Righteous Praying #2b

Jesus, when He teaches on prayer in this chapter, is not teaching you time management principles for a good prayer life. Receive this teaching that He has to find fertile soil in your life so that your heart will respond in the kind of prayer that we all want.

The religious Pharisees prided themselves on their long, structured, and methodical prayers. But imagine if we talked to people like that. Would that really enhance our relationship with them? Hi, I'm Bill Wright, and as Don Green continues to teach God's people God's Word, he'll be resuming our current series titled, Lord Teach Us to Pray. And we'll be delving into God's Word to teach us more about righteous praying.

So here is Don to guide us on the truth pulpit. There's a second point of self-examination that I want to lay out to you, and it's this. Examine how you pray. Examine how you pray.

Two more sub-points here, just like the last one. And ask yourself this question as you examine how you pray. Do you aim for quantity? Do you aim for a quantity of prayer? Look at verse 7 with me.

I think it'll become clear what I mean by this. Verse 7, Jesus says, And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. Jesus says there are pagans out there, and they'll pray, and they'll repeat prayers, and they'll do all of that on the assumption that if they just pray long enough and hard enough, somehow God will hear them and answer. Jesus says, don't be like that. When he uses this term that's translated meaningless repetition, it's a verb that means to babble. To speak without thinking.

It has the idea of idle talk. What Jesus does here, listen to me, not that you're not, but you know what I'm saying. Jesus here is condemning a mechanical approach to prayer which is characterized by thoughtless speech and mindless repetition.

He says, don't be that way. When you pray, your mind is to be engaged. Your heart is to be engaged. Prayer is not a mechanical repetition of words.

It is not words that you say on one hand, while with your mind you're thinking about what you're going to do for the rest of the day. That's not praying. That is not acceptable to God. And he says, when those Gentiles pray that way, they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. Jesus says they've got an entirely wrong conception.

Their paradigm is completely wrong. He says, and to the extent that you have that mindset that many words equal good prayer, you've got to take a ball bat to it and just beat that thing down and break it until it is shattered and there is nothing left. And then rebuild it with what true prayer is. Because these Gentiles thought that long repetitious prayers would prompt God to respond favorably to them. And get this, beloved, Jesus says that's all wrong. And remember that He's teaching you as one of His disciples about prayer. And He says this, He says, God's favor is not bought with the quantity of your words. It's not about, beloved, this may shock some of you, it is not about how long you pray.

It's not. And that is gloriously liberating. You mean to say that I could pray for five or ten minutes with my heart really focused and engaged? And that would be more acceptable to God than if I prayed for an hour and was half asleep when I did it? Yes, that's exactly what Jesus is saying here. He says you can't force God to answer by saying the same thing repeatedly in a thoughtless way by just droning on and on and on without engaging your mind and heart and His character and who it is that you're praying to. Jesus says that's what pagans do. And if you have any doubt that that kind of prayer is meaningless and totally devoid of any substance whatsoever, beloved, and I say this with gentleness in my heart with who I'm going to address this to, if you have any doubt about that, go to a Catholic mass sometime, go to a Catholic funeral sometime, and listen to them repeat the same thing over and over again in a monotone, and you'll have an idea of what Jesus is saying.

And that is totally meaningless. It is just empty repetition without any spiritual reality behind it. Jesus says your Father is not like that, that is not the kind of prayer that He receives, and so don't pray like them. Don't pray like that. And you say, it's okay, I've been a Protestant all of my life, so what Jesus is saying here doesn't apply to me.

No, no, that's not it at all. You see, Jesus is going deeper than that. We can use the Catholic model of prayer or a Jewish model of prayer where it's just repetition of the same words over and over and over again. We can use that to make the point, but Jesus is teaching His disciples. And where you need to apply this in your own life is this.

And this convicts all of us. When you are speaking words ostensibly in prayer, while your mind is thinking about something else, you're just engaged in meaningless repetition. You're just babbling.

