"This, Then, Is How You Should Pray” | Matthew 6:5–15

Show Notes

Episode 746: 
In this episode, we dive into the topic of prayer, specifically focusing on Jesus' teachings about how to pray as outlined in Matthew 6. We explore the contrast Jesus makes between genuine prayer and the hypocritical prayers of the Pharisees, who sought public recognition rather than a true connection with God. We discuss the significance of praying in private and the heart behind our prayers, emphasizing that God desires authenticity over eloquence.

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You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Bible Guys, and we are very excited to be back together. Well here we are. Yes. The platinum edition, however, was stellar, Jeff. It was super great. Yes, yeah, that was a couple weeks ago now, Chris, No. No, no, this week. I saw it today. Yeah, yeah, yes, morning. Yeah, well that's what's playing this morning. But you and I shot one last week, didn't we? Oh okay, okay. So the one that plays next week, the one we did last week, the one we're doing now is the one that plays two weeks from now, or for the people that are listening. Hey, right, you ever watch Simpsons? We're Homer Simpson goes ye. So so the Wesley thing was a couple weeks ago for our listeners. All right, well, hey, I watched The Bible Guys this morning, and Wesley did a great job. He did, he did super great. So today, Jeff, we are talking about Jesus making the comment. Then this then is how you should pray. There you go. And so before we get into that, we have a segment by Desiree. And this is not a very common segment. It is a segment called stump the pastor the pastor. We do one of these every few weeks. Yeah, I'd say three weeks, maybe once every three weeks. But this this is when only people write in. And so this one comes in from Patrick. H Hi Patrick, And Patrick says, what does it mean to quote hear from God? And how do we know it's him? That's a good question, It's a great question, and especially you know, and I wonder if it's a you know, I wonder if Patrick's been a Christian a long time, or if Patrick's a new Christian or not a Christian. I don't know, but but I think across the board, even for mature Christians, you know, it's it's it's still a question that we have to pay attention to. Right. We may know the answer, but we still have to be in tune, I think, to God's voice, don't you think? Yes? Yeah? So what is your first initial reaction to this? I would say, first of all, great question, Patrick. I think that this is a question every Christian has to ask at some point, and the sooner the better, because what you're looking for now is how do I know what I'm supposed to do? How do I know if I'm honoring God. I'm trying to figure out how to maximize my life for the days I have left, and I want to be bear much fruit as we talked about last week in the podcast for Jesus whatever. So I don't know what I'm supposed to do. First of all, God will never give you something that is contradictory to scripture, right, So the first place to go is God's word. He's already spoken to you. This is the thing. A lot of times people wish, I wish Jesus would just show up at the foot of my bed in the middle of the night like this nine hundred foot Jesus what to do and say, Patrick, I want you to do X y Z right. But He's already given you his word. So you need to become a student of the Word, and you need to spend time in God's word and every day. And by the way, that's important because some people, and I'm sure you've had a two where they've come to me and they say God told me this, and you're like, well, no, I'm pretty sure that wasn't God. Because in the thirty semid years we've been in ministry, both of us. Right, I've had multiple people come and tell me, man, I feel so much better. I feel like God told me I'm supposed to divorce my spouse. Yeah, right, why just because I'm sick of them? Right right? I'm like, trust me, don't blame that on God, right right. He didn't tell you to do that. There's a lot of those kinds of things that people will do. Yep. So I said, that's first God's word. Man, you need to know God's word. And if you're not positive where to start start? Jump in with the words of Jesus and then the teachings of Paul. I think those two things would really really help you. So, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the teachings of Jesus for the most part. And then you know, you get into the Book of Acts, which is the story of the church. Luke wrote that he also wrote the Book of Luke and then from Romans on. The big chunk of the next portion of the Bible is the teaching teachings of Paul about how to follow Jesus and act like a Christian. I'm not minimizing the rest scripture. But as you're looking for what should you do in your life, that's going to be the beginning. It's the place to start. Yeah. Yeah, so God's word, I would say, you need to be spending meaningful time in prayer, and when you don't know what to pray, pray for wisdom, pray for discernment, and let not let God know you're willing to do whatever he says. Have