Rhythms: Prayer
Matthew 6: 5- 15
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 “This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Quite often, when you hear people speak about being a Christian, you will hear them speak in terms of having a relationship with God. This is good. I really like this way of speaking about being a Christian. The heart of Christianity isn’t a load of things to know, it’s about there being a person to know. As with many relationships, our relationship with God requires communication. We can listen to God through the words of others and through scripture and we can speak to God ourselves through prayer.
It’s interesting to note that our passage from the bible doesn’t say if you pray. It says when you pray. Prayer is assumed for followers of Jesus. Now, there’s loads of things I could say about prayer. I could talk about the different types of prayer. I could talk about how prayer might look different for different people. I could talk about how to pray for others or how to respond to unanswered prayer. Instead, I want to explore one thing that comes directly out of our passage.
I’m really struck by the fact that in our passage we are told that, when we pray, we should go into our room, shut the door and pray. Just us and God. I spend quite a lot of my time as a curate reminding followers of Jesus of the corporate aspects of following Jesus. Therefore it’s striking that Jesus goes in the opposite direction and instructs us to retreat into the personal, private place.
He instructs us to pray in the place where only God can see. This is really challenging in a world that’s all about getting a name for ourselves and building a platform. God doesn’t want the version of us that we project for everyone else to see. He doesn’t want the performance of ourselves that we play out at work or on social media. He wants the real, honest us in a deep and intimate relationship with him. That’s what Jesus had with his Father and we hunger after the same too. We’re to go into our rooms, shut the door and spend time with our Father in heaven.
This is the context in which we’re given the Lord’s prayer. It’s good that we say the Lord’s prayer together, however this isn't the context in which it was first given. It was first given to us, by Jesus, as a simple prayer to be used in our private, intimate moments with God. When was the last time you used it in that way?
So, we are being invited to go deeper into a relationship with God through prayer. More specifically, we’re being invited to go deeper into private, individual prayer where the only audience is God himself.
So, let me ask you, how is your prayer life? How is your relationship with God in the private place? Do you have a rhythm of private prayer? Do you need to start one?
Richard Barber
