How should I pray?
by Faye Schmidt
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But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen (Matthew 6:6).
‘Don’t ask me to give the devotion – I’m not good at it.’
‘I’m no good at praying – I don’t know how.’
Has this been your response when approached to pray before others at any time? Rather than being out there in front of people praying, we are more often than not seeking to avoid praying in public. We make excuses.
But we are missing the point of the text if we avoid being prepared to pray to our Loving Father with others hearing and, hopefully, participating.
There are times when both public and private prayers may be required of us.
The issue with the man in our text is that he wasn’t praying to God. It would seem by Jesus’ rebuke that the man was performing to his audience. He was more concerned about those witnessing his words than actually having a relationship with God.
The key to this text is that Jesus wants us to know the Father personally. He makes it clear that the One we are to pray to is no witness to our prayer. God is ‘unseen’ – our Heavenly Father. He is the recipient of our prayers, not a bystander.
We can get caught up thinking our prayers are inadequate and not very eloquent. But we forget that when we pray to the Father, we have an Intercessor, one who takes our inadequacies and makes them and us right with him. And that is Jesus himself. That is why we usually end our prayers with the words ‘through Jesus Christ, our Lord’.
If you feel you just don’t know how to pray, remember, the disciples didn’t know either!
‘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 11:1,2).
And what did Jesus say? He gave us what we know as the Lord’s Prayer. When uncertain about what or how to pray, we look to Jesus and this gift.
I praise and thank you, dear Father, that through your Son, you have accepted me as your child, and you love me and seek to have me know and love you. Amen.
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