You're not really thinking about God, your heart really isn't engaged in that. Let me make it more personal. Let me make it where I'm going to get some complaints, okay? So you can start addressing your note to me or figuring it up this way. Let me get it right to where we live, running through your prayer list. When your heart is not engaged, when you are just mouthing the requests that you've penciled out before on your list, is a problem. That's that same kind of meaningless repetition. And if, notice my conditional statement here, so maybe that will restrict some of the complaints that I get about this, if you're simply going through that list in a mechanical way, you are not really praying. If it's just the same thing day after day after day, and your mind is not engaged, your heart isn't fervent, your heart isn't passionate, you're not praying! It's just meaningless repetition. For some of you, you need to just bomb your prayer list and start all over.

Because, beloved, I'm saying this for your upbuilding and for your benefit. Prayer involves intelligent, thoughtful words addressed to the living God that you are consciously engaged in. Some people can go through a prayer list and be consciously engaged and their heart move toward that direction. It's not the prayer list by themselves are wrong. I'm not saying that.

What I'm saying is how you use it. And substituting a mechanical repetition of your prayer list as a substitute for real prayer. Jesus says, I'm not buying that. It's just meaningless repetition. You say, I don't know if I agree with that.

Put it this way. Can you imagine having a human relationship where someone came to you and every day they said the same things to you repeatedly with no variety, no thought, no emotion? Hello, Janet. Good day to you today. Fine weather we're having, yes. I hope you have a nice day. And the next day it's the same thing. Hello, Janet. Nice day we're having.

Nice weather, yes. Good day. And again the next day. And it's the same thing over and over again. You would get tired of that pretty quickly.

You would turn your head away and say, I don't want to talk to that person. There's no relational reality here. He's on autopilot. God looks at that mechanical praying and says the exact same thing.

You're just on autopilot. I don't want to hear it. Until you get your heart and mind engaged, you're just praying like a pagan. You think you can just roll this off of your tongue without thinking and that that's what I want in prayer. Jesus says no. Uh-uh.

That's not it at all. Jesus here says that many words do not guarantee that your prayers will be heard. And beloved, that truth has hit me like a ton of glorious bricks.

It is so liberating to realize that. Jesus isn't setting a time schedule here. He's not setting down a bunch of rules about how you must pray. He's calling for a heart relationship to God in prayer that is rooted in the character of God, the goodness of God.

And that, beloved, should draw a believing heart and say that's what I want. God be with my Father. How many of you have been Christians for a long period of time? How many of you have fallen into that kind of repetitious model where your heart's not really engaged if you're even praying at all? And how many of you can look back into your past Christian experience, look back at times when you were under the fire of persecution, or maybe look back to those early days of prayer before someone got a hold of you and said these are the rules that you must follow? How many of you can look back and say, I remember what passion was like. I remember crying out to God for the salvation of my loved ones. I remember being on the floor before Him and just pleading for His favor. I remember being in prayer and just being raptured by how glorious it was to be in the presence of the Father who loved me. Beloved, go back to that!

Go back! Plow that ground again. Drill those wells again where the real reality of prayer is instead of the mechanical approach that so many of us have fallen into, maybe without even thinking about it. Because that kind of reality, that kind of passion in prayer can still be yours today.

It doesn't have to be the dead thing we've turned it into. Praise God for that! It's not that God has changed and all of a sudden that's what makes it boring. It's because somewhere along the way we lost our way. At some point we started to drift away and we started praying like pagans do and say it's about how long I pray and covering every item on my prayer list and if I don't do that I haven't really prayed.

God have mercy on us. God does not want long prayers simply for the sake of you praying long prayers. And beloved, there's a reason it's for your sake that I am so energized by this. It is for your sake, beloved, that I am so animated by this because I want to rescue your conscience from that which has held it in bondage for so long.

I know because I've been there and I hated it! And what Jesus does here is He breaks all of those chains and He sets your heart free to really pray. So much evangelical preaching on prayer, at least in our Western society, and Paul puts all across the land.

