Powerful Prayer: When You Pray - Matthew 6:5–8, Pastor Rajiv

How do I pray?

Now, um, as a church, I want to further develop or at least help in what God may be calling us to do to develop a greater culture of prayer.

So again, years ago, when I when I woke up this morning, I had this question, how do I pray?

Now, to give you some context, I knew how to chant.

I knew uh, you know, I grew up with it.

I grew up as a Hindu, so I knew what chanting meant.

Uh, I grew up with saying certain sounds, like the om, ohm sort of sounds.

You know, I knew Hindu prayer rituals, the sounds, the repetitions, I knew all of it.

But what I didn't know is how to actually pray.

And in this moment in my life, I needed to know.

I was desperate to know how to pray.

So I grabbed Sarah, put her in the car, and we drove to the nearest Hindu temple.

Because at the time when I was still going through my journey of faith, I was I was trying to figure things out.

And I wanted to go to the Hindu temple to ask the Hindu priest, ask him, priest, how do I pray?

Like, teach me how to pray.

So I'm in the temple, I'm standing in line waiting for him, waiting for my turn to talk to him.

And right next to me is the priest's bookshelf, his his whole library of books right there, right in front of me.

And while I'm looking at it, while I'm waiting and I'm looking at this bookshelf, on the bottom of the shelf, I see a Bible.

A Bible in the Hindu temple.

I remember thinking, what is a Bible doing in a Hindu temple?

So I picked it up.

Turns out, I wasn't the first person to wake up with that question.

Teach me how to pray.

In fact, 2,000 years ago, Jesus' disciples, they listen, these guys, they watched Jesus turn water into wine.

They watched him cleanse the leper, they watched him heal a man who couldn't walk.

They saw all of it, and out of everything they could have possibly asked him, out of everything, one day they come to him and they say, Lord, teach us to pray.

Not teach us to heal, not teach us to preach, not teach us to do what you just did, teach us to pray.

Now, the way I see it, they must have watched Jesus' life and seen some sort of connection.

They must have seen a connection between prayer and everything else he did, right?

The miracles, the wisdom, the way he carried himself, all of it was flowing out of that time that he spent with God the Father.

So they didn't ask him for the power.

They asked him for the one thing underneath the power.

Teach us to pray.

And that's why we're starting here as a church as well.

See, for the next few weeks, we're gonna be walking through what's famously known as the Lord's Prayer.

We're gonna be walking through what Jesus taught his disciples.

We're calling it, as our series, kingdom-centered prayer.

And the reason for that, this is important because let me put it this way: left to ourselves, our prayers, more often than not, curve inward.

They merely become a list of the things we want.

But the prayer Jesus teaches lifts our eyes first.

God's name, God's kingdom, God's will.

It starts with Him.

But before Jesus teaches us how to pray, He tells us how not to pray.

So, if you have your Bibles, well, you all have Bibles in front of you as well.

Why don't you grab those and open those up?

Or I don't know if you can follow along on the screen, I guess you can.

Open up to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter six.

Gospel of Matthew, chapter six, we're gonna read in verse five.

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.

For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.

Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.

Let's start with that word hypocrites.

Now, when we hear it, we think of it maybe we think of it as fake.

You know, somebody who says one thing and does another.

But that's not where the word actually comes from.

See, in Jesus' day, a hypocrite was an actor, a guy on stage playing a part in front of a crowd.

That's the picture.

So Jesus isn't first saying that these people are liars.

I mean, we wouldn't call Tom Holland a liar because he's playing Spider-Man in a movie.

He's saying they're performing, they turn prayer into a show.

And every show, what do they need?

They need an audience.

In fact, look at where they're praying: the synagogue, the street corner, all the busy spots, the place where people can see them.

And look at why?

That they may be seen by others.

I mean, that's the whole thing.

See, the point he's making here is they're not talking to God, they're playing a part for the room.

And Jesus says something really strange about them.

He says they have received their reward.

Now, that word reward was a business word back then.

You stamped it on a receipt when a bill was paid, when it was paid in full, done, nothing more owed.

So, what's Jesus saying here?

He's saying the performer wanted people to notice him.

And people noticed that was the deal.

They got exactly what they came for.

The applause was the answer to that person's prayer.

Bill paid, receipt stamped.

