 | It is a special occasion indeed when the Spirit of the Lord moves and touches people that directly correlates with the message of the day; especially when the message has not yet been given. Today was one of those divinely momentous occurrences. Before Pastor Ellery came up to speak on prayer from Matthew 6:5-8, Pastor Loraine shared about how the gifts of the Spirit can frequently be misconstrued as “our” personal gifts given to us by God in response to our spiritually maturity. But In reality, they have been and always will be His gifts that He distributes and uses by grace to whom and when He wills. These gifts cannot be conjured up and performed of our own volition. As an example, Pastor Loraine told us how she once randomly picked a person from a small group she was teaching and began to encourage them about some hypothetical problems on their job in order to demonstrate how a simple word of encouragement can minister to someone. |
What she did not know that the very person she picked out as a “for instance” case was actually in the middle of some turmoil on their job back then. What she did not know today that the very same person was sitting at church today going through the same kind of work problems. But God knew it and used a previous instance of divine encouragement to bring a fresh word of hope to a distressed soul.
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. I assure you: They’ve got their reward! 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. When you pray, don’t babble like the idolaters, 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. - Matthew 6:5-8
But what does any of this have to do with prayer from the passage in Matthew?
We are shown the good news that God knows our needs before we even bring them to Him in prayer. It also contains an admonition to not pray like hypocrites and idolaters. Before we get too judgmental about others, we need to remember that we can fall into the temptations of these behaviors. We need to look at ourselves and ask: do we pray louder around certain people? Do we recite sanctimonious dissertations with rehearsed eloquence to impress the leaders? Do we pray differently when we are alone than we do if we are with others? Prayer is communication with God, it is not delivering a wish list nor is it an opportunity to practice our public speaking skills. Honest and effective praying occurs when we share our true heartfelt desires and thoughts with Him. We can know He hears us because He loves us, not because we are needy or worthy or because of our succinctly eloquent speech.
God has already met our deepest need, mankind’s need for redemption of our sin. Before any of us were born, God knew mankind would rebel against Him, yet He created us anyway. Because of His love for us, He paid the price for our sin with the death of His Son Jesus. If our God went that far to redeem us from sin we can be assured He will always be there in our times of need with an answered prayer, an inner peace, a comforting word from a friend, or a scripture that reminds us of His love for us.
We are shown the good news that God knows our needs before we even bring them to Him in prayer. It also contains an admonition to not pray like hypocrites and idolaters. Before we get too judgmental about others, we need to remember that we can fall into the temptations of these behaviors. We need to look at ourselves and ask: do we pray louder around certain people? Do we recite sanctimonious dissertations with rehearsed eloquence to impress the leaders? Do we pray differently when we are alone than we do if we are with others? Prayer is communication with God, it is not delivering a wish list nor is it an opportunity to practice our public speaking skills. Honest and effective praying occurs when we share our true heartfelt desires and thoughts with Him. We can know He hears us because He loves us, not because we are needy or worthy or because of our succinctly eloquent speech.
God has already met our deepest need, mankind’s need for redemption of our sin. Before any of us were born, God knew mankind would rebel against Him, yet He created us anyway. Because of His love for us, He paid the price for our sin with the death of His Son Jesus. If our God went that far to redeem us from sin we can be assured He will always be there in our times of need with an answered prayer, an inner peace, a comforting word from a friend, or a scripture that reminds us of His love for us.
John Clark
John Clark is a husband to Julie, a father of one son living in Valrico, Florida. He has an Associate Degree of Theology from Life Christian University, and serves at Life Center of Brandon where he is a teacher and writer.