How did you learn to pray?
If you’re around Christians for a while, sooner or later you’ll hear someone pray like this: “We beseech thee, most gracious Lord and Heavenly Father, to hearken to our petitions as we humble ourselves before you this morning…” For some reason, the person praying thinks God speaks in King James’ English.
On the other extreme, I recently heard someone who was asked to pray before a meeting say, “Hey, Jesus. Yeah. We just want to come to you and thank you, Lord…” Hey, Jesus? That’s a bit casual for addressing a King, don’t you think?
People usually learn to pray by listening to other people pray. You listen to someone you respect as a Christian pray and assume that’s the right way to pray. Consciously or unconsciously, you imitate those prayers or at least the vocabulary and style of those prayers.
If you grew up in a Christian family and went to church all your life, the concept of prayer is familiar to you. It’s something Christians do or, at least, something they should do. Honestly, the subject of prayer is probably something you feel guilty about. You know you don’t do it as well or as often as you should. But at least the idea of praying doesn’t sound strange to you.
If you didn’t grow up going to church or in a Christian family, the idea of prayer is probably a bit foreign. Imagine you had never visited a church of any kind or heard anything about the Bible. A friend who is a Christian invited you to his home for a Bible study and you thought you’d humor him and go along. It was interesting. A group of people sat around and talked about something they read in the Bible.
Then it got weird. They all closed their eyes and started talking out loud to someone you couldn’t see. Nobody peeked. But you did. You thought, “Why are they all closing their eyes if they can’t see God anyway?” You listened, and some people in the group talked to God, some didn’t. And you certainly didn’t because you thought, “I wouldn’t know what to say…” You were afraid that if you started talking to God right there in front of other people, even though their eyes were closed, they would recognize your voice and know right away that you didn’t have a clue about any of this.
But maybe after a few weeks or months, what you were hearing about God in the Bible made sense, and you became a Christian. You started going to a worship service in a church building. And when you met with a group of Christians, you were finally brave enough to try praying in public. You had listened to the other people in the group, and you picked up the vocabulary. So one week, when the group gathered for dinner, you offered to pray before the meal.
Meal time prayers
Your first out loud mealtime prayer probably went something like this: “Heavenly Father, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies and us to Thy service, in Jesus’ name, Amen.” And you thought, “I did it. I prayed, and nobody laughed.” You had no idea what those words actually meant, but you prayed in public. Now you knew how to pray. And in time, you even risked saying a bit longer prayer in the group prayer time.
And then you tried it at home. After all, Christians are supposed to pray. So out of a sense of duty, you tried it. You didn’t pray out loud, because nobody was around. You just kind of thought the words. And you asked God to help someone who was sick, or to bless a missionary the church supported.
Maybe you tried that for a few days. But after a while, it felt kind of pointless. It wasn’t all that meaningful or fun. Honestly, it was kind of boring. You talked to God, but he didn’t talk to you. And it was hard to keep your mind focused even for a few minutes. So you decided to leave the praying to the experts (the pastor and worship leaders at church). Once in a while, when something reminds you that you should or when it seems like a good idea, you’ll say a short prayer. Other than that, it isn’t a part of your daily life.
I suspect your experience is far more common than you imagine.
Maybe part of the problem is that we don’t understand what prayer is and we’ve not gone to the right sources to learn how to pray. The psalmist writes, “Teach me your way, O LORD…” (Psalm 27:11). He is asking for instruction from God. That’s the right source when it comes to learning to pray. If you want to learn how to pray, you need to go to God, through his Word, the Bible. Don’t just imitate someone whose praying impresses you. And don’t assume you will know how to pray instinctively as time goes by in your life as a Christian.
The right way to approach God in prayer is learned from God as he teaches us by his Spirit working through his Word. And he’s given us great instruction in Scripture, particularly in the psalms: 150 models of praise, thanksgiving, petition, intercession, and meditation that should inform the way we approach and speak to God.
Teach us to pray
It was unintentional, I’m sure, but the disciples of Jesus echoed the request of Psalm 27 (Teach me your way, O LORD) when they asked Jesus “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1). Jesus was praying. His disciples saw him and heard him praying. There was something different about the way Jesus prayed. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone. It was real and genuine and attractive. He didn’t recite memorized prayers, or they could have memorized the words he used and prayed like he did. So they said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
In Luke’s account, Jesus gave them what we call the Lord’s Prayer. In Matthew’s account of the same event, he tells us that Jesus first told them some things to avoid.
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven…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” (Matthew 6:1,5).