You've heard it and I've heard it from different teachers in different places. So much evangelical preaching on prayer is geared toward simply making you pray for a longer period of time than what you're currently doing. And it leaves you feeling guilty because you don't measure up to the pattern of men who lived hundreds of years ago in a different kind of society. And they leave you with the unspoken impression, maybe the untended impression, that if you're praying here it's not until you get up here that you really start to pray. So work yourself up and maybe then God will find your prayers acceptable. I know they'd never put it that way but you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Get this. Jesus sets up many words as a bad example. Look at what He says, verse 7. He says, When you're praying, don't use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard.

Why? For their many words. You can't assume that many words equals good prayer any more than you can assume that bad food at a restaurant will be made better if they just give you a bigger portion.

No, we've got to go right back to the start, beloved. And Jesus wasn't the first one to say this, this caution about many words in prayer. Write this verse down. In Ecclesiastes 5, 2, Solomon said the same thing. Ecclesiastes 5, 2. He said, Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God. For God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be you. God does not want long prayers that are simply the result of trying to meet an artificial time standard. He's not looking for quantity. You don't have to pray for two hours before God starts to get impressed and say, Hey, I'll start to listen now.

That's 120 minutes, man. Good job. You see, beloved, all of this is tied into your understanding of the character of God because we are not trying with our long prayers to overcome some perceived reluctance of God to respond to us. You don't have to keep talking and talking and talking until God says, Okay, that's enough. What is it you want now?

No. When you come to God, God is ready and willing to bless. You say, Well, what is it that he wants then? If it's not a quantity of prayer that he's after, you'll find the answer as you start to deal with the second question about examining how you pray.

The second question is this. Do you aim for quality of prayer? Verse 8. Quality of prayer. Jesus says, So do not be like them. Don't be like the Gentiles who meaninglessly repeat many words, who think that the length of their prayer is what guarantees that it will be heard. He says, Don't be like them, beloved.

He says, For your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Beloved, you don't have to rehearse the facts to God to get him up to speed on what's happening in your life. Lord, I got a really bad problem here at work. You know, my boss just really goes off on me. And then when he does, I get all upset. God knows all of that stuff already.

Okay? So don't waste your words informing him about the situation. Jesus says, God is a loving Father who already knows your needs and how best to meet them. And so, beloved, let me lay out something for you. Your job in prayer is to be as clear and simple in prayer as you can be, and trust God to bless you based on his great character. You just go to him with a humble heart and lay it out before him clearly. Lay it before him simply.

And pursue a quality of prayer that is based on the fact that you know who he is and you trust him. My kids don't have to go into a 30-minute explanation of why they're hungry, or more often they go to Nancy and say that. They don't come to me so much for it. But they don't have to explain the mechanics of hunger and the result they said, Mom, I'm ready for lunch.

You got it. That is so liberating. And the liberation that that brings to you makes you want to pray more and more, but from a different motive. You see, beloved, you put your confidence that your prayers are meaningful and God will respond to your prayers based on who he is, not on how you pray. So you're seeking a quality of prayer that is rooted in trusting his character that he's revealed in the Bible.

You say, I don't know. Well, beloved, let me say this. Many of the greatest prayers in the Bible were short. 78, by my count, 78 of the 150 Psalms are 12 verses or less. A complete unit of thought inspired by the Spirit of God for the occasion for which they were written, and so good and perfect in the sight of God that they're recorded in the canon to be an example to us on how to pray for all ages until Jesus comes. When Moses wanted to see the glory of God in Exodus 32, he said, Lord, I pray you, show me your glory. How great is that prayer? What condition of heart does that express that says, God, I just so desire you, would you just show me your glory? He prayed it in five seconds and prayed from a heart that was animated by desires that would put all of us to shame.

God, just show me your glory. Think about the dying thief on the cross. Luke 23 verse 42. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. The Bible ends with a short prayer. Revelation 22 verse 20.

