All Eyes on Jesus - Part 2

Continuing on from our last post where we started examining Jesus’ teaching on prayer from the Sermon on the Mount – the part that encapsulates that most famous of prayers, The Lord’s Prayer. Our goal today is to identify some biblical principles that will help us to do corporate prayer well. In case you are just joining us now and are wondering were this is coming from, you should know that This is part 10 in an ongoing series entitled “Becoming a People of Prayer ”and you can Click here for a listing of previous posts in this series if you want to catch up on what you’ve missed.

Using our text from Matthew 6 as a guide here are a few Biblical principles that should guide our prayer:

1. Prayer is not a performance art!

Now bear with me on this one because it can get a little convoluted. It is clear as mud that Jesus in our text rebukes the Pharisees (here he calls them hypocrites but the context makes it very clear to whom he’s referring) for their showy prayers and instead tells them that they should take those prayers into the privacy of their own homes. But at the same time we’ve already established that corporate prayer is normative and healthy in the life of God’s people – so what is Jesus point here. What can we take away from this that is non-contradictory and helpful for us in developing our own pattern of prayer?

Here’s what I’ve come to as I’ve read and meditated on this text over and over again. What I see is something very different that simple public prayer being offered, I see self-righteous religious people putting on a performance. Listen to these words again.

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. 

Listen to the breakdown of that statement. 

When you pray:  That is a command to be a people of prayer – we’ve covered that already

Don’t be like the hypocrites: don’t be like these guys. Okay I get that, but why?

For they love to pray: Okay that sounds pretty good so far – what’s the qualifier here?

Standing in the synagogues and on the street corners: Okay so they love to pray publicly a little weird but as we’ve already established that’s not unbiblical. Where is the problem? Here it comes:

To be seen by others:  Ah, there is the rub. What makes the prayers of the Pharisees so detestable is that their prayers are not for God. They have turned communion with the Almighty into a performance art. They have taken a holy and transcendent privilege given by God to his people and turned it into the equivalent of a mime on the street corner pretending to be trapped in a box. What they are doing – and claiming to do in the name of God – is patently offensive. And Jesus wants his followers to have no part in it.

When I or a worship leader or one of the elders or anyone else stands up here in church and delivers a prayer on the congregation’s behalf we have the daunting responsibility to make sure that our words our genuine and that our eyes are on Jesus. Public prayer is about keeping everyone’s eyes on Jesus. It’s not about how eloquent or articulate the prayer leader is – it’s about whom they are focusing on. If I stand up to pray publicly and my goal in prayer is to impress you – it doesn’t matter how beautiful my words are – they are offensive and ugly to God. And if you stand up in the congregation, or in your small group, or in a prayer meeting to lead people in prayer and you are truly focused on communing with Jesus on the group’s behalf – it doesn’t matter how clumsy, or simple your words are – God loves what you’re doing. We need to keep our eyes on Jesus because prayer is not a performance art.

2. Fear God; not others

After rebuking the prayer pattern of the Pharisees Jesus delivers this little gem of insight when he says:

Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Near the beginning of the book of Galatians, Paul picks up on this idea is the motivating drive for his ministry:

Am I now trying to win human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Galatians 1:10

Who are we looking to impress with our prayers? Does it really matter what the other people around you think about your prayers, your eloquence or lack thereof; does it matter what other people think about your vocabulary, or the perceived simplicity of your prayers? Whose approval are you trying to win? In Proverbs 29 there is a wonderful truth that explains what happens in our heart when we get this backwards – it’s especially poignant in the Common English Bible translation where it says:

People are trapped by their fear of others;
   those who trust the LORD are secure.

Proverbs 29:25

Are you trapped by your fear of others ore are you joyfully free to respond to God in the fear of the Lord? Too often we become paralyzed by the fear of what people are going to think about us when we are seeking validation in the wrong places.

Those of you who only ever see me at church may not realize that I'm a terribly self conscious person. I have quite a bit of social anxiety when it comes to certain things. For instance, I actually have to work my self up to do cold calling. If I've got to call around to ask for help for some event or project it terrifies me - being transparent with you here, it's one of those areas where I struggle with the whole fear-of-man thing.

On the flip side though EVEN THOUGH I'm extremely self conscious about singing in front of people (choirs don't count, there is safety in numbers) you probably wouldn't be able to discern that if you saw me leading worship because when I sing for God the people out there really don't matter that much. When we understand in our hearts who we are aiming to please, it can make the difference between a grown man afraid to make phone calls and a singer getting lost in God in front of a hundred people.

And it makes a difference in prayer too. Don't get wrapped up in the fear of what others think. If you stutter, then stutter to the glory of God. If you've got a funny accent, just remember that somewhere else in the world it would be the rest of the group that talked funny. If you don't have an expansive vocabulary, remember the most powerful prayers are prayed on our behalf by the Holy Spirit in groans that cannot be understood by human ears. Keep your eyes on Jesus and don't worry about who else might be watching.

3. You can’t wear down God with words 

Jesus continues with these instructions:

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 

First when you pray, don’t be like the Pharisees – we’ve covered that – but now Jesus uses a different comparable – Don’t be like the pagans. Well what did the pagans do that was so wrong?  Well of course the answer starts and ends with the recognition of Jesus as God with a lot of stuff in between but specifically Jesus is talking here about their pattern of prayer. The pagan approach to prayer in the 1^st century was to keep repeating yourself until whatever god you were praying to gets so weary of hearing you that he relents and does what you want.  That's basically it.  Just keep doing it and doing it and saying it and saying it until he gets so sick of hearing it, that He finally reacts. 

In fact, if you'll remember back in the encounter between Elijah and the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18), Elijah played up this fact for comedy.  Elijah kept egging them on.  Maybe He's on a vacation.  Maybe he can't hear you, better yell a little louder, he might be asleep.  And the prophets of Baal just kept on and on and on.  All day long and they kept crying out oh Baal hear us.  Oh Baal hear us.  Oh Baal hear us.  Oh Baal hear us.  Hour after hour after hour, they mumbled that same phrase, trying to wake up their god.  Trying to pester him into doing something.

But that’s not what our God responds to. God is not interested in superhuman feats of repetitive stamina as if we could wear down his resolve and change his mind by our stubbornness – he’s interested in a heart that longs to be in relationship with him and a spirit that is committed to waiting on him. That doesn’t mean as some have suggested that you ask for something once and then never speak of it again – it means you come to God with your need and earnestly wait for an answer. When you pray for the same thing over again it is not because you think that God has forgotten it’s because you are reminding yourself that God has not answered that prayer yet and you are professing anew to the Lord that you are trusting in Him to provide that answer.

The perfect and timely example is the prayer for healing. We believe that God heals our bodies. We believe that we are promised a complete and physical renewal in the end times and that glimmers of that renewal are breaking through into this world with the coming of the kingdom of God. And so when someone is sick – we pray. We anoint. And we call out to God and we do not stop until we receive an answer – and in that sense healing is an easy one – either God heals or that person waits for the resurrection and full restoration in paradise. What is your heart’s orientation toward God?  He is not impressed or interested with mantras or vain repetition. He is interested in persistent faithful trust in his power to act. Keep your eyes on Jesus and not on any formulas or mantras that you might have learned for prayer.

Which brings us full circle back to our initial quandary: how do we overcome the crippling fear of praying in front of others so that our corporate prayer life can be vital and effective? Well in our next, and penultimate post in this series I will have four quick suggestions for you to consider. These suggestions are less exegesis (now that you know what that word means) and more application but I think that they are important things for us to consider in making prayer meetings accessible to those who struggle with this problem.  But to see them, you’ll need to come back next time.