When you pray

Matthew 6:5–13 ESV

5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 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. 7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: “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 this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Intro

In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus gives us 3 “when’s”. But what we need to understand about these things is 2 fold: These are things we are expected to do as believers. and HOW we do them matters just as much as doing them. These 3 “when’s” are: When you give, when you pray and when you fast. Jesus qualifies these things as practicing righteousness in 6:1. I truly believe that Jesus highlights these three things because these are the three things that believers struggled to do the most. We struggle to give we struggle to pray, and we struggle to fast. It is easier for us to read our Bible than it is for us to get on our knees and cry out to God. It’s easier for us to attend church than it is for us to sow seeds in giving. We neglect a fast because our natural instinct is to serve our flesh. And that is why Jesus highlights these three things. Because I truly believe these are three of the hardest things, not the only things, but things that even Jesus saw needed to be addressed. And that’s why, with each of these things Jesus uses the word “when”. Because he had to set the tone that these are expected things. Things that are expected of us by God as acts of righteousness. That will strengthen your faith, bless your life, and produce fruit in the body of Christ.

When you pray

Prayer is another expected thing for us to do. Prayer is the foundation of communication between us and God. Prayer is the thing that connects our heart to his heart. Without prayer we have no real relationship. This is why Jesus says when you pray. Because without prayer, we don’t have the relationship and we are not connected to the heart of God. Prayer is a very challenging thing for many believers. We struggle because we are distracted. We struggle because we can’t come up with the words to say. But if you don’t have a prayer life, you don’t have much of a Faith. Leonard Ravenhill once said: “no man is greater than his prayer life.” So let me ask you this question: If God came and told you, I’m going to say yes to every prayer, you have prayed in the past week, what would the world look like? Would addicts be set free? Would your loved ones be safe? Would you know God more? Would you find some strength? Would your relationships be stronger? Would your family be healthy? Or would your food just be blessed?

The Purpose of Prayer

Prayer will open us up to understanding things we otherwise would never know. Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and incomprehensible things you do not know.” I know this may be hard for some of us to admit, but you don’t know everything and neither do I. I don’t know how to raise a kid in the world we live in. I don’t know how to navigate the social landscape that is constantly changing and moving further away from truth. I don’t have all the biblical answers to all theological questions. There are just some things I don’t know. But I know how to find those answers. I know how to get deeper in the Word. If I commit myself to prayer Jeremiah says that God will reveal to us the unknown things. Things that are hidden, hidden IN prayer. Prayer unlocks information that cannot be obtained any other way.

Certain things in life can only be dealt with by prayer. The disciples struggled to cast out a demon in Mark 9. We find Jesus is able to cast it out with ease. When they question Jesus about why they could not cast it out, Jesus tells them, “This kind only goes out by prayer and fasting.” There are some things that require a deep commitment to prayer to get a solution. I believe the purpose of some of our situations is to take us to a deeper place of prayer.

Prayer will grant you access to doors that would not be opened otherwise.

Matthew 7:7-11 (ESV)

7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 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!

How to Pray

The Don’ts of Prayer

Don’t overcomplicate prayer. Some people go from praying to preaching. They try to get into the old king James English, and try to be fancy in their prayers so they can be respected and given an appearance of a powerful prayer life, but in reality, the power is not in the words you pray, but in the consistency and strength of the relationship between you and God. The Pharisees thought it was all about how fancy they could be. And they wanted people to look at them as super spiritual. So they not only prayed empty prayers, but they prayed to fill their own pride rather than to humbly come before God and receive the power, the knowledge and the relationship that prayer is supposed to provide.

The Do’s of Prayer

When you do pray it is something that is private and personal. There is a time for public prayer when we gather together, but public prayer is only as powerful as the private prayer life you have. What you do in private fuels your effectiveness in public. This is how Jesus instructed us to pray:

Matthew 6:9 ESV

9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

The term “Our father” Would have been a huge shock in that first century. It was unheard of to refer to God as father. But Jesus is revealing in this prayer that prayer is about relationship between us and God. We honor him, his father, as well as God of the universe and creator of all things. Our heavenly father is the god of the universe. That speaks to the power of him, but also how special it is that we can have a relationship with him. Our prayer life should honor our relationship and strengthen our relationship between us and God.

