PRAY FERVENTLY

Matthew 6:5-15
Original date: February 10, 2008

VIDEO: Dropped Call (This can be view here. Scroll down to "Dropped Call.")

I want to talk today about prayer as the command of Jesus. That’s an odd way of putting it, isn’t it? The point I want to make is that one of the basic commands of Jesus is that we pray.

Remember that all God’s commands are only given for this one reason: because it will bring joy and fulfillment into our lives and because it will bring glory to His Son. God doesn’t tell us to pray, and to pray fervently, because He likes to see us sweat. God doesn’t tell us to pray because it will make us bored. God tells us to pray because it will bring us joy and because it brings glory to the name of Jesus.

So I have three basic ideas I want to open here. The first is that Jesus does repeatedly command us to pray; we’ll be brief with that. The second is that Jesus tells us what kind of spirit or attitude we’re to bring to our praying. Finally, Jesus gives us a model of prayer that we call the Lord’s Prayer, which I’m just going to quickly highlight.

I also want you to remember that this is connected to what we’ve identified as the seven basic commands of Jesus. Jesus told us to makes disciples who obey His commands. What are those commands? John Piper identified fifty commands. That’s kind of overwhelming. George Patterson back around 1970 identified seven basic commands—commands which he used effectively to train new believers in Central America. Here’s that list of seven again:

1. Repent and believe: Mark 1:15
2. Be baptized (and continue in the new life it initiates): Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 2:38; Romans 6:1-11
3. Love God and neighbor in a practical way: Matthew 22:37-40
4. Celebrate the Lord’s Supper: Luke 22:17-20
5. Pray: Matthew 6:5-15
6. Give: Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 6:38
7. Disciple others: Matthew 28:18-20

Let’s look at the passage for prayer. It’s Matthew 6:5-15. Jesus is teaching, it’s from the Sermon on the Mount, and He says this:

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...."

Did you notice that Jesus says, “When you pray”? He didn’t say, “If you pray.” Jesus consistently assumes that His disciples will be men and women of prayer. But right now, He’s telling us what not to do—don’t pray for show, pray for real, and one way we can help assure that it’s real is to get away from others, to be by ourselves for at least most of the times when we pray.

5b "I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 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. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words."

Another lesson: lots of words or fancy words don’t make for better praying. I think sometimes we’re intimidated when we hear stories about some great saint of God that would pray for three hours every morning. Or we’re intimidated by that guy in our small group—when he prays, man, he sounds good. Don’t be intimidated! That exceptional gifting and call to prayer isn’t the standard, it isn’t what Jesus commands all His disciples to do.

8 "Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 "This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'
14 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

OK, let’s think here. I said that Jesus assumes that His disciples will be people of prayer; He also commands it. In vs. 9, He says, “This is how you should pray.” That’s a command, a gentle but clear command. Take another place, Luke 18:1, “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” That’s another gentle but clear command.
So, Jesus commands it. Now how do we approach prayer? The attitude or spirit that Jesus calls us to when we pray is that of a child to a Father. I say that despite the fact that that I know that some of you bad dads. Even if you had a bad dad, you still have a kind of an image in your mind of what a good dad would be like. That’s what we’re talking about.

That spirit is given in the opening of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father.” Jesus could have told us to pray, “Our master” or “God almighty” or “Holy Lord”. Instead He sets the tone for prayer under the New Covenant when He tells us to pray to God as “our father.” That’s the spirit of prayer that He calls us too even when we use other words.

So far, we’ve seen the fact that Jesus commands us to pray. And then we’ve seen the spirit of prayer we’re called to: come to God as your loving father, not to God as the Unknown, Unseen, Invisible One. He loves you and wants you to know Him! Now let’s look for a few minutes at this model prayer, the Lord’s Prayer.

My love for the Lord’s Prayer has grown over the years. I used to kind of not like it. I was suspicious of churches that used it every Sunday for the reasons Jesus talks about here in the Sermon on the Mount: it can be used as a rote prayer, repeated without thought, one word kind of mumbled after another.

It took some years for me to really come back to the Lord’s Prayer, and now I love it, even though I rarely pray it word for word. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just that I use it to guide my praying, and that’s what I suggest for you too.

Here’s what I mean. Here’s the Lord’s Prayer as it appears in Matthew 5:9-13 (it’s slightly different in Luke). As a matter of fact, let’s pray it together as it appears on the screen:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

And you may be wondering, what happened to the ending—“For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever, Amen.” Well, that’s a great prayer, but our best and oldest copies of the New Testament don’t have those words, and even though they’re great words, they weren’t actually part of this model prayer the way Jesus taught it.

But to get back to the main thing, do you see how Jesus beautifully balanced this model prayer so that we would learn to put God, His glory, His holiness, His kingdom, His reign first, and then and only then do we start praying about the things that touch my life?

Here’s the first half again—notice it’s all about God:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

It radically God-centered. We come before God as our Father, and the first thing we pray is “hallowed be your name.” That means that the cry of our heart is that God’s name, His reputation, is held as holy, that’s it’s glorified, that God is honored in my life, in my home, in my church, in my country and in my world.

Then we pray for His kingdom to come. And Jesus isn’t teaching us to pray for the end of the world, because the following lines explain what “your kingdom come” means: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” “Lord, we pray that your ways would prevail as much in my life and in my world as your ways now prevail among the angels and the elect saints who are already with you in heaven.”

That’s the starting point in pray the way Jesus commands us. Then the second half of the pray is when we bring ourselves and our needs before this wonderful loving heavenly Father:

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

"Lord, my body needs food, shelter and clothing. I trust You for those things. And my soul needs a lot of things too. I need forgiveness, and I promise to be as free forgiving others as you are free when it comes to forgiving me. I am confident that you don’t lead me into temptation [by the way folks, that’s what the Greek grammar here indicates—it’s not like you have to ask God not to lead you into temptation]; now protect me from the Evil One, Satan.”

OK, so now we’ve seen that Jesus commands us to pray, that the spirit we bring to prayer is that of a loving child to a loving father, and we’ve seen that the Lord’s Prayer is the model, the laboratory where we can really learn to pray. I just want to leave you with a couple of parting thoughts that will enable you to either establish or strengthen your praying. Very quickly (it’s on the outline):

1. Establish a set time daily to pray. Nobody’s effective in prayer who hasn’t set aside time to be with God daily.
2. Approach it as a time to personally worship and adore God, not just ask Him for things.
3. Have a prayer list. People, situations, missions locations, and so forth.
4. Pray in conjunction with reading your Bible. What better time than you bring together your time with God’s word with your time talking with God.
5. Be “GLOCAL” in your praying: that is, pray about global things like missions and world events as well as local things like your kids or somebody’s health.

One last thought. Prayer can change your life. I know no one who is close to God without prayer, and I know of no prayerful person who is not close to God. William McGill, a devoutly Catholic psychologist and educator, said, “The value of consistent prayer is not that He will hear us, but that we will hear Him.” I think he was so right. Church, let’s pray!

PRAYER

Video: The Lord’s Prayer/ END