The Lord's Prayer 1

How to Pray!

Story of Donald Snuika

Prayer is not a time to show off.

The guy on the corner of Chicago with a golden microphone.

sometimes they would call on people to pray and they would used fancy language.

2. Prayer is done in secret because it is intimate.

There are certain details about yourself that you only share with your spouse or others in you family because they are not intimate details. Pray is an opportunity to be intimate with God.

This is related to verse 1.

Matthew and Mark Notes

There disciples are enjoined to do good deeds to the Father’s glory; here they are enjoined not to do them for their own glory.

3. Prayer is purposeful.

Old Syriac version: “Do not say idol things”.

Some translation have translated this as “vain repetitions” and as a kid I was concerned that I would repeat myself too much in prayer and God would be displease with me somehow.

The jist of what is being said here deals more with the vain than the repetitions. after all Jesus repeated Himself in prayer. Matt 26:44

Matthew 26:44 ESV

So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again.

Matthew and Mark Notes

This critique addresses hypocritical Jewish practice, and may have in mind hypocrisy in the praying of the ʿAmidah or Eighteen Benedictions (to be uttered three times a day), the recitation of the Shema (to be done twice daily), and various other blessings.

By the way Tyndale one of the first to translate the Bible into English translated this “babble overmuch”

if we spent as much time praying as we do talking to ourselves we would be much healthier, and happier and we would know God and experience His peace.

4. We pray because God knows our needs.

although the Father already knows the needs of His children, He wishes them to show their trust and dependence by praying to Him.

Story of a kid who was in trouble and after to tell his parents but the parents already knew.

Matthew 7:7–11 ESV

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

next week

people who have not forgiven other are the Hypocrites who stand on the corner and pray loud prayers!