How Should I Pray?

When it comes to prayer, have you ever wondered where to start? 

• How long should you pray? 
• Should you pray on your knees? 
• When is the best time of day to pray? 

Jesus gave His disciples wonderful principles of prayer in Matthew 6, that can help answer these questions. Let's dive in!

Transcript

74. How Should I Pray.MP3

Transcript

And how should I pray? This is a question that many Christians have today. They know that prayer is essential for their growth as a believer, and yet they just don't know where to start. Well, thankfully, Jesus gives us some wonderful answers in Matthew Chapter 6, let's dive in. Hey, guys. It's Tyler. Welcome to the podcast where we talk Faith, family and focus and our life and our leadership. And today we're answering the question how should I pray? How should I pray? You know, it was Effie Meyer who said this, the greatest tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer, but an offered prayer. There, you know, many believers, they don't know where to start when it comes to their their prayer life. They don't know what to say, and sometimes that can be a deterrent from praying at all. Sometimes when we neglect right, especially as we perfection us right, we neglect prayer altogether. If the situation is not right, we're if our words are not. Just right prayer is not just for grandma or for the pastor. Prayer is for you. You and you can wherever you are. If you are in Christ, you can commune with God. You can talk to God. The Bible says call unto me, and I will answer thee and show the great and mighty things which thou knowest not God is ready to listen if we will just all for our prayers to God. God. I love the verse in Luke Chapter 11 and verse one where Jesus is disciples come to him with a question. They say Lord teach us how to pray. Or can you just teach us, like when you pray, something powerful happens, something amazing happens and we want to know how to do that. Think about all the many miracles that Jesus did right. Think about the feeding of the 5000, the woman with the issue of blood, the healing, the blind man. Blind Barr, mayus. Raising Lazarus from the dead, all of the miracles that Jesus did, and what did his disciples asked him? They said Lord teaches how to pray. Hey, how to pray not how to preach. Now how to do miracles, but how to pray. I think there was. Something. In the way that Jesus prayed that was so powerful, it was so just impactful that it compelled his disciples to ask him. Lord, can you teach us how to do that? Can you teach us how to pray and how to get ahold? Of God. So in Matthew Chapter 6, Jesus is answering that question. Look what he says in verse #6 Matthew 6, verse 6. The Bible says but thou when thou pro. List when you pray. I love that word win because it implies that he's like, OK, you know, prayer is essential for your Christian life. So when you pray, it's not if you pray, right. But when you pray, hey, you're going to have to pray. If you're going to grow as a believer, if you going to be effective in the service. Of God, you're going to have to pray. So he gets across his disciples right out of the gate. He says when you pray. And I love that word, thou or you right thou when thou praise, when you pray. Prayer is. It's a personal relationship with God. God right, it is communing with God on an individual level. And as I mentioned earlier, some people think that prayer is just for grandma or it's just for the pastor down the road. It's for the spiritual person, but prayer is for everyone, you know, think about it in the context of any other sport or hobby that you pick up. Right. You're gonna fall flat on your face a little bit, right? Especially at the beginning. You're going to. It's going to be awkward at first. You're gonna have to really get used to it. Remember the first time that I played pickleball, right? I was having to get used to this. Like, if not tennis, it's. It's not. It's not ping pong. It's pickleball, right? It's just, like, totally different. That's becoming a super popular sport today. But I remember when I began to play right at first, it was like it was awkward. Right at prayer is the same way. There's gonna be some awkward times. They're gonna be some times where. Lord, I don't really know what to say. There's going to be times. Where you don't know what to say, you don't know exactly. Maybe the best time to pray. But understand that prayer is essential for you to be an effective servant of Jesus Christ, and when he laid it down in verse 6, he said when you pray, this is what I want you to look at it. It says enter into that closet. And when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy father, which is in secret. I love this because Jesus is getting across to his disciples that there's a specific business of prayer. Right, you need to make a business of. Prayer, he said. Enter into thy closet and shut the door. That implies that you're you're you are. You're cutting out all distractions, right? You're cutting out all distractions. You're cutting out everything that's going to take your attention away from your talking to God, right? It's the same with your spouse, right? Your spouse especially. If you're like me, your husband, what does off the times your your wife ask. She said. Hey, can I have your eyes? Hey, look at me. Look at me. Right. They they want. There's something in a woman's nature that's especially that wants the confirmation of eye contact. Right. They want eye contact. They want complete focus, not scrolling through your phone on social media. They want complete focus on what they're saying. And it's the same way when we pray to God. We ought to shut out in distractions. We ought to turn the TV off. We ought to put the phone away. This is why, you know, I don't even do my devotions on my phone. And if you do, that's perfectly fine. If that works for you, that. OK, but understand, I don't even do it on my phone because I know the distractions getting text message after text message, especially if you're in a group thread. You know what I'm saying, right? You're getting hundreds of messages a day. It seems like in some cases there's gonna be a lot of cases for distractions and so eliminate as many of those distractions as possible when you enter into a business. For a season, a moment of prayer with God, yes, there are times when you pray many times where you can pray throughout your day and you're just checking the mail or you're even. You're about to talk to someone about the Lord and you just breathe the prayer. Lord help me, Holy Spirit, give me the. Just to say yes in the moment, those are great moments of prayer, but understand, I think we should. As believers, we should have seasons and specific times that we pray and we really just seek the face of God when he goes on to say and thy father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. I love that your father sees you in secret. Some people think that their prayer is in vain, right? Their prayers are in vain. There's no way that I'm even getting to the balconies of heaven, to the throne of God. There's no way that God is listening to me. But understand that if you are his child. World God is listening to you. He loves you. He wants to answer your prayers. He wants to commune with you more than you want to commune with him and fellowship with him. He's eager to take an opportunity to show you his love and to understand that he is like a father. He is a father and he, which sees in secret verse success. He will reward you openly and he goes on and elaborates on that point in verse 7. But when you pray use not vain repetitions as the. Ethan do for they that think they shall be heard for their much speaking like in Jesus's day. There were the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and Jesus is kind of calling them out and saying, listen, this is how they pray. They use vain repetitions, right and many people, when they're even when they're studying. Matthew Chapter 6, that's exactly how they read it. Our father, which art? In heaven, how would be thy name? Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in. Like it's just it, literally. That's exactly what a vain repetition means. If something is vain, it is empty. If it's a repetition, it's obviously it's repeated. And so it's empty repetitions. It's empty, repeating of the words. And there's no heart. Behind it, it's literally it's shallow. This is why at one instance, Jesus called the Pharisees like they're they're like, why did tombs right on the outside? They look pretty, but on the inside they're full of dead men's bones. And so that's the Pharisees, but sometimes understand, even as disciples of Jesus. That we have a Pharisee in us that wants to pray, where people see right, we want to praise at church where people see, but yet we never lift our hands and praise to God at home and in private. Or we pray we give the we bow our head and close our eyes during during worship. During prayer during a service and yet we never find time to do that on our own. I think something is missing. There's a level of depth to our Christian life that is missing and so Jesus said this in verse 6, he said. When you pray, don't use vain repetitions as the heathen. Do for they think they shall be heard for their much speaking, and I think there's a great principle of prayer in this verse that just because you're talking just because you're using much space doesn't mean you are having good fellowship. Right. Think about it on a personal level, right on a friendship level. If you always have that. Man, that they call you and they say, hey, man, how's it going, man? And they received for the next 30 minutes to talk and you literally don't get in, in a word in edgewise. Right. And they kind of it's more of a monologue and they're like, OK, well, I'll see you later and then click. Right. And it didn't really feel like much of a conversation. It just felt like you were they were just blah, right. They were just kind of, you know, word vomiting in your direction and and you just felt like you were this recipient of that. Well, I wonder sometimes in our prayer life, how often we do that to God. Right. We go to God and we're like. And we just give him all of our requests. We give him all of our plans and desires and this is what we want and we kind of use. You know, we kind of use God as like a an ATM machine, right? We're gonna like, hey, this is what we want. This is what we want. And we put in our orders. But understand that prayer is so much deeper than that. It's not just getting our request out to God. It's not just even venting so that we feel relieved. Understand so much about prayer is. Listening. It's listening to God. It's learning to not speak. It's learning to be quiet and tune into the voice of God. Remember Elijah on Mount Horeb, right? Jesus. God's voice was not in the earthquake. It wasn't in the fire. It wasn't in the whirlwind. It was in a still small voice. And sometimes God does speak it of fire, right? Remember Moses and the burning Bush. Right. So does he does speak in a fire? And sometimes he just show up in an earthquake. Remember when Jesus died and he he he he called out to God. He said it is finished. Right. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? There was a great earthquake, right? Sometimes the voice of God is connected to those things. But in that instance in Elijah on Mount Horibe was trying to teach Elijah. Yes, I am in. The fire, but there are many times where I'm in a still small voice. And if Elijah you want power to get down and to face the world, you want power on your life and on your ministry, you've got to learn to tune those other things out and to tune in to that still small voice. So Jesus says in verse #8 he says be not ye therefore liking to them. For your father knoweth what things you have need of before you ask. Now here's another huge question we can probably do a whole nother video on this. But should we even pray if God already knows what we're going to say? I mean, if God, who knows everything, if we believe that God is the God of the Bible, right, which hopefully you do, that he knows everything. He's omniscient. Then he knows what I'm about to. Say before I say it right. Then why should I pray if he already knows what I'm going to say? OK. But let me ask you this. If one of my children come to me right and I see the jar of cookies on the counter and they come to me and they got the finger in there, they got this curious look on their face. Do I know what they're going to ask? Yes, absolutely I do, daddy. Have a cookie, right? They're they're gonna. I know they're going to ask me that. Right. And in this instance, right. It's OK to have one. And I can't wait to tell them. Yes, but do I interrupt them and say, yeah, go ahead. Do I say no? Don't even ask. Go ahead. Now. I don't do that. You as a dad, I love to hear the mask. I love for my children to come to ask me for things that I know that I can meet their need or I know that I can give them something that they will enjoy. And I really believe that we see we see many times the word father is used. In this passage that God is a loving father to us, and when we come to him in prayer, he is lovingly waiting for us. To pray, to talk to him so that he can give us something we enjoy so that he can give us his presence so that he can show us, give us another instance, another opportunity where he could show us his love. Now, that doesn't mean that God always answers yes, but that does mean that God is real. He. For you to call out to him, wow, there is a lot in this passage that is so good about when we pray or how we should even pray, we're going to pick this up in the following episode. If you would like to follow this study of prayer and so many other things when it comes to your faith family and your focus, whether that's ministry or whether that's business. I would love for you to subscribe to the podcast. You can hit the like button and subscribe here on YouTube and follow us on our website at tylerheyrobertson.com. Next time we're together, we'll talk about versus 9 and talk about literally the prayer of the model prayer that Jesus gives us. And how we can specifically prey what kind of heart should we go to God with? I'm excited about it until next time.