it be kind of a surrender prayer to him. It doesn't have to be super long, just I think it needs to be consistent, right, that you need to be spent time per which by the day, we're talking about prayer today, so that'll be great. The other one is I think the Bible says in Book of Proverbs, which by the way, I think you should be reading the Book of Proverbs every day too for wisdom. But in the Book of Proverbs, Solomon says multiple times that counselors, godly counselors will help you and protect you from making bad choices. One of the verses he uses, one of the quotes, he says, there's safety in a multitude of counselors, and so having godly counselors and you measure the good counsel that you're getting against scripture. And so the way you know whether or not you're getting good advice from a godly counselor is does it align with scripture? And are they're using scripture as the basis of what they're trying to say rather than just their opinion. A lot of people. Everybody has an opinion, right, right, everybody has an opinion. So what you want to know, what you want to hear is somebody saying, these are God's words and this is how I think you apply him to your life. Yeah. And then I also think that there are times where God will speak and and just like you said number one, He's already given us a lot of commands through his word. That's God speaking, uh. And then through prayer. And then sometimes during prayer we will get hit with a thought or or something that feels like a directive from the Holy Spirit. And and I don't know about you, but like most of the time for me, it's like that was out of nowhere, and and and and it's like and that that's I think that's probably the wrestling part of his question, which is like how do I know this is from God? Versus like my thoughts and in which I would say, I would say that you know, first of all, In John ten, Jesus says that my sheep know me, and they know my voice. And I think that the longer that you pray and the longer you align yourself with getting to know God, the easier it is to recognize what is from God in the Holy Spirit. So that's that's a good thing. Uh. Secondly, Proverbs thirty seven says, delight yourself and the law of the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Right, So the best thing to do is to want to do good. And so when you when you throw yourself into God's word, he is going. To which is the law of the Lord's side, which is. The law of the Lord's sides. Right, then he is going to direct you. And you're going to say, oh, man, I want to go tell that person, I want to do good, I want to bless others, and and and it's gonna it's just going to come out in the form of uh, something that you want to do, I think, And then uh. And then I would say, also, the godly counsel is the only thing we didn't talk about, right, right, No, you did. Yeah, but but but yeah, I would definitely say if if you feel like something's from God measured against God's word measured against you know, godly counsel, So get the advice of people around you that you know are good Christians and and and and see what they say as well. And I think that God will use people to nudge you along the way. Yeah. So then Matthew six thirty three says, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, which is just good living, and all these things will be added under you, right, So seek first his kingdom. So what's God's plan for the world, and and and be a part of that, and then his right living and then all the other things he'll add to you. So then that's why you need to know God's word, because then you'll know God's plan for the world and how, and then all you have to do is figure out your part in it. So then there's there's two more things. I would say. One, I pray often that God will close the doors, and then He'll throw open the right doors and then give me the courage to walk through them. So what I don't do is shove on doors. I don't I don't find the thing I want to do and push on that instead, I let God know, Hey, I'm thinking this, but I'm not sure. If you open the doors, I'll walk through it. If you close, if you slam the door, you know, make it obvious. And and so I see him do that a lot of times where a thing I thought was a good idea, he just slam the door. I don't keep shoving on that one. But then there's other times when doors are wide open, and then you're just a little nervous about it. You're not sure. And if if you're seeking his kingdom, it's it's for him first, and you're you're living right according to his words, then all these other things to be added to you just walk through the door, have courage to go through that door and see what God's going to do. And then that doesn't mean that you're never going to fail, but failure is a great teacher. And then you just get back up, you know, rise back up and go again. Yeah, that's great. Hey, great question, Patrick. I think that that's not all of it, but that's a good start. Yeah, that's a good start. I think we took a stab at it, but but yeah, I think that definitely as we begin as Christians to get to hear from God. We just