And in fact, heaven owes you nothing because you were never really talking to God in the first place.

So you've received your reward.

That person got their reward.

Just wasn't worth that much.

Now, before you immediately think that's about somebody else, I think many of us, many of you, maybe you've prayed in a in a you know out loud in a group before.

And look, let's be honest with ourselves.

You you can feel it when a prayer is landing, right?

When you're praying and you're you're in the moment and you're praying really well, and you could feel in the room that it's really landing, someone's saying, mm-hmm, yes, amen.

Come on.

And you get this little ego rush when it happens.

When you're praying really well, you got you're in the moment, this powerful prayer, and you're praying, and you get this all this response from the people.

That little rush that you get, that little ego rush, that's the receipt.

That's that's you listening for the room, and part of you just got paid.

So that's the first way prayer can break.

When we aim it at people to get the applause of others.

But now, if that's one of the ways prayer breaks, what does Jesus say to do instead?

Well, let's look at verse 6.

He says, But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret.

And your father who sees in secret will reward you.

Go into your room and shut the door.

Room.

Another important word.

This word, let me put it this way.

In a house back then, this word actually meant the storeroom.

It was the pantry, the closet, the one room in the whole house that had a lock on it.

It's where you kept the things that mattered, the important things.

And back then, it was the grain, the oil, those types of things.

It was the most private room in the house.

In fact, some of you know exactly what he's probably talking about.

I mean, maybe you grew up in a really full house.

You had a lot of kids running around, a lot of cousins.

There was always someone crashed on the couch.

There was always one room with a lock on it.

Maybe for you it was the bathroom.

I know that's a room for me to get some privacy and just shut everyone out.

Maybe if you were lucky, you had a bedroom that you could just get away from everybody.

One room where nobody could follow you.

One door you could actually shut.

That's the word Jesus is using here.

He says, go into that room, the room with the lock.

Shut the door and pray to your father.

Now why that room?

Because it's the one room a crowd can't follow you.

See on the street corner, everybody's watching.

In the synagogue, everybody's watching.

But behind that locked door, there's no one left to perform for.

No audience to play to, no one to impress.

It is just you and God the Father.

And let me point this out.

Think about how ordinary he makes it.

Right?

He's not sending you to a temple.

He doesn't send you to a priest.

He sends you to the back of a room in your own house, the pantry, the closet, and he says, Your father, he's right there.

No audience, a closed door, and a father who sees you and hears you.

Look, friends, this is important, okay?

Because I really want you to pay attention to this.

This verse, when you pray, go into your room, pray to your father.

Every word of this is you, your room, your door, your father.

Jesus is essentially stripping away the whole crowd.

And he's doing that so that you find out who you are really talking to the whole time.

Are you really talking to God or are you talking for other people?

Because that's the test.

It's not whether you pray alone or out loud.

It's not whether you're you're in a closet or in a crowd.

The question is when you pray, are you sincerely talking to God or are you talking for an audience?

Because you gotta understand something.

You can be all alone and still be performing.

You can be rehearsing and running the words in your head, imagining how they'll sound to God when you start saying them out loud.

You can also be praying out loud in front of a thousand people and genuinely, sincerely be talking to God alone.

The locked room just helps to make it more obvious to you.

It helps you to know because behind it, there's there's no one left to perform for.

So you find out real fast who you've been talking to.

Okay, so that's the first way prayer breaks.

We aim it at people.

We we're we're doing it to get the applause of people.

There's a second way.

Let's read the next verse, verse 7.

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words.

Okay.

Do not heap up empty phrases.

Some Bible translations say vain repetitions.

The word Jesus uses here is almost a joke in Greek.

It's the sound of babbling, bada bada bada, empty noise, syllables with nothing behind them.

And notice why they're doing it.

See, they think they will be heard for their many words.

In other words, they believe if they say enough, if they find the right words in the right order and say them enough times, then God would finally hear them.

In fact, then God will finally move in the direction they want.

Friends, that's not prayer.

That's a mechanical technique.

It's a formula.

And underneath the formula is this certain kind of God you've created.

A God who's who's far off, maybe distracted, a God who's reluctant, a God who you think you have to wear down and convince to care about you.

You've made God a transactional God.

So what do you do?

