how to pray

The Disciple’s Praying

⁵ “And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. ⁶ But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. ⁷ And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.

⁸ “Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.

—Matthew 6:5–8

Prayer is opening one’s life to God. It is inviting Him to act in our lives. Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, it is being willing to accept His will in our lives. Prayer moves the hand of God by giving Him the moral freedom to do in our lives what He has been wanting to do. God, in His sovereign practice, does not impose His will upon us. Consequently, He can function in our lives in accordance with the degree of freedom we surrender to Him. Prayer is therefore relational; it is not merely a psychological exercise of self-fulfillment, nor is it a mental review of God’s principles, nor is it coercing God; rather, it is a free personality inviting the Personage of heaven to share with us.

To expose the hypocritical motive of praying to be seen of men, Jesus refers to the style of Jewish praying, which was to stand in the synagogues and corners of the streets for human notice and praise. He again says they have their reward; they received what they were asking for. The style is like that described in a newspaper report of a religious service, which, in referring to the prayer, said, “The finest prayer ever offered to a Boston congregation!” In contrast, Jesus says that the prayer to God is to be addressed to Him in the secrecy of heartfelt communion. Second, He says that we are to avoid repetition, for prayer is neither to impress God nor man, especially since God knows us so completely that He already knows all of our needs. Should we ask, if He knows our needs, why pray? It is because He waits to move until we recognize Him and His will. Prayer is relationship, not entreaty. Prayer is fellowship, not impression. Someone has said that “Power in prayer is not measured by the clock any more than power in preaching.”¹

THE MARKS OF GENUINE PRAYER

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward [Matt. 6:5].

“Thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are”—my, our Lord used strong language, didn’t He! “They have their reward.” They pray so that they may be seen of men. A man might go wearing a prayer shawl, which advertises the fact that he is praying. Jesus said that when a man prays like that, he has his reward. He gets what he wants—that is, to be seen of men. But his prayer never gets above the rafters of the building.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly [Matt. 6:6].

The concept we are dealing with here is revolutionary. Did you notice that the Lord uses the term Father? These are citizens of the Kingdom that the Lord is talking about. How do you become a child of God today? John 1:12 gives us the answer: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power [the authority] to become the sons of God, even to them that [do no more or less than] believe on his name.” Our Lord even said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again” (see John 3:3)—until then, you can’t call God your Father. And in the Old Testament you will not find the word Father used in relation to a man with God. The nation Israel as a whole was called by God, “… Israel is my son …” (Exod. 4:22), but not an individual. The Lord Jesus is speaking of a new relationship.

Concerning the subject of prayer, we are told that it should be secret and sincere. Many an unknown saint of God will be revealed at the judgment seat of Christ as a real person of prayer.

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking [Matt. 6:7].

I heard a fellow pray the other day, and he repeated his petition about a dozen times. The Lord Jesus says that if we ask the Father one time, He hears us.

Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him [Matt. 6:8].

Prayer should be marked by sincerity and simplicity:

1. Sincerity—Matthew 6:6. Go in and close the door—your prayer is between you and God.

2. Simplicity—Matthew 6:7. Don’t use vain repetition. Get right down to the nitty–gritty and tell the Lord what you have on your mind. “Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him” v. 8. Even though He already knows what we need, He wants us to come to Him and ask.

Now He gives us a sample prayer—“After this manner therefore pray ye.”

Before we look at this so–called Lord’s Prayer, let me say that I never use it in a public service. I don’t think that a Sunday morning crowd should get up and pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” when they have a roast in the oven at home—they already have their meal. It is a very meaningful prayer for those who are hungry, but a well–fed Sunday morning congregation ought not to pray this because for them it is vain repetition.

However, it is a wonderful model prayer for believers of all conditions.²

Our Praying (Matt. 6:5–15)

Jesus gave four instructions to guide us in our praying.