continue to pray, pray, pray, and the bigger, the bigger the thing that you hear from God, the longer you should wait and go to God and say, God, please help me confirm this is from you. Right? Right, So you know, start a business. Oh that's a pretty big decision, you know, then you better pray through that pretty hard. Sure, right, yeah, But if you know, if you know all of God's promises, especially with regard to right living, tithing, placing Him first in every area of your life being a holy person, I think you can have a reasonable expectation then that in all the things you're doing as you move forward. Next, if you if your genuine heart is that God be first in everything, you have a reasonable expectation that God's going to take care of you. Right, It's not like he's going to go There's only one linear path for your life, and if you step out of that zap you know. Instead, it's if you're doing all the things you know to do, and you're growing in your walk with God, you getting God to counsel, you spend it time in the world, you're generous with your resources, you're holy in your life. God says He's gonna bless that kind of person. And so we you have a reasonable expectation that Hey, whatever path you're deciding to go forward now, if it's moral and legal and ethical and biblical, then you can expect that God's going to give you his favorite. God's for you, He's not against you. That's great. Well, hey, a lot of that answer revolved around prayer and speaking of prayer. Hey, that is exactly what Jesus is. That was a good transition teach us to do. Y. Are we moving into good transitions now? Is what we're doing? Hey, that was a good one. Wow, Yeah, you're right. It really likes that. Oh it's great. You know what, I'm going to leave it a good I was going to try to correct it and make. It bad, but it was a good one. So talking about prayer. So in Matthew chapter six, Jesus teaches about prayer. And we're just going to read from Matthew six, verse five to verse fifteen, and it just simply says, when you pray, don't babble on. Oh I'm sorry, When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who I was getting to the babbel part, which is my favorite part for you. When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth. That is all the reward they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your father in heaven. Then your father, who sees everything, will reward you. When you pray. Don't babble on and on as the gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. Don't be like them, for your heavenly father knows exactly what you need before you ask him. Pray like this, our Father in Heaven, May your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come soon. May or will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need. And forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And don't let us yield the temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly father will forgive you. But if you refuse to for give others. Your father will not forgive your sins. Well, that's a nice little tag at the end of that you, So it's a good one. So as Jesus is talking about prayers, I love how he starts by saying, don't do it this way, right, here's what not to do. Don't do that. Did I ever tell you I interviewed at Charles Stanley's church? Did I ever tay that? Yeah? And he had a prayer closet, And everything I read about Charles Stanley and heard from his sermons, I know that he was a super praying guy. Right. Just you know, some people just lean more heavily toward prayer. They're just prayer warriors. They're built that way. They spend so much time in prayer. And he's one of those guys. And so anyway, I saw his prayer closet and I thought it's built right onto his office, and it was just pretty amazing, and I thought to myself, Wow, And but it dawned on me that most of his praying that he had done and what I read about in his books happened in private, right, not publicly. Right. But Jesus is talking about praying for show with the wrong motives. So the Pharisees would stand on the corners, you know, and they would you know, praying fast and put ashes on their forehead and they would make it sort of a public display. And and and apparently their motives were wrong. We don't, you know, it doesn't say that, but that's the indication that that because well, actually Jesus does say it. Well, he calls them hypocrites. He calls them hypocrites, and he says for everybody to see, all right, I was trying to give him credit, right, but then he says, don't do it repetitively. And and you know what's interesting is that he said, don't babble on and on and on repeating the same thing. And then he gives us the Lord's prayer. And it's so funny because many of our listeners, probably like myself, grew up saying, okay, send say ten Hell Mary's and say twenty our fathers. And it's like, it's so interesting because here he's saying, you think your prayer's going to be heard because you repeat over and over and over, but don't do that, and then he gives us the Lord's prayer. And I grew up saying, I grew up with somebody telling me to