12)
• Ask for protection from temptation and evil. (v. 13)
Now here’s your homework. As you spend time in prayer this week – keep this outline handy, and let these basic instructions begin to mold the way you pray. After all, if all else fails…read the directions!