We must pray in secret before we pray in public (v. 6). It is not wrong to pray in public in the assembly (1 Tim. 2:1ff), or even when blessing food (John 6:11) or seeking God’s help (John 11:41–42; Acts 27:35). But it is wrong to pray in public if we are not in the habit of praying in private. Observers may think that we are practicing prayer when we are not, and this is hypocrisy. The word translated closet means “a private chamber.” It could refer to the store-chamber in a house. Our Lord prayed privately (Mark 1:35); so did Elisha (2 Kings 4:32ff) and Daniel (Dan. 6:10ff).

We must pray sincerely (vv. 7–8). The fact that a request is repeated does not make it a “vain repetition”; for both Jesus and Paul repeated their petitions (Matt. 26:36–46; 2 Cor. 12:7–8). A request becomes a “vain repetition” if it is only a babbling of words without a sincere heart desire to seek and do God’s will. The mere reciting of memorized prayers can be vain repetition. The Gentiles had such prayers in their pagan ceremonies (see 1 Kings 18:26).

My friend Dr. Robert A. Cook has often said, “All of us have one routine prayer in our system; and once we get rid of it, then we can really start to pray!” I have noticed this, not only in my own praying, but often when I have conducted prayer meetings. With some people, praying is like putting the needle on a phonograph record and then forgetting about it. But God does not answer insincere prayers.³

6:7 From the motives for praying (vv. 1–6), Jesus turned to methods of praying. Why one prays determines how one prays. Nothing is wrong with repeating prayers (26:39, 42, 44). Here Jesus was referring to the empty recitation of words.

6:7 It is not the length of prayer but the strength of prayer that prevails with God. Jesus Himself prayed all night prior to His crucifixion and on most other occasions prayed very briefly. He is not condemning lengthy prayers, although there is nothing particularly spiritual about them. He is merely emphasizing that prayer must be a sincere expression of the heart, not mere accumulation of verbiage. God is not impressed with words, but with the genuine outcry of a needy heart.

6:8 Many have questioned the meaning of the statement your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. “Then why should we pray?” they ask. Prayer is not man’s attempt to change the will of God. God’s method of changing our will is to bring it into conformity with His will. More than changing things, prayer changes people. Prayer is not conquering God’s reluctance to answer, but laying hold of His willingness to help! Prayer, in the life of the true believer, is an act of total confidence and assurance in the plan and purpose of God.⁴

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SINCERE PRAYER

Matthew 6:5–9

There are few areas of our spiritual life in which we need more instruction and encouragement than godly prayer. In this brief passage Jesus tells us how not to pray, and then He gives us some words that teach us how indeed we ought to pray. Jesus has just talked about giving gifts in secret in order to honor God rather than giving them openly to receive the praise of men. Here He carries this motif further, explaining that we are not to make an ostentatious display of our piety before the eyes of the world.

When I attended seminary, the institution at which I was studying was in the process of merging with another seminary. The blended seminary had lofty goals of academic excellence, and we students were required to write term papers exceeding two hundred pages. Our reading lists were so large that we could but read only the first line of each paragraph of a particular book in order to meet the requirements. In a sociology of religion class, we were required to write a twenty-page paper analyzing the image of the minister in contemporary culture. We were asked to leaf through magazines and newspaper comic strips to see how ministers were portrayed. We students considered that assignment as hardly worthy of our time, yet when I did the study I made a discovery that has stayed with me ever since. Ministers are caricatured as pious, wimpy sourpusses with pursed lips. That image has expanded so that it now includes all Christians in general. I fear that the caricature has come from the posture that Jesus teaches us we should never adopt, a posture that makes us appear holier than everyone around us and paints us with a facade of hypocrisy.

Private Piety

As we saw earlier, hypocrisy has a devastating impact on the life of the church and on the representation of Christianity to a dying world. For that reason, our Lord warns us here not to parade our piety before the world. “And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men” (v. 5).