do that. I led a guy to Christ a few years ago and he got baptized here at Heritage Church. And then he was started reading through the Bible. He was in one of our New Believers kind of classes. Starts getting excited about spend a little bit of time in God's word every day. So what he decided, He's going to spend time about ten to fifteen minutes a day reading the Bible. He was going to spend a few minutes a day learning how to pray. He wanted a weekly tithe for God. And he wanted to be on a team, right, some kind of a ministry team for God. Those are the three things he was doing so, which I think is great first steps for new believers, right, a daily time with God, a weekly tithe to God, and a committed team for God. So he was doing those things, and he came to me after like two or three weeks of this new believers reading his Bible and praying every day, and he said, man, I just read Matthew chapter six and Jesus says, don't Babylon and on he said, but I only know three prayers. And he said, those three prayers. I know that our father, right, I know the Hail Mary. And then he had one more. He had one more out of a prayer book probably, and so there were three prayers that he knew. He said, Man, I do those every day, he said, So now it's been like three or four weeks. Yeah, he said, I'm twenty something days in those are the only prayers. They pray all three of those prayers every day, he said. But then Jesus says, don't Babylon and on as a dentile's do do you think I should find some other prayers? And I said, well, I think God's waiting for you to start talking from your heart instead of quoting something somebody taught you, right, And so I don't. I think it's very interesting here he says, don't Babylon and then he gives us this list or this this model prayer that we use to Babylon and on with Yeah. So two years ago we did a series. It was a seven week series called Higher Power. And if you want to go to hero ai Church dot com and then just scroll back on the media, you can listen to the whole thing. But we broke down the Lord prayer one by one. And what's so interesting is that I honestly, from the bottom of my heart, believe that Jesus didn't give us this prayer as a prayer to recite, even though I'm very careful to always say reciting this prayer is not a bad thing. It's it's a good thing. Uh, you know, it's it's it's not a bad thing. But but to to to think that saying that multiple times over and over right is something that you know, equals penance for the you know, for the different levels of sins and things like that, that's where that that's where the mistake comes from. But to quote this prayer once, you know in your prayers is a good thing. But Jesus gave it to us a model. How do we know that, Well, because he taught us how to pray in Matthew, but he also taught us how to pray in Luke, and and in Luke he did a different And if it was a prayer that we should quote, then it's almost like we should say, Jesus, don't you know the Lord's prayer. It's like it's like it's like, Jesus, you forgot a part. And it's like, no, no, no, he didn't forget a part. It says that he gave us a model, and the model is, you know, it's basically a thing to follow. So if you'll notice, at the very beginning, he says, our father were in heaven. May your name be kept holy. We probably learned it as hallo would be your name. Another translation says great is your name, because that's what that means. And so what God's really doing is he's saying, like, hey, if you want a prayer, you should pray like this, And then he's basically saying, your first step is declare God's greatness. That's right, you know, you should just just take a moment at the beginning of your prayer, before you get to your needs, wants and wishes, take time to rest in just who it is you're praying to, because if you do that, then maybe by the time you get to your requests, then maybe you'll feel a lot better about them. Recognizing just who it is that you're praying to and who it is that's on your side, recognize God's sovereignty, recognize God's greatness, and give God glory at the beginning of your prayer, because it's going to reset, reframe, and reshape everything about what's going on in your life. And so I think that that's why that's there. And then he goes on and then he actually, you know, asks us to then lay out our dependency upon God. Right, So God give us our daily bread, God give us our needs, give us you know where we want your will, not our own. God forgive us, right, and it's just and it's our dependency upon God in every area of our life. And I think that the first half of the prayer is You're the boss, right, and it's all about you. Right. The second half of the prayer is I need you, yeah right. Those are the only two pieces to the prayer. Yeah, so where at the beginning. And I've had people challenge me on this. I've had people challenge me on so many different areas that are similar to this. Romans chapter ten versus nine, and Tennis says, if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth Jesus's Lord, right, believe in your heart that God raised them