“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. 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. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
Someone trained you to brush your teeth. Someone trained you to read. Someone trained you to drive. You need someone to train you to pray.
“One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’”
“The disciples had learned to understand something of the connection between Christ’s wondrous life in public and his secret life of prayer,” Andrew Murray explains. “They had been with [Jesus] and had seen him pray. They had learned to believe in him as a master in the art of prayer. None could pray like him. And so they went to him with the request, ‘Lord, teach us to pray’… It is still true today that disciples who see him feel the need of repeating that same request, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’”
I don’t want you to feel incapable and ineffectual in prayer. I feel incapable and ineffectual in a car with a stick shift because no one ever trained me to drive a stick. I don’t want you to feel that way when it comes to prayer because if you feel that way, you won’t pray.
Jesus is willing to train us to pray. “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’” Jesus still trains disciples who ask.
Jesus loves you enough to train you in prayer. That’s the claim of this sermon: Jesus loves you enough to train you in prayer.
We will study it in three points. First: an assumption. Second: our audience. Third: our posture. The assumption is found in the first four words of verse 5. Our audience is found in verses 5-6 and our posture is found in verses 7-8.
First: an assumption. Verse 5, “And when you pray…”
Jesus assumes we disciples will pray. That’s the starting point for this training, ‘do you think prayer is expected?’
In general, we American Christians can be pretty prayerless. We are so prayerless that even our seminary students are prayerless. Only six percent of seminary students pray regularly—not ninety-sixty percent, not sixty-six percent, six percent of seminary students pray regularly. Only six percent of people who want to train people to live Jesus’ life pray regularly. And yet the master assumes we will pray, “And when you pray…”
If you are relatively prayerless, my hope is that the next couple months will change that. My hope is that you will pray more often because you know what prayer is and what prayer does, and how to do it.
If you don’t pray, I want you to think about why. The most common reason Christians give is busyness. ‘I am too busy to pray.’
Now is that the case? Last Sunday evening we saw that you are already thinking all the time and that you need to take control of your mind. You don’t need to block off two hours to pray. You need to turn your attention to God and think. You have time for that. You have time for that when you’re driving. You have time for that when you’re cleaning. You certainly have time for that if you’re worrying.
You don’t need uninterrupted time to pray but my guess is that many of us have more uninterrupted time than we think. “One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook,” said John Piper, “will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.” You can fill in your own distraction—sports, movies, reading – none of these are bad in and of themselves but it is hard to look at the time we give to our diversions and say we are too busy to pray. I want you to know how to pray, but first you need to acknowledge that you are not too busy to pray.
You might also need to overcome the hurdle of not feeling any urgency to pray. Some people feel like they need to be in a particularly religious mood, whatever that is, before they pray. Feeling far from God is a rather sad reason for prayerlessness because not praying will keep you far from God. If you want to be close to God, you need to communicate with God.
You need to inspect the emotional reasons for your prayerlessness. Let’s just take bitterness towards God as an example. ‘God, I’ve prayed for this for months and months and nothing has happened. Why should I waste any more time? Why should I get my hopes up?’
If you are too bitter to pray, you will never get over the bitterness until you pray. You need to pray to deal with the bitterness and you deal with that bitterness by taking it to God. The Psalms are full of saints taking their bitterness to God. Psalm 6:2–3, “Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul is greatly troubled, but You, O Lord, how long?” Psalm 13:1–2, “How long, O Lord, will You forget me forever? How long will You hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day?” Psalm 42:9-11, “I say to God my Rock ‘Why have You forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?’ My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’”
That’s bitterness going towards God rather than staying away from Him. You will never resolve your bitterness against God until you go to Him, until you pray to Him. That goes for whatever feelings or moods you think stand between you and God in regard to prayer. If you have a communication problem with God, you need to inspect your heart. You need to know that prayer is expected.
Jesus assumes that we disciples will pray. He tells us to pray to the Father. The Father is our audience. That’s our second point: our audience.
Jesus started with the basics, ‘to whom should you pray?’ The answer, of course, is God, but that’s not always how it works out in practice. Look at the praying in verse 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.”
These men had forgotten their audience. They had forgotten to pray to God. What about you? There is a test to see whether or not God is the audience of your prayers. The test is in verse 6, “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.” That’s the test.
Do you pray when no one is watching? Do you pray when no one expects it? Is the congregational prayer in this service your longest or only prayer of the week? If so, are you just praying because it is part of this worship? Do you only pray with your parents at the dinner table? If so, I want you to consider that you might simply be praying to be seen by men.
If God is your audience, you will pray alone too; you won’t need a flesh and blood audience. Praying alone is a crucial test because praying alone forces you to reckon with the questions of audience –do you think the Father really listens? You can pray with a friend without believing that God really listens. You will do it because you are a nice person and you want your friend to feel loved. You can even pray alone without believing that God really listens. You will just do it to feel better and get stuff off your chest.
The only people who pray in secret are the people who believe the Father listens. People aren’t foolish. We don’t continue doing something we think accomplishes nothing. We don’t spend valuable time doing something we find worthless.
The only people who spend real time in prayer are firmly convinced that God listens. They know their audience. They know they are speaking with God and that He will reward their efforts; “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.”
The hypocrites had their reward. People saw them pray and thought they were good people. “I tell you the truth,” says Jesus, “they have received their reward in full.” Don’t settle for such a paltry reward. Pray to God. He is able to do immeasurably more than you can ask or imagine.
We will talk more about this reward, but for today, Jesus is training us to expect something as a result of praying. Explain verse 6 to me any other way, “your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” I fear that some of us don’t pray because we don’t expect anything to happen as a result.