The solution is not to stop praying. Rather, “when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words” (vv. 6–7). Pagans have historically been those who recite mantras, and people today repeat nonsensical syllables in order to achieve a mystical transcendence. Prayers are used as magical incantations to try to change the environment or one’s circumstances. This is the approach of the New Age movement, which believes that one can make things happen by applying mind over matter.

“In this manner, therefore, pray …” (v. 9). Jesus did not instruct that we are to use these very words. Rather, He has given us in the Lord’s Prayer an outline or model that suggests to us the type of things that we should include in our prayers. It certainly is not wrong to pray or to sing the Lord’s Prayer; it has a rich history in the church. Whenever we hear or recite it, we are being reminded of the priorities that Jesus sets before us to pray about. However, praying the Lord’s Prayer can become as mindless and vain as the magical incantations and mantras that pagans use. So when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we need to pray it thoughtfully, giving attention to the content of the prayer. Therefore, I want to consider the elements found in the Lord’s Prayer so that we can see why Jesus includes them as He does in teaching us how to pray.

God’s Omniscience

“Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him” (v. 8). The psalmist said, “For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.… Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there” (Ps. 139:4, 7–8). Jesus is simply seconding that affirmation when He says that the Lord knows what you need before you ask Him and knows what you are going to say before you say it. I am asked frequently whether I think prayer changes God’s mind, but how could prayer ever change the mind of God? We cannot give Him information that He lacked before we informed Him. We cannot correct His counsel, showing that what He has determined to do is wrong. God does not have a Plan B that He puts in motion at our request.

“If that is the case,” people say, “why should we pray?” We pray because it changes us. We pray also because God uses our prayer as the means to bring about the ends that He has decreed from all eternity. God commands us to pray and to do so earnestly, but we do not pray to instruct Him or give Him our counsel.

Approach to God

There are two things we must always remember when we pray. The first thing we have to remember is to whom we are speaking. We must remember who God is. He is not a cosmic bellhop on call to give us everything on our wish list. The second thing we have to remember is who we are. So often the prayers of God’s people are irreverent. They lack a sense of adoration and awe. We sometimes speak to God as if He were our pal; however, if God were to appear before us, such familiarity would vanish from our soul and we would be on our face groveling in the dust before His majesty. That should be our posture when we come before Him. We have been invited to come before Him boldly but never arrogantly.

Years ago there was a barber named Peter who made his living cutting hair and shaving faces. One day as he was cutting the hair of a customer, he looked up and saw a man come in the door whom he recognized immediately as an outlaw, one with a large bounty on his life. When the outlaw got into the barber’s chair, the barber put the apron on him and then, taking out the sharpest knife he had, applied soap to the man’s chin and neck and pressed the razor to his jugular vein. Just a little more pressure and the reward would be his. However, the barber had no intention of even nicking his client in the neck, because the barber had profound respect for his customer. The outlaw was Martin Luther, and the barber saw Martin Luther not as an outlaw but as his mentor. One day when the barber was shaving Martin Luther, he said to him, “Dr. Luther, can you teach me how to pray?” Luther said, “Of course, Master Peter. I’d be happy to do that.” When the shave was finished, Martin Luther went back to his cell and wrote a book just for his barber entitled A Simple Way to Pray.

Everyone should read that book. It is the best book I have ever read on prayer. Luther’s simple suggestion was to pray the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. He did not mean that we should get down on our knees and recite the law, the creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. Luther meant that if we really want to learn how to pray, we must focus on the things that God reveals in His law, in the creed, and in the Lord’s Prayer. Luther would pray, “You, Lord, are the one who brought your people out of the land of bondage. You are a God who is so offended by idolatry in every form that you have told us not to allow any other gods before you. May we never tolerate in our hearts the very presence of an idol that would tarnish the glory that belongs to You.” Luther would take the Apostles’ Creed and pray, “Oh, Lord, I am so grateful that I can call you ‘Father’ and that you are not the Father impotent or the Father abusive, but you are the Father almighty. There is no power or force in this universe that can resist the power of your word. It is by your word, God, that the heavens and the earth were made, by which you said, ‘Let there be light,’ and the lights came. My soul is overcome when I consider the work of your hands, the sun and the moon and all that you have ordained, and I am forced to ask the question, What is man that you are mindful of him? Or the son of man that you visit him?”

