Teach Us To Pray

Secret Places

Matthew 6:6– But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.

For a short time as a young teenager, my sisters and I lived with our grandparents out in the country with the closest neighbor a mile and a half away. I loved it! My favorite thing to do was climb the hills behind the house, cross the creek, and watch for deer, or take paper and pen with me to write my thoughts. I loved the woods, the earthy smells, the quiet sounds, but most of all the aloneness. I could talk to God or just appreciate his amazing creation and sometimes even get lost and have to find my way home. Like David in Psalm 131, I could say, “I’ve calmed and quieted myself” after time by myself in my secret place.

I love the picture in Mark 1:35 of Jesus getting up very early in the morning while it was still dark, leaving the house, and going off to a solitary place where he prayed. Does this mean Jesus never wants us to pray out loud or with others? No, he often prayed so others would hear, and praying with other believers encourages and comforts us.

God knows how noisy and chaotic our lives have gotten. We rarely sit still and when we do we are either being entertained by the television or are being bombarded with images, ideas, and notifications on the little screen of our cell phone that never leaves our side. Hence he tells us to go to a secret place and shut the door, where we can be still and focus on him alone without distractions. Jeremiah 29:13 tells us “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” Mark Batterson said in his book Whisper, “God often speaks loudest when we’re quietest.”

So, we have the responsibility to find a place where we won’t be interrupted, take our bible, maybe a journal and just be still. Talk to him but listen for that still small voice, that whisper–that thought or idea that could only come from him. Have you experienced it? It makes you want more, but it requires something of us. It might require getting up earlier to spend time alone with him in prayer and scripture or sacrificing something in your day for that time. That doesn’t mean we can’t talk to him while driving, cleaning the house, or at any other time, but there is a difference when we go to a secret place or shut the door and seek him with all of our hearts. I know my heart soars when my adult children call or grandkids, so I can only imagine how my Abba Father feels when I seek him and want to listen to his voice. Lord, help us make choices that bring us closer to you and delight your heart. Amen.

Deb Hill

by Deb Hill

A Bad Habit that Sounds Prayerful

People talk to pets, or small children, using a different voice than they use in their normal life. Not everyone does this with animals, but it is difficult to avoid talking to babies without switching to the “I’m talking to a baby right now voice.” This is especially true for folks who are not around babies much.

This seems to happen to some of us when talking to God too. It's not the “talking to a baby voice,” but there is a common style of prayer that is different from the way people normally speak. When talking to God, a person’s voice might not vocally change the way it does with a pet or baby, but the words change. More and more, people pray and add “God” or “Lord” or “Lord God” into sentences where commas or periods normally go. A person praying the Lord’s Prayer this way today might read like this:

Our Father in Heaven, God,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, Lord,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day, Lord, our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts, Lord,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not, Lord God, into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

There’s never been a class, seminar, or sermon that instructs people to pray this way, nor has there been one to teach people to talk differently to babies. People just pick it up and it seems like the right thing to do. Maybe it feels spiritual or feels natural, to change the way one speaks because the person one is speaking to is vastly different than at normal times. Before he introduced the Lord’s prayer, Jesus said this:

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. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Matt 6:7-8

Adding extra words to prayers doesn’t make them better, and people don’t need to add God’s name or title every few phrases to honor, connect with, or speak to him. Consider how you pray. Do you use your regular voice or do you add a kind of false spirituality to your prayers that are only empty words heaped up?

Pastor John Riley

by John Riley

Teach Us to Pray

In Matthew’s Gospel, the “Lord’s Prayer,” is taught right in the middle of what has been called “The Sermon on the Mount.” In this context, Jesus is talking to a large crowd of people. However, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus taught a very similar prayer just to his disciples after this interaction in Luke 11:1…

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” - Luke 11:1

I have a bunch of thoughts about this! Where was the certain place that Jesus prayed? If we knew, wouldn’t everyone go there to pray? How long did they watch him pray? That must have been a little awkward. What did they see in the way that Jesus prayed that made them want to imitate him? I find it very comforting to know that they too were a bit confused by prayer… they didn’t know if they were doing it right and they just wanted Jesus to show them. I can relate to that feeling. But, notice what they want. They want Jesus to teach them “just as John taught his disciples.” That is interesting! Unfortunately, we don't have a record of how John taught his disciples to pray, but we do know that it was common for Rabbis to teach specific prayers to their disciples. These prayers were meant to be memorized and repeated word for word by the disciples. A disciple’s virtue was measured by how well he could recite the rabbi’s prayers from memory, with the same cadence, and tone as the Rabbi. This is because typically Rabbis taught their disciples what to pray… not how to pray.

Jesus was different. He did not teach a formula just to be memorized and repeated. He doesn’t suggest that there is anything magic in the words that he uses. Instead, he is teaching us how to pray.

We can be confident of this because Jesus doesn’t repeat the same words in the two times that he teaches us the prayer. The prayers in Luke 11 and Matthew 6 are different, and that is good news! They are very similar, but they are not exact. This means that Jesus used this prayer as a template, not as a formula.

I’m guessing that many of you have memorized the Lord’s Prayer… it is one of the most commonly known passages in the Bible. That is a good thing, but instead of just praying the prayer as it is, try praying it like a template. Instead of saying, “Our Father, hallowed by your name…” What would you say? Put it in your words. Maybe we too can learn how to pray… not just what to pray.

Josh Rose
Discipleship Pastor

by Josh Rose