from the dead. Profess your mouth is the Lord. So I had a guy tell me one time, you can't be saved if you don't say it out loud. Yeah. Right. He argued extensively with me as opposed to the intent being this, because it says to say with your mouth, and in this one it says, don't pray out in public, only pray in private. But it's interesting because Jesus prayed in public all the time, right right. He also prayed it. He had a very deep private prayer life, but he would and many, Father, let them see your will, Father, let them see your glory. There's many times where he prays out loud, or he prays for the people. He prays in front of his disciples. The disciples in the Book of Acts, they pray together out loud. So he's not saying don't pray. It's the attitude of the heart that's the thing. And you're to talk about this. So the hypocrisy is, hey, look at me, Look at the big words I can use, Look at all the theolog how theologically astute I am with my prayers. You ever get around something like that. They just prayer, all pray, They pray all the theology they know. I call it a pontificating, Yeah, yeah, pontificating. Oh my goodness. We had a guy at my first church. It was like whenever you called on him, you just knew it was going to be like this show. It's like it's like, everybody, buckle up, get your popcorn. He's gonna pray, you. Know, And it's funny. I think you should be respectful in your prayer. Yeah, but uh A pastor friend of mine one time said, if you wouldn't order a steak that way, you probably shouldn't pray that way, right, he said, the these and the doows, you're praying like Shakespeare, and then you turn around and you just act like a normal person as soon as you're done. So the way you pray over your steak should probably have been the way you ordered your steak. Right, Just just very normal person. Just be a normal guy, Right, that's what God wants. God wants you to be a normal person. You pray over it with the these and the thows and all these big doctrinal statements, and then you go in and now you're just a normal guy talking about the new truck pickup truck you're buying. And he said, man, God can tell the difference between when you're when you're being fake and when you're not. And that's a challenge. But then he basically gives us two pieces. Your name is holy, You're in heaven. Your kingdom is what we're looking for. I want your will to be done on earth, is in heaven. Those are all You're the boss. Everything about you I'm not worthy of, but I'm grateful for man alive. I want to be a part of your kingdom coming to earth. I want to be part. And when you think about that, what you're praying is, God, help me to be part of being your hands and your feet, serving the people that need to be served, taking the Gospel to the people who need to hear it. I want to be part of you making a difference in this world right because I'm one of your children, and I want your will to be done, not just my will here on earth, even as it is in heaven. And now, because you're the boss, I need you to forgive my sins. I need you to provide for me all these things right so that I can do the things that I prayed at the beginning that your will would be done. And those two things go together, and I think it's just a really genuine way to pray. But instead, because of the beauty of the prayer, we love reciting it, and there's nothing wrong with reciting that prayer together collectively. It's a beautiful thing. We just can't get bogged down thinking that is the only way to the formula is God, you're the boss, Would you help me? Would you forgive me? Those are the three steps to it. Yeah, and then he says, hey, don't be asking for stuff you're not willing to do. Yeah, that's I think that's the point behind that last one. Yeah, right, don't ask for food if you're not willing to give food. Don't don't ask for forgiveness if you're not willing to offer forgiveness. Don't ask to be protected from temptation if you're not willing to walk away from temptation. I think that's the message he's sending there is because he doesn't talk about anything on the front side. God, you're the You're the one that's in charge. But he does talk about this forgiveness thing because I think that's the hardest of them. Yeah, I agree, I definitely agree. Well, Hey, that's that's great. That's a great place to think. Wrap up. I feel like there's one more thought maybe for our listeners, which is, if you are you know, new and you you don't have a habit of praying. I would say, take time to pray, and do it in the morning, do it before your day starts, and take just a moment and by your head, and and just honest to goodness, just like you said, talk talk to God like a friend. Talk to God from your heart, recognize his greatness, ask him for your dependency of what you need him. You know what you want him to do for you. And then uh, and then just continually recognize Him throughout the day. And I would say, just start there, and uh, it would be a start to a great prayer life. Yeah. So all right, well that's our time, so hopefully we will see you tomorrow on the Bible guys. H