Come, Lord Jesus. Think about what goes into those kinds of prayers. The love for the glory of God. The desire for his salvation.

The desire to see him vindicate his plan for history. And the shortness of the prayers are disproportionate to the heart that prays them. So what I want you to see, beloved, is there is nothing intrinsically meritorious about long prayers. There is nothing intrinsically defective about short prayers. And if you start your thinking about prayer at that point, it will change your prayer life. Now, some people I know have a set schedule for prayer. Some of you use prayer lists.

Understand that I'm not criticizing that per se. That is fine as far as it goes, but here's the challenge for those of you that are oriented towards that kind of structure. Here's your challenge that you have to deal with in your heart. That structure is not a substitute for real passion in prayer. That structure is fine only so far as it is a secondary means of fulfilling your love for the Lord. So you seek a quality of prayer instead of a quantity of prayer, and trust that in time God will direct it to where he wants it to be. James Boyce illustrates this concern with the following story.

This is great, so stay with me. He says, at one point, George Whitefield, the Calvinistic evangelist, and John Wesley, the Arminian evangelist, were preaching together in the daytime and rooming together in the same boarding house each night. One day after a particularly strenuous day, the two of them returned to the boarding house exhausted and prepared for bed. When they were ready, each knelt beside the bed to pray. And Whitefield, the Calvinist, prayed like this. He said, Lord, we thank you for all those with whom we spoke today, and we rejoice that their lives and destinies are entirely in your hand. Honor our efforts according to your perfect will.

Amen. He rose from his knees, Whitefield did, and got into bed. Now John Wesley had hardly gotten past his invocation of his prayer during that length of time, and he looked up from the side of his bed and he said, Mr. Whitefield, is this where your Calvinism leads you? Then Wesley put his head down and went on praying, having criticized Whitefield for the content and length of his prayer.

Whitefield stayed in bed and went to sleep. About two hours later, Whitefield woke up, and there was Wesley, still on his knees beside the bed. So Whitefield got up and went around the bed to where Wesley was kneeling. When he got there, he found Wesley asleep.

He shook him by the shoulder and said to him, Mr. Wesley, is this where your Arminianism leads you? You see, beloved, George Whitefield had a quality of prayer that led him to an informed brevity and trust in the Lord. Wesley was seeking a quantity of prayer that put him to sleep.

And I might add, probably put the Lord to sleep as well. So beloved, what am I saying? Don't make prayer so complicated. God is good, and He will bless your simple prayers as you pray to Him in private. And as you embrace that, beloved, stay with me just one more second. As you embrace that, prayer will increasingly become a lifestyle to you.

Not just an hour in the day. Mechanical repetition will be replaced by a warm-hearted devotion to Christ that is based on a true love for His person, not an adherence to a set of rules that you or someone else has made up for you. So God help us that the quality of our prayers would be worthy of this great Christ who loved us and gave Himself up for us. Well, it certainly sounds like we should make prayer a lifestyle and not just a chore that we check off of our to-do list as our due diligence to God. And perhaps for some people who have been Christians for many years, that's a new concept. Pastor Don Green will have more of our series, Lord Teach Us to Pray Next Time on The Truth Pulpit, and we invite you to join us then. Well, Don, we so easily want to measure our prayers by how long we pray, but you're saying that's the wrong approach.

Well, Bill, it's not that I say it's the wrong approach. Jesus said that, and here's the beauty of it, my friend. Prayer does not need to be complicated. You see, God loves us in Christ, and so we don't have to badger Him to hear us. The humble transparency of your brief prayers directly stated to God is the pattern that our Lord calls us to, rather than some kind of formal repetition or memorized prayers, rote prayers that often mark other forms of religion. No, what Christ wants us to do is to bring our requests directly humbly to our Lord, and He promises that God will hear and God will answer you. Thanks, Don. I'm Bill Wright, and we'll see you next time as our teacher continues teaching God's people God's Word here on the Truth Pulpit.