Those Jesus identified as hypocrites prayed in order to be seen and admired. They were more concerned about what other people thought about them than they were about what God thought. They weren’t praying. They were performing.
When Jesus prayed it was different. Jesus spoke to God like a child speaks to his father. His prayers were spontaneous, full of confidence that God is not distant, but near.
Jesus went on to say, “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” (Matthew 6:6).
I’m a pastor. I have to pray in public every week. Is Jesus saying it’s a bad idea to pray in public? No. It’s the heart attitude that matters.
I’m sure you’ve been in situations where you knew other people expected you to pray out loud. I remember the sheer terror of that when I was younger. The youth pastor asked us to pray around the circle. I was in the circle. Everyone would notice if I didn’t pray. I had to say something. While other people were praying, I was counting down how many were left before I had to pray. I practiced what I would say in my mind so I wouldn’t sound like an idiot when my turn came around.
Was that prayer? Nope. I wasn’t thinking about God or talking to God at all. I was thinking about what others in the group thought about me. I was “praying” to be seen by men, to gain their admiration.
Jesus told his disciples not to be like the hypocrites who make sure they wind up on a street corner at the prescribed daily times for prayer so they can have an audience. They want to be admired. People admire them. They received their “reward” – the approval of other men. But God is not impressed with all that. That’s not prayer.
Empty Phrases
Furthermore, Jesus continued, “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” (Matthew 6:7-8).
Something like what we call “prayer” is happening all over the world right now in all kinds of religions: prayers are being offered to various gods in India, to Allah in the Middle East, to ancestors in some cultures, to saints and to Mary, the mother of Jesus, by Roman Catholics. Christians aren’t the only people who pray. But in all this “praying,” what can you discern about people’s concept of God or their gods by the way they pray?
Maybe you’ve seen pictures of prayer wheels in the mountains of Nepal. To a pinwheel, driven by the wind, scraps of paper with written prayers are attached. Just think how often that prayer comes around on a really windy day. What do those who attach their prayers to a “prayer wheel” think the gods are like? What seems to matter is not the heart of the person praying, but the number of times the prayer goes out. The gods are moved to respond by the number of times a request is made. The person making the request isn’t sure what that number is (how many times the prayer needs to go out to get the attention of the gods) but they get the petition going around over and over again, hoping they’ll hit the right number and get a response from the gods.
In Islam, devout Muslims pray to Allah at prescribed times, five times every day. No matter where they are when the call to prayer comes, they kneel, facing the right direction, bow before God, which is the correct posture, and repeat prescribed prayers. You’ve probably seen pictures of Muslims on their knees touching their foreheads to the ground on their prayer mats. Day after day they follow this prescribed pattern for prayer as part of their devotion to God.
There’s probably something we can learn from the Buddhists about being persistent in praying for something that is important to us. And there’s something we could learn from the Muslims about being devoted to consistent prayer. But what kind of God is impressed more with the sheer volume of words and hours spent praying than with the heart attitudes of the person praying? What kind of God would care more about the time of day when you pray than about the desires and attitudes of your heart?
Jesus told us not to be like the Gentiles who think they will be heard because they use a lot of words. On the other hand, what does the way you pray and the words you use when you pray reveal about what you believe God is like? Where do meaningless words creep into your prayers?
A little help, please
Jack Miller, the founder of World Harvest Mission, said he once asked his wife, Rose Marie: “If you could change one thing about me, what would it be?” She said, “You don’t listen.” So Jack began to pray, “Lord, forgive me for not listening to my wife. Help me to be a better listener.”
Do you see any problem with that prayer? From just those words, what did Jack Miller believe about God and about himself? By saying, “Help me,” Jack was saying, “God, I can do it. I can be a better listener with a little boost from you. All I need is a little help.”
A year later, after asking God to help him be a better listener, he came back to his wife and asked, “Rose Marie, if you could change one thing about me, what would it be?” And she said, “You don’t listen.” He was shocked. He said it took him a while to understand that he couldn’t change himself with just a little help from God. He needed a changed heart. And only God could change his heart. That began to change the way he prayed. Instead of just saying, “Help me do this,” he began to ask God to change in him what he could not change through his own efforts. Sometimes when we ask God for help, we recognize our dependence on him. But sometimes it can be “empty phrases” – words that sound pious but don’t mean anything.
Where else do we tend to repeat prayers that become empty words? What about our prayers before meals? How often have you heard or prayed something like this: “Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies…” That sounds pretty spiritual. So you’ve picked that up and used those words. But what does that mean?” Would the food not be a blessing or nourish your physical body if you didn’t ask God to use it like that? Is it like God performs a special miracle when you ask him to bless the food to the nourishment of our bodies? Does he remove the germs that would have made us sick if we hadn’t prayed? Is that the reason for praying before we eat?”
