Prayer Pt. 2

Intro

Matthew 6:5–14 CSB

5 “Whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 When you pray, don’t babble like the Gentiles, since they imagine they’ll be heard for their many words. 8 Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask him. 9 “Therefore, you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. 14 “For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well.

Last week we said that prayer was purposely giving God a message, today we’re going to look at how we should pray.

Prayer is for God

Matthew 6:5–6 CSB

5 “Whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Do y’all know what hypocrites mean? The Britannica defines hypocrite as: a person who claims or pretends to have certain beliefs about what is right but who behaves in a way that disagrees with those beliefs.

What makes these people hypocrites? The fact that they are going to God, in honor and prayer but they are doing it for their own selfish reasons. They claim to need to pray because they say they need God but only pray to get noticed by other people. Those people do not want God, they want to make themselves look good. So, how should we pray? Personal prayer should be done in private. When you have a something you need to tell God, go and pray privately, don’t make a show out of it. Go to God humbly, to where it’s just you and Him. Then you can honestly say that love praying to God and not love being seen.

Prayer is simple

Matthew 6:7–8 CSB

When you pray, don’t babble like the Gentiles, since they imagine they’ll be heard for their many words. Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask him.

Do y’all remember who the Gentiles were? The Gentiles was everyone who wasn’t a Jew, the Jewish people were given the word of God and were God’s chosen people. So When we read “the Gentiles” we can assume that, that means people who don’t know God. The Gentiles or the people who don’t know God, in the old days would pray these crazy long and repetitive prayers making noises and what not. Imagine kind of like what the Native Americans did. Those people were trying to please their God with their fancy prayers and big words (even though their God isn’t real.) We can trust that our God, doesn’t want that. We can’t earn God’s attention, He has already given it to us through the cross.

So, when we pray we don’t need to use fancy words or be super smooth or repeat stuff over and over again. God already knows your heart, He wants you to be faithful because He tells you to pray. God wont hear you because you use a whole bunch of fancy words or because you sound fancy. He hears you because He loved you so much He send Jesus down to die on the cross to establish that direct connection.

A structured Prayer

Matthew 6:9–14 CSB

9 “Therefore, you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. 14 “For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well.

And then Jesus gives us an outline. I do want to say that this is an outline, a lot people will take this to say that Jesus wants us to pray this specific prayer when I don’t think that’s what He is saying.

We start with Praise and Wroship

Matthew 6:9 CSB

“Therefore, you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.

We acknowledge that God deserves all the Glory, that He is worthy of our worship and of our praise. So when we pray we start it by praising God.

Next, we pray for God’s will

Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The mark of someone who loves God is that they don’t pray “God i need you to do this, this, that and the other.” But they do pray “God give me whatever you will give me and show me what you want from me.” When we pray we shouldn’t try to make God do what WE want but we should pray that we do what HE wants. So, next we pray for God’s will to be done, on earth and in our lives.

Next, we pray for our needs

Matthew 6:11 CSB

Give us today our daily bread.

God knows that while we are on this world we are going to need food, water, shelter, etc. So if theirs something we need, we pray for that. If money is low, we pray. If we don’t know if food is going to last, we pray. If you don’t know if your car going to start, pray. If you aren’t doing good in school, pray. God has a name Jehovah Jireh, it literally means the Lord will provide. God is good so he will provide your needs.

Next we pray for forgiveness

Matthew 6:12 CSB

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

One of the most important aspects of being a Christian is that we forgive and love others.

Jesus closes this segment on prayer with this statement

Matthew 6:14 CSB

“For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well.

Jesus has already forgiven us on the cross, so Jesus changes us and lets us forgive others. What this is not saying is “once you forgive others, God will forgive you.” Because that’s not how that works. God will change us and give us hearts that forgive each other. We are called to be like Jesus and Jesus died to forgive every one of their sins. We should forgive to.

But something’s its hard to forgive, trust me I get it. So pray that God gives you a softer heart so that you can forgive. So that you can be more like Him and less like you.

Next, we pray for protection

Matthew 6:13 CSB

And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

There is a war ranging right now, the first if you’re a Christian your flesh is fighting with the Holy Spirit who lives inside of you. Second, there is this war being fought in the Spiritual Realm where Satan and the Angels are fighting for us. You see it’s our own flesh that causes us to sin, so when we pray for God to keep us away from sin we pray that God protects us from our own sin.

We also pray that God protects us from Satan and his army of fallen angels who will try to tempt us and whisper sinful thoughts in our ears. Trying to cause us to fall, so we pray to God asking for protection against the forces of evil.