Part of praying to God as your audience is expecting Him to do what only God can do. If you could supply for yourself whatever you are asking from God, you wouldn’t ask; you would just do it yourself. You pray for what you can’t give yourself.
Pray expectantly. If the Father is your audience, you will expect things from Him and if you don’t expect anything from prayer then God isn’t your audience.
Our training continues. Jesus turned the disciples’ attention to posture. He wasn’t talking about standing or kneeling. He was talking about the posture of the heart. That’s our third point.
Jesus contrasts two postures of the heart – a manipulative posture and a trusting posture. Verse 7, “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”
The pagans, the Greeks and Romans, sought to manipulate their gods in prayer. Their prayers were long because they believed their gods would reward them for being so pious. They buttered up their gods with praise before they asked for what they really wanted.
That’s insulting. Fathers, would you rather your children butter you up or just ask you for what they want? ‘Dad, you look really nice in that shirt today. Thanks so much for helping me with my homework and taking us out to eat yesterday. You are a great dad. I wish every Sunday were Father’s Day… Can I borrow the car this Saturday?’ Or would you rather your children trusted your gracious nature so they felt comfortable just asking? That’s what God wants. “When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”
Inspect the posture of your heart in prayer. Inspect yourself for manipulation. We can use even good lessons in prayer to try to manipulate God. My guess is that many of us have learned about ACTS prayer—‘A’‘C’‘T’‘S’ prayers—Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication—‘A’‘C’‘T’‘S’, ACTS.
Now that is a helpful way to pray. It is a good way to pray. It reminds us of the majestic audience of our prayer. It reminds us of the need to confess our sins of thought, word, and deed before God. It reminds us to be thankful for what God has given us, but we need to beware of using the first three—adoration, confession, and thanksgiving—as a means of buttering up God for what we really care about – the supplication, the big ask.
God doesn’t want you to butter Him up. He is generous. Just ask.
The Father is generous so tell Him what you need and get to the point. “Do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” You don’t need to use flowery language in prayer. You just need to say what is on your mind. You just need to tell God what is on your heart.
Don’t be afraid to cut to the chase with God. He already knows what you need. Verse 8, “your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
Before you begin to pray, God already knows what you need. There are two ways to respond to this truth that God knows what we need before we ask Him. The first way is unhelpful but pretty common. This response is to essentially stop praying altogether. ‘If God knows everything and if He loves me, why do I need to pray?’ I remember thinking that way during college. I thought it was so profound. I thought it was such an act of faith. ‘I so strongly believe that God knows what I need I’m not going to badger Him at all.’
Jesus doesn’t think it is that profound. He thinks it is foolish and silly. “Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him,” so ask Him. Jesus doesn’t see God’s omniscience – His perfect knowledge – as a reason not to pray. He sees it as a reason to pray. ‘Your Father already knows, so ask Him.’
This is a heart posture of trust. This needs to be your posture in prayer. You can ask God because He already knows and He is generous.
So how do you pray to God considering that He already knows? Let’s take a common prayer as an example, confession of sin. In confession of sin we know that we are telling God what He already knows. We know we have done wrong. We know that God knows we have done wrong but often we refuse to tell Him. Why? Because we don’t want Him to find out? No, we know He knows. We just don’t want to feel ashamed in His presence. God wants us to come to Him, to acknowledge our sin, to tell Him what He already knows, because then we can deal with it. Your Father knows, so He tells you to tell Him. Tell Him because He knows. Jesus says the same thing works with all prayer – ask Him because He already knows.
He knows, but He wants you to ask. Imagine your little girl comes in your room in the middle of the night because there is a thunderstorm. You know that she is afraid of storms, but what do you say when she walks in, ‘I already know why you are in here; no need to say anything’? Of course not. You say, ‘what’s wrong, honey?’ Why? Why do you say that even though you already know? Because it is a relationship. You want to hear her heart. You want her to tell you what is wrong because you love her, and you want her to be able to say it to you because she loves you.
That’s just part of why you pray even though God already knows. “Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him… so ask.” He loves to hear from you. He wants you to love to speak with Him.
That’s part of why He saved you from your sins. He saved you for a relationship with Him. Communication is a big part of any relationship and that’s what prayer is—communication with God.
God delights to communicate with us. That’s why He sent prophets. That’s why He inspired this word. That’s why He hears prayers. The Father wants to know what’s really on your heart far more than the most loving father here loves to hear what’s on his child’s heart… and that’s a lot.
“The only person,” says Tim Keller, “who dares wake up a king at 3:00 AM for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access.” Do you pray with a trusting heart? Do you think God wants to hear from you?
He can give you more than you can ask or imagine. We are urged to ask for more than we can ask or imagine because we need more than we can ask or imagine. I’ve urged you to pray Paul’s prayer in Ephesians, that we might know God better, that we might have the hope to which He has called us, and that we might witness His power at work in and through us.
I want you to ask for that boldly because God knows you need it. He knows you need it, so ask Him.
Jesus will keep teaching us how to pray. What I want you to do in preparation for next week is to inspect your prayers or your prayerlessness. Do you pray to the Father? Do you trust Him when you speak to Him? I also want you to pray and ask that you might know Him better. Ask that you might have the hope He offers. Ask that you might see His power at work. Jesus expects you will learn to pray by praying.
Jesus will train us to pray like him, but we must be honest with him and we need to do what He says. May Andrew Murray’s prayer be our prayer, “Lord Jesus! Enroll my name among those who confess that they don’t know how to pray as they should, and who especially ask you for a course of teaching in prayer. Lord, teach me to be patient in your school, so that you will have time to train me. I am ignorant of the wonderful privilege and power of prayer… I know that you won’t put that student to shame who trusts in you, and with your grace, that student won’t shame you, either.” Amen.