You pile up the words, you say it louder and louder, you say it longer, you say it better this time because the whole time you're afraid of something.

You're afraid that if you don't get it right, he's not listening.

And maybe he's grown distant from you.

Now, for those of you who've been Christians for a long time, I want to be clear about something.

Jesus is not saying long prayers are bad.

I mean, we know there were times where he prayed all night.

He's not saying repeating a prayer is bad.

In fact, in the garden the night before he died, he prayed the same thing three times.

The problem is not the length, the problem isn't even the repeating.

The problem is treating prayer like this mechanical machine you operate instead of father you talk to.

And in fact, I get that.

I mean, gosh, I grew up believing I had to get everything exactly right when it came to prayer, or at least in my previous religion, the prayer ceremony.

I had to wear a certain kind of clothing.

I had to take my shoes off before I entered the temple.

I had to say the words the right way.

I had to sing the chants just right.

I had to repeat the ohm sounds until I could feel the vibrations deep in my bones.

And only then, if I did it right, if I got everything right, only then would there be even a chance that the gods would hear me.

But you know what?

I never knew for sure.

I never had certainty.

And in fact, the you know, if I would if I'm really honest, the whole time I was even doing that, I was actually hoping that what God would do would be to give me what I wanted.

In fact, when I was eight years old, if I'm doing these prayers and these chants and these repetitions, I'm actually hoping, I'm making him transactional.

I'm actually hoping that he'll give me a new toy, maybe a new bike.

When I got to my teenage years, it was God, you know, if I get this right, if I get my prayers right, if I get all the chanting right, God, would you please give me a girlfriend?

Spoiler alert, I must not have gotten it right because I didn't get a girlfriend at that time.

Look, I was reaching for a God that I thought was far away and didn't really care.

Not knowing that the true God was already on his way to reach for me.

Friends, prayer is not a negotiation with God.

Let me tell you about another person, another type of person.

Maybe it's somebody in this room.

You ever come across those Christians who can, you know, who can pray?

Right?

You know the ones.

The that you know, somebody, somebody asks, you know, who wants to open us up in prayer?

And and one of them boom just launches.

Father God, we just come before you today.

Lord God, we we thank you.

Be in this place.

Father, we are so grateful for all that you're doing, your presence in this room.

And then they start praying for the church, they start praying for the city, they start praying for missionaries in countries you never even heard of, and they start bringing out all these Bible verses out of memory, and you're just sitting there thinking, Whoa, wow, what a prayer warrior! And I love those prayers, I love the people who can pray like that.

But sometimes there's somebody else in that room sitting quiet, eyes half open, watching all of it, thinking one thing.

Could never do that.

I could never do that.

And maybe that's you.

Maybe you're new to church, or maybe you've been in church for years and you've never really prayed out loud, not because you don't love God, but because you heard people who are good at it.

And you decided one day that's not you.

You don't have the words, you don't have the Bible verses.

You you you'll you decided that you're gonna leave the praying to the professionals.

Maybe you decided that your weak words disqualified you.

But hear me, Jesus never made eloquence the qualification for prayer.

Prayer was never a talent show.

And your father isn't grading the words.

I mean, think about how a little kid asked their dad for something, right?

They don't prepare a speech, they don't check their grammar, they they just say what's on their heart.

Why?

Because they know their father is listening.

Author Paul Miller says, that's not a cute observation about kids.

It's actually the gospel.

If you belong to Jesus, you don't need better or perfect words.

You need to remember God, your father, is already listening to you.

Do you know that?

Okay.

So we met the negotiator working the machine, the silent one, you know, sitting quiet in the back.

But I want to go back to the very first one, back in verse 5, the performer.

I described that person as if it was somebody else.

It wasn't.

During seminary, I discovered the Puritans.

These were old dead pastors who wrote some of the richest prayers you've ever read.

In fact, there's a book of them called The Valley of Vision.

This book right here.

It is incredible.

I still read it.

And I found that I started to pray like them.

And I want you to understand, that's not a bad thing.

You start praying like the Puritans, it will feed your soul.

But at some point, I went through a drift.

Well, a shift rather.

I was no longer doing it to feed my soul.

I was doing it so that when I finished my prayer, people would look at me and think, wow, listen to Rajiv pray.

So rich, so deep, so powerful.

