Three Questions for a Genuine Prayer Life

I want you to imagine that you are walking into the doctor’s office for a check up. So you check in and a young lady in scrubs, holding a clipboard opens the door and calls you back. While you’re walking, she uses all of the right language and doing all of the things that a nurse normally does but as you begin to ask her questions she begins to stumble around and stares at you like a deer in headlights until she finally lets you know that she’s a student that is doing a training exercise for the day. She looked the part, but she was really just going through the motions that she figured she was supposed to do. In a similar way, we might be just like that student. We know that prayer is important, but we don’t know why and we certainly don’t put much thought into it when we do it and that is the topic I want us to address today.

In Matthew 6, Jesus is describing people doing righteous things with wrong attitudes and as he does that, one of the Disciples, Luke tells us, says, “Lord, teach us to pray.” and as He does that, He first gives us a few warnings to be aware of. Now, the reason this is so significant for us to understand is that prayer is the lifeline of the Christian, it is the greatest of things we can do. Prayer is simply man speaking with God. Do you do a lot of that? I know that for me, it is an area I fight with on a constant basis. And so, if you struggle to have a passionate prayer life and feel that you’re simply going through the motions, this lesson is for you and with that being said, I want us to look at three questions that will help us have a genuine prayer life.

Why Am I Doing This?

Has your mom ever told you to clean your house or your room while she ran errands? Have you ever gotten sidetracked and found yourself watching a show until she calls and says that she is on the way home? What do you do when she calls you? Well, you probably jump up and clean as fast as you can, throwing clothes in the closet and sweeping dirt underneath the rug. But the thing is that she didn’t ask you to make things look okay enough, she asked you to actually clean things. Right? Well, as we look in Matthew 6, we will find that Jesus is describing these hypocrites who are praying, but they’re praying for the wrong purposes because they want to be seen by others. And if we are going to have a genuine prayer life, we need to hear what Jesus has to say about this kind of situation.

In verse 5, we see that Jesus is describing the behavior of the hypocrites, which is an interesting word that would describe someone pretending to be what they aren’t. It comes from the ancient plays where actors would wear masks that were obviously different from the faces they really had. And Jesus is saying that they are praying alright, but they are only praying in public so that everyone can look at them and see how super spiritual they are. And have you ever met anyone like that? Around teachers or coaches or adults they’ve convinced everyone that they’re just great, but in reality they are wild. These are hypocrites who are playing both sides of the coin and Jesus says, “They get their reward. Their reward isn’t the presence of God or His blessings, instead their reward is that you get to look super spiritual in front of all of these people.”

And Jesus says, “When you pray…” this is a commanded action here. Jesus is saying that His followers shouldn’t be interested in the popularity like the hypocrite is, but instead Christians should be focused on a prayer life that is focused on speaking with God as He says, “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” So, when do you pray and why do you pray? Is it only when you’re called on to do it publicly so that everyone thinks you are spiritual? Jesus tells us not to focus on that, but to focus on having genuine motives in talking to God since prayer is simply us speaking with Him, worshiping Him, submitting to His will and asking for strength for the day.

What Am I Saying?

Michael Scott, the manager from Dunder Mifflin Scranton in The Office once said, “Sometimes I’ll start a sentence and I don’t know where it’s going. I just hope to find it somewhere along the way. Like an improv conversation. An improversation.” And while that might be funny in normal conversations, it’s a struggle that we must fight with while we pray.

You see in verse 7, Jesus tells us not to be like people who just ramble with empty, heartless words over and over again while praying. You see, during this time, the pagans thought that the longer the prayer, the more likely it was that one of the gods would actually do what they were asking. What Jesus is saying here is that we need to be serious, passionate, and clear with what we’re praying for when we pray to God. He’s not telling us that our prayers have to be so long or so short, but He is telling us that when we pray to God, we can come to Him with full hearts and that we should speak to Him passionately. Not that the amount of time, or words we use will catch God’s attention, Jesus says, “Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Who Am I Talking To?

Have you guys ever watched The Incredibles before? If you have, you may remember my favorite part in the movie where there is a battle raging outside of Frozones house while he is getting ready for a dinner date with his wife and here is what he says,

[Frozone] Honey???

[Honey] What?

[Frozone] Where’s my super suit?

[Honey] Whaaaat?

[Frozone] Where. Is. My. SUPER. SUIT?

[Honey] I, uh, put it away.

[Frozone] Where?

[Honey] Why do you need to know?

[Frozone] I NEED it!

[Honey] Uh-uh! Don’t you think about running off To do no darin’ do! We’ve been planning this dinner for two months!

[Frozone] The public is in danger!

[Honey] My EVENING is in danger!

[Frozone] You tell me where my suit is, woman! We are talking about the greater good!

[Honey] Greater good? I am your wife! I am the greatest GOOD You are ever going to get!

Sometimes who we are speaking to changes how we might speak to someone. For instance, could you imagine if I spoke to Pastor Barkman like he’s my two year old daughter? And with that said, I think we should often remind ourselves of who we are talking to when we are praying and I think this truth comes out at the very beginning of the prayer that the Lord teaches us as He says, “Pray then like this: Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed be your name.” One time Andrew Fuller was writing to a man who said that he does really well in delivering passionate public prayers, but has a really dead private prayer life and Andrew said, “Permit me to ask, Are you not more influenced by the presence of creatures than by His presence who fills the Earth?” In other words he was saying, “Are you seriously more excited over people hearing you than you are by the fact that the God of heaven and earth hears you?”

And this is something we need to remember as we approach the Lord in prayer everyday is that we are praying to our Father. Our loving, caring Father who desires to hear from us. But He is also our great Father who is high and lifted up. He is our gloriously majestic God and He hears from us and with that in mind, the Lord wants us to remember that when we pray, we come praying for things that might enable the “hallowing of His name.” What this means is that we should come before Him with warm, reverent hearts that simply desire that He would work through us to the glory of His name throughout the world. And boy, won’t knowing that impact how we pray?

So, the next time you pray, don’t do it to check something off of your list, do your best to make every word sincere, and remind yourself that you are praying to the God who has the power to melt hearts of stone to save kings and loved-ones, you are praying to the One who can control the winds and seas, and you are praying to the One who is willing to give you strength to walk day by day and remembering these things will, hopefully, encourage us to have a more passionate prayer life.