What do you mean when you ask God to “bless this food”? I was at a family gathering one time and one of my nephews came in late for dinner. Everyone greeted him, and someone said, “Sit down and eat, the food has already been blessed.” What does that mean? Does it mean we recited the prescribed magical incantation to invoke the protection of the deity over the food? It’s now safe to eat.
Isn’t the reason for praying before a meal to remember that everything comes from God? Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us today our daily bread.” God has given us food to eat, so we come before him and remember our dependence on him and express our gratitude for his blessing of food and drink.
Instead of a bunch of meaningless words repeated time after time, Jesus told his disciples to pray sincerely. It’s the heart that matters, and what you believe God is like will shape the way you pray.
Prayer has to do with relationship
If you talked to your wife only when other people could see and hear what you said, and if your motive was to impress them with what a wonderful husband you are by the lovely things you say, do you think your wife would want to hear you talk? She wants you to talk to her, not with flowery words you’ve memorized or by saying exactly the same things you’ve said every day for years. She wants you to really talk to her. She wants you to want to know her and to let her know you by telling her what you think and how you feel about things that have happened.
God is a person. He has spoken to us in creation and more clearly in his written Word. He has given us his Spirit to open our minds to what he says in his Word. And he invites us to talk to him, to express what we’re thinking, what we’re feeling, what we’re afraid of, what we don’t like, what we do like.
A pattern for prayer
Having warned them against praying just to impress others and against repeating meaningless words, Jesus gave his disciples a pattern for prayer. We call it the Lord’s Prayer, but it is not something Jesus prayed over and over again. It can’t be. It includes the petition, “Forgive us our debts” (our trespasses). Jesus never needed to ask the Father to forgive him. He never sinned. And having just warned his disciples not to make prayer a matter of repeating words over and over again, he certainly would not have given them a prayer they should memorize and pray word for word day after day. There’s nothing wrong with reciting the Lord’s Prayer in a worship setting. But it is a pattern for prayer that Jesus gave us.
He said, “Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:9-13).
In the chapters that follow we are going to be looking at patterns for prayer that can be found in the psalms. What you find in this model prayer Jesus gave us are aspects of prayer that are deeply rooted in the psalms. The Lord’s Prayer is a model prayer, a pattern for praying. Jesus gave his disciples some categories of things to pray about. And you will find all of those categories of prayer in the psalms. In a sense, the skeleton of the Lord’s Prayer is fleshed out in the psalms.
Let me explain by briefly showing how each of the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer can be found in the psalms.
Our Father in heaven
No devout Jew before the time of Jesus addressed God as “Father.” Jesus introduced that close relational term. The psalmists, writing hundreds of years before the time of Jesus, did not address God as “Father.” That is a distinctively Christian way to address God. But as you consider the various ways the psalmists addressed God, what you find are terms that imply an intimacy of relationship.
“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” (Psalm 8:1).
“O LORD, my God, in you do I take refuge” (Psalm 7:1).
The term LORD (all caps) in our Bible translations is the word Yahweh. When Moses met God at the burning bush and God commanded him to go back to Egypt to tell Pharaoh to set the people of Israel free, Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, `The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, I AM has sent me to you’ ” (Exodus 3:13-14).
When a psalm begins by addressing God as LORD, it is this revealed name of God that is used. It can be translated literally as “I Am,” but in the Old Testament covenantal context, it means “I am with you to bless you.”
So the name of God as the psalms begin reflects an intimacy, closeness, and a certain privilege that belongs to the people of God. Jesus intensified that sense of intimacy with God by encouraging us to address God as “Father,” but biblical prayer has always assumed a relationship of closeness with God.
Hallowed be your name
Prayer is concerned with God’s glory. The psalms are a rich source of not just information about God, but of learning ways to delight in the majesty and beauty and glory of God. God is holy. God is high and exalted. He is transcendent – high above us. Our Father in heaven is infinitely holy, and that creates a certain amount of reverence and awe as we come before God. We are sinful people – forgiven, justified, adopted, but still sinful. Even so, we are invited to draw near to God as loved children.
This petition, “hallowed be your name” has its parallel in the psalms: “Exalt the LORD,” “Magnify the LORD.” To exalt is to lift up from a lowly position to a position of honor. To raise in status, dignity and honor. We can’t make God any higher status than he already is. We can’t make God more dignified or more worthy of honor. We can’t make God more holy than he already is. So why do the psalmists call us to exalt and magnify God? What higher status can you lift him up to? What higher position can be given to God than King of kings and Lord of lords? Who is higher than the Most High God?