I took some of the most beautiful prayers ever written, and I used them to make people admire me.

I became the hypocrite, the actor.

Verse five, the man standing up front praying to be seen.

And I look, I'm telling you this clearly because, yes, I'm the pastor, and I'm telling you, I've also prayed for an audience instead of to God.

In fact, I've been all three.

I've been the performer, I've been the negotiator, and I've also been the silent one in the room.

I've been through all three.

And all three types of people.

Comes down to one problem.

Underneath all of it is the same unbelief.

You see, the negotiator doesn't trust the father's goodness.

So he tries to manipulate him.

The silent one doesn't trust the father's welcoming.

So that person stays quiet.

The performer fears people more than God.

So he prays for their approval.

Pride, fear, unbelief.

They may look different, but all three keep us from simple, honest prayer.

And in fact, all three assume that access to God depends on something getting depends on us getting something right.

That's this that's the underlying belief, the false belief that we've got to get it right.

And that belief will wreck your prayer life.

Because if prayer depends on you getting it right, you're never gonna be sure.

You're always gonna wonder, did I do enough?

Did I say it right?

Did it sound good enough?

You'd be like me at the temple doing everything I thought, I everything I could think of, and never once knowing if anyone was ever listening.

Because in fact, that's actually a question that's that's lingering underneath.

Is anyone actually listening to my prayers?

And that's the exact question Jesus answers next in verse 8.

Do not be like them, for your father knows what you Need before you ask him.

Before you ask him.

Not after you say the right words.

Before.

See that one phrase answers all three of these people.

If your father already knows what you need before you even say a word, then the negotiator can stop trying to close the deal.

Right?

Because you're not informing or persuading God.

He already knows there's nothing left to negotiate.

If your father already knows before you ask, then the silent one can finally open their mouth.

Right?

Because you were never going to impress him with the right words or that perfect eloquence.

He already knows what's going on in your heart.

So just say it out loud to him.

And if your father already knows, then the performer can stop performing.

Because the audience you were playing to was never the audience that mattered.

The only one who is actually listening already knows everything about you.

Everything.

Every reason you thought you had to earn it falls apart.

Because God already knows.

If he already knows what I need, why pray at all?

Prayer was never about getting information to God.

It was never about impressing him or wearing him down.

Again, prayer is a child talking to a father who knows you and loves you.

God does not need us to tell him what's going on.

He already knows.

Remember, he is an all-knowing God.

We pray because he tells us to.

He tells us to come to him because he wants to hear from us.

He wants to hear from his children.

And because prayer teaches us to trust him, to depend on him.

We're not trying to talk to God into caring about us.

He already cares.

We're coming to a father who already knows what we need.

See, prayer is not a way to control God.

It's how a child depends on their father.

If I bring you back to the my Hindu temple story, that Bible that was on the bottom shelf.

When I picked it up, there was a bookmark in it.

So I opened to the page that the bookmark was marking.

At the top of that page were three words.

Anyone guess what those words were?

How to pray.

I am standing in a Hindu temple holding a Bible I wasn't even looking for, open to a page I did not choose, and it is answering the exact question I woke up with that morning.

How to pray.

I read down the page, and it was Jesus teaching his disciples the Lord's Prayer, the same prayer we're going to spend the next several weeks in.

I didn't wait to talk to the priest.

I read that, I put the Bible down, ran back to my car, and Sarah and I we drove home as fast as we could because I was trying to keep, I was trying to hold on to those words.

I want to remember those words and get home and just start praying them.

So I did.

I got home, I started praying them over and over and over.

It was honestly, it was the first real prayer of my life.

I went looking for a technique.

I went to ask a man, the Hindu priest, how to perform a ritual correctly.

And before I ever got to the front of that line, a Bible was already sitting on the shelf, bookmarked, waiting for me.

I thought I was searching for God.

God already knew and prepared the answer for me and put it where I would find it.

Friends, that is verse 8.

Your father knows what you need before you ask him.

He knew what I needed before I walked into that door.

He knew the question before I even woke up with it.

And he answered it before I even knew how to ask.

I mean, this is God we're talking about, the one who spoke light into existence, the one who carries and holds every star in the sky and knows them by name, the one who knows the number, every number of hairs on your head.

Look at look, he doesn't need me.

