Seeking The Praise Of God Or Men

Praying in these public places revealed two things about the attitude of the scribes and Pharisees, first, they did not love prayer for its own sake, but they loved it when it gave them an opportunity of making themselves noticed. Second, they used prayer to seek the praise of men and not acceptance by God.

If we seek the approval of God when we pray we must ignore the praise of men because we do not pray to men expecting an answer, when we pray our eyes must be focused on God and not self or our fellowman. A story comes to mind of an elderly, quiet woman when asked to pray, after a few moments of silence she said “amen.” After the service, one of her friends told her she could not hear what she prayed. The woman answered, “if I was praying to you, you would have heard my pray, I was praying to the Lord.” When we pray what passes between God and our own souls must be out of sight. Public places are not the proper places for private solemn prayer. In His instructions to the disciples Jesus was not condemning public prayer. Public prayer has its place in the worship service.

Jesus told the disciples, instead of praying in public places pray in a private place. Jesus often went alone to the mountains and prayed. Peter went to a housetop to pray. The private place of prayer is a place where we can pray and not be seen, interrupted, disturbed, distracted and heard. The private place of prayer is the place where we have the freedom to pray we that do not have in the public place. In the private place of prayer, we can share with God the deepest desires of our hearts.

The second thing Jesus told the disciples to avoid was meaningless repetitions (v 7).

Jesus was not speaking against long prayers or repetition in prayers He was talking about trying to manipulate God through long and repetitious prayers. God does not need endless detailed information. Jesus said to avoid these practices, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

In his letter to the Thessalonians the apostle Paul told them, “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). How would that teaching harmonize with Jesus’ warning not to think long repetitions prayers will break through to God. “Pray without ceasing” is not meant to be taken literally, or we would do absolutely nothing in life but pray. However, it is meant to be taken literally in the sense that prayer should be a continuous, never-ending discipline of the spiritual life. It should be like a natural reflex, every time the Christian encounters a need, a problem, a person in trouble, a situation in the world, prayer should be made, and prayer should be the natural communication between the Christian and the Father in heaven, on every issue in life. Prayer is the pouring out of the heart to our heavenly Father.

In verse nine, Jesus tells the disciples to pray in this way,

“Our Father who is in heaven,

Hallowed be Your name.

Your kingdom come

Your will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.