To exalt God means to elevate or lift God higher in our estimation of him. In the way you think of God, may he be hallowed and honored with the respect that belongs to him.
Your kingdom come
God rules over all. He is sovereign over men and nations. In this petition we are not asking God to begin to reign. We are expressing a longing for the visible reign of God to spread in this world. We are asking that people, including ourselves, would honor God and acknowledge his lordship.
If God is reigning as the Sovereign King over all the earth, why is there so much evil and brokenness in our world? The psalms will give you examples of the kind of honest questions you can bring to God and the perspective God will give you as you ask those questions. The psalms are full of expressions of desire for God’s reign to be evident in life. The longing expressed in the psalms is for the peoples and nations of this world to know and honor God.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
Prayers in the psalms are often focused on the difficulties people experience in this fallen world. What we experience in life doesn’t make sense if God is ruling over everything. What goes on in our world often doesn’t look like the will of a good and loving God. We are often confused – what we experience doesn’t fit the ideas we have of how God should work in our lives. So God’s people cry out to him for justice, for change, for understanding.
Give us this day our daily bread
Because we can go to the grocery store and buy what we need without any difficulty, and because we have food in the pantry and the refrigerator, it is easy for us to forget that God is the one who provides what we need to live each day. When you are out of work and can’t find a job and bills begin to pile up, you are forced to recognize how desperately you need God to provide what you need to live. When you are hungry and a meal is provided for you, being thankful is easy. When you have all you need, it’s easy to forget to thank God for his provision.
The psalms are full of thanksgiving and gratitude for God’s provision for his people. The writers of the psalms expressed dependence on God for everything.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors
We are sinners. Sin creates a relational debt to God – we haven’t honored him as we should. We sin against God, we sin against other people, and other people sin against us. Jesus taught his followers to acknowledge their debt of sin before God regularly, to face the truth about what our sin does to our relationship with God, and to know that we need God’s forgiveness. Sometimes we understand how our sin impacts God by feeling the impact of other people’s sins against us.
There are great examples of remorse, confession and repentance in the psalms. We need to learn that there is a difference between merely admitting that we have sinned and actually turning to God in repentance and acknowledging our need for God’s mercy and grace. The psalms give us a deeper understanding of what it means to pray, “forgive us our debts…”
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
It won’t take you long as you read through the psalms to find the psalmists asking God for protection, acknowledging their weakness and looking to God to rescue them from their enemies, from opposition, and from evil. There is honesty in the psalms about the brokenness of our world, about the evil we suffer and about the sense we have when we suffer wrong that we need a defender and an avenger.
The temptation when we are sinned against is to take vengeance into our own hands. We don’t just want to get even; we want to get ahead in the score. But we end up making things worse.
Furthermore, experiences of being wronged often lead to temptation to reject God. The lies and temptations of Satan haven’t changed through the centuries: “Did God really say that? God knows that won’t happen. God is not good, he is holding something back from you that would be good for you.” In those times when God allows us to experience suffering or to be sinned against in a grievous way, we will experience temptation to not believe God is wise in what he chooses and that he is not good in what he does.
The psalms teach us to bring those ways we’ve been wronged to God and plead with him to deal with those who have sinned against us – to deliver us from evil. And the psalms bring us back from our unanswered questions about God’s work in our lives to remind us that God is good and wise in all he does.
Prayer is a privilege
The psalms were not written to give us a method for praying or to provide instruction on the right technique for prayer. They are actually a collection of songs. But in those songs of praise and adoration and confession and petition, we can learn much about the God to whom we pray.
I’m not saying we need to go beyond what Jesus taught us about prayer. I’m saying what Jesus said is also found in the psalms. Jesus knew these songs and prayers of Israel. They were on his mind often – even as he hung on the cross (Psalm 22 begins and ends with words Jesus cried out on the cross). The God Jesus described when he taught his disciples to understand God’s willingness to hear their prayer is the same God you find in the psalms.
Biblical prayer assumes this truth about God: He is a person who wants to know us and wants to be known. A force or an impersonal power can’t hear or respond. God is a person who hears, who cares, who invites, who loves, who protects, and who delights in being known.
The privilege of approaching God like this is staggering. Jesus is uniquely the Son of God, and God is uniquely his Father. When Jesus prayed, He came to his Father as the one and only Son. But now he makes it clear that those in relationship with him have been brought into this intimate relationship with God. We can now call God “Father” and come to him as loved children.
Ultimately, it’s what we believe about God in our hearts that will shape the way we pray.