He doesn't need my information or my performance or my chanting or my anything.

He is the highest, holiest, most complete being in existence.

And Jesus says that God already knows what you need before you ask, which means he's paying attention to you.

He cares about you.

The God who runs the universe is not distracted, he is not too busy, he is not annoyed, he knows what you need before the words are even formed in your mouth.

And here's what makes it even more wonderful.

Jesus doesn't call him the Almighty, he doesn't call him the Most High.

What does he call him?

Your father.

Not a boss you have to impress.

A father who already knows you, who already wants you, who already loves you.

But how?

How does the God of that much majesty become my father?

Because I'll tell you, I don't have the I don't have the right to that, and frankly, neither do any of you.

I mean, the years you spent far away from him, the way you've lived, the things you've done, the things I've done, none of us, not a single person in this room has the right to walk in and call him father.

We don't we don't get that name by earning it.

We get it because Jesus purchased it for us.

The whole reason I could pick up the Bible and pray.

The whole reason you can pray and have confidence that God our Father hears it is because Jesus made a way.

And then he rose again.

And now everyone who repents and trusts in Jesus Christ is forgiven, adopted, and brought to the Father.

We do not earn the name child of God.

We receive it through faith in Jesus Christ.

And look, we're gonna spend a whole Sunday on what that actually means, that He's our Father next week, but today I just need you to know and understand one thing.

You do not earn your way in.

The way is already open through Jesus Christ.

And the God on the other side of it isn't a stranger you have to win.

He's a father who already knows your name.

So, church, understand this.

You've got a father who's already listening.

So pray like it.

I mean, imagine a church where people stop performing, stop negotiating, stop hiding.

Imagine believers who come honestly to their father every day.

I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I want to see the hopeless people in our world converted to Christ.

I want to see weak Christians strengthened.

I want to see cold hearts catch the fire of God in them.

I want to see broken relationships restored, and I want to see this church made useful in our city.

And guess what?

Programs alone cannot produce that.

Only God can.

So we must pray.

We must pray.

So over these next few weeks, I am asking God, I am begging God to do something in us we could never manufacture on our own.

Because a church that prays is a church God moves through.

And I believe with all my heart that he wants to move through us.

In fact, we've already begun to see it this year.

I believe he's gonna do more.

So here's what I want you to do this week.

I want you to find your quiet place where no one is watching.

Shut the door.

Speak honestly to God through Jesus Christ.

Do not perform, do not negotiate, don't wait until you've got those perfect, better words.

Bring him your sins, your fears, your needs, your desires.

Because guess what?

Your Father, he already knows.

And because of Jesus, you can come to him.

I want to speak to a different group.

Just for a moment.

There are quite a few of you who got baptized some point this year.

Speaking from my own experience, when you first come to faith in Christ and you get baptized, it kind of feels like you're on this high that's going up and up and up.

But sometimes, post all that, you start to feel like things are coming down, like the adrenaline is coming down.

And sometimes you can feel like, is God still there?

Because I'm not feeling it the same way right now.

If that's you, I want you to understand this clearly.

Your Father is there, he is here, he is present with you, whether you feel him or not.

So go to him.

He hasn't moved.

Move towards him.

Look, church, for the next several weeks, we're going to learn the Lord's Prayer together.

We're gonna learn how through Jesus Christ, he has turned strangers into children.

And when he does that, when he turns strangers into children, he then teaches them how to pray.

But today I want you to really understand that you do not have to earn your way, you just have to come to him through Jesus Christ.

There's a table set in front of us, and this is gonna help us to understand what we've been talking about.

If I can ask the leaders to come to the front.

Through Jesus, we are not standing outside somewhere trying to grab God's attention.

Through Jesus, we have been brought close, we have been welcomed into fellowship with God our Father and one another.

This is not a table for people who have prayed well or prayed the perfect prayer.

It is a family meal for those who belong to Jesus.

The bread in the cup remind us that our place with the Father was purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ.

So don't perform your way to the Lord's Supper.

Don't negotiate your way.

And if you belong to Jesus, understand that you've been made worthy through Christ.

None of us comes to this moment because we're good enough.

We come to this moment because Jesus is.

So as the team plays a song, we're gonna pass out the elements to take part in the Lord's Supper.