That is what Luther meant by praying the Lord’s Prayer. Rather than praying, “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name,” he would say, “Oh, God, I have not regarded your name as holy, because I have not regarded you as holy. I live in the midst of a people that think nothing of using your name in an irreverent manner. God, I know that your kingdom and your will won’t be done on this earth as it is in heaven until or unless we begin to exalt the majesty of your name.”

The first thing that Jesus instructed His disciples to pray was that the name of His Father would be considered holy and sacred, that it might never be blasphemed, that the name would never be taken in vain or used as an occasion for cursing. Do you realize that nothing reveals the state of your soul more clearly than the words that come out of your mouth? I know that Christians are capable of all kinds of sin, but I cannot understand how a regenerate person could use the name of Jesus in a blasphemous way. How can we worship someone whom we routinely blaspheme? I do not see how it is possible.

What does your mouth tell you about the state of your soul? Jesus put that at the top of the list. “If you want to pray for something,” he is saying, “pray that my Father, who sent me to redeem you, might be regarded as holy and that you would have the same reverence and adoration for Him and for His name as the angels in heaven who surround His throne daily, singing ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is filled with his glory.’ ”

We want to learn how to pray and get beyond not only the childlike but also the childish methodology of praying, “Dear God, please bless Mommy and Daddy and Sarah and Jane and Uncle Sam and Aunt Gertrude,” to where we focus our pleas on the work of the kingdom and for the sake of the kingdom.⁵

6:5, 6. Praying, like giving, is to be done to the Lord, not to man. Jesus said that people love to pray standing in the synagogues. Both a time and place for prayer were customary in the ancient Jewish synagogue (cf. Mark 11:25). Therefore, Jesus is not condemning the practice of public prayer, but rather the misuse of it. Because of the statement enter into thy closet, some have suggested that all public prayer is wrong. This would be contrary to the rest of New Testament statements about prayer, commandments and restrictions regarding prayer, and examples of prayer meetings (cf. Acts 12:12). The principle here is that the believer should not make a show of his prayer nor of the answers he receives to prayer in such a way as to call unnecessary attention to himself.

6:7. Jesus warned that we use not vain repetitions (Gr. battalogeō denotes babbling or speaking without thinking). Such prayer was characteristic of the heathen. A good example of this is found in the ecstatic babblings of the false prophets in the Old Testament and in the prophets of Baal who confronted Elijah on Mount Carmel (cf. 1 Kin. 18:26–29).

6:8. Prayer is not man’s attempt to change the will of God. Prayer is not conquering God’s reluctance to answer, but laying hold of His willingness to help. Prayer in the life of the true believer is an act of total confidence and assurance in the plan and purpose of God. The following sample prayer is given to the disciples as an example of a suitable prayer. This prayer, often called the “Lord’s Prayer,” is in reality a disciple’s prayer. In no way does the prayer itself embody all of Christ’s teaching about prayer; and having just warned against vain repetition, He did not intend for this particular prayer to be merely recited with empty meaninglessness.⁶

1 Augsburger, M. S., & Ogilvie, L. J. (1982). Matthew (Vol. 24, p. 18). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.

2 McGee, J. V. (1991). Thru the Bible commentary: The Gospels (Matthew 1-13) (electronic ed., Vol. 34, pp. 89–91). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

3 Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, pp. 25–26). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.

4 Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1999). Nelson’s new illustrated Bible commentary (Mt 6:7–8). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.

5 Sproul, R. C. (2013). Matthew (pp. 135–139). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

6 King James Version study Bible . (1997). (electronic ed., Mt 6:5–8). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.