Matthew 6:10 ESV

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

Prayer is more than just asking and requesting things. It is a surrender ourselves to God’s will. Too many times we come and we’re asking God to fulfill our checklist. But what we really should be asking is for God’s will to be done. Not just in our life, but in this world.We want Earth to look like heaven. And that only happens if God’s will is done. And as a sidenote, we are the ones who are supposed to carry out his will. We don’t just simply pray for it to Happen, but for God to equip us to carry out his plan. God has placed us on this earth to do his will.

Matthew 6:11 ESV

11 Give us this day our daily bread,

This prayer is when we struggled to understand because most of us can go open our refrigerator and find food quite easily. Most of us don’t struggle to eat. Most of us are well taken care of through one means or another. Whether it be through your job or through assistance programs.I highly doubt most of us in this room, understand what it means to truly be hungry. Nevertheless, we all have many needs in our life. And this prayer is about asking God to make provision for us. We don’t need to make exuberant over the top prayers Jesus said in the scripture that our father in heaven knows what we need even before we ask. If you look at the scripture, this part of the prayer is the shortest of them all. However, we make it the longest piece of every prayer. We usually pray. But if you look at the other aspects of the Lord’s prayer, there is more time spent on praying for God’s will, on worshiping and honoring him, and seeking forgiveness and deliverance from temptation which represents Praying to build holiness in our life. I truly believe it’s because these other things matter more. And if we would focus on those things more than we focus on our material and physical issues. We would see God take care of the rest.

Matthew 6:12 ESV

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

You are never so saved that you don’t need to repent. The reality of it is we all fall short every day and we need forgiveness every day. There’s a reason your Bible says God’s mercies are new each day. It’s because we need new Fresh mercy each day.But a key part to this prayer is that we have to forgive those who have wronged us. In verse 14 Jesus goes on to tell us that if we do not forgive those who have wrong us, we will not receive forgiveness ourselves. This prayer right here is the first partof what I had already talked about when it comes to forgiveness and holiness in our prayer life being a key part of what we pray for. The second part comes in verse number 13.

Matthew 6:13 ESV

13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

You need help to overcome temptation. Prayer sets your mind and your heart and the right place and it puts your guard up to protect yourself against the Temptations we face. It gives us the wisdom we need to put accountability in place and it strengthens our spirit and makes us more sensitive to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. This is the second part of the prayer that leads us into a holy Life. Holiness is still right, and we will never achieve a holy life, with righteous living without a powerful prayer life.

Yours is the kingdom and the power in the glory forever amen

Most of your modern translations don’t have this line in the scripture. It is not because they are trying to take away from the word of God, but rather these modern translations use manuscripts that are dated earlier meaning they are closer to the original time of writing. Scholars have found that the manuscripts used to produce the king James and the new King James translations had scriptures in them that were not in the original manuscripts. But at that time, the manuscripts used for King James and new King Jamand translations that are similar were the best available. Now that we have had new discoveries we have found that there are things that have been added to the manuscripts that at one point where maybe a footnote or a commentary that a scribe or early church leader added just like we may add a note in our own personal Bibles. And those notes and footnotes got included into the main text. It is important to understand that no doctrine has changed in your Bible because of these they’re actually very minor changes. And all of those phrases that appeared to be missing are actually still there. They have just been moved to the footnote section of your Bible if you have a modern translation.

I say all that because this line is one of those controversial scriptures that is not in a modern translation. At least not in the main text, but is down in the footnote. It is not wrong to include this in the prayer. But it was not part of what Jesus actually said that day when he gave this teaching, according to the original manuscripts. Again, it is still in your Bible. It’s just not in the main text. It is in the footnote. It’s still in the footnote because it’s still important. However, it just wasn’t part of the original manuscripts.

This line I still believe is special because it describes to God all the power and the glory for everything you have just prayed for. It is like the stamp and the signature at the end of the prayer that surrenders all authority for all of the things that have just been covered in prayer over to God.