When You Pray

When the Lord Jesus taught His disciples about prayer, He did not begin with technique. He began with a relationship. Notice the small word He uses three times in the Sermon on the Mount: "when you pray." Not "if you pray." Jesus simply assumes that prayer will be the native air of His followers, as natural to the believer as breathing. And then He lifts the whole subject onto holy ground with one astonishing word. He tells us to pray to our Father. That single word reframes everything, and I want to spend our time on it, because I believe many of God's children have never truly entered into the privilege it offers.

Before He tells us how to pray, Jesus tells us how not to. He warns against two errors that were common then and are common now. The first is the prayer of performance — praying to be seen by others, standing on the street corner so that men will admire our piety. Prayer, Jesus says, was never meant to be a performance for an audience of people. So He says, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen. There is a private prayer, a secret place between the soul and God, that is the engine room of the whole Christian life. What we are on our knees in secret is what we truly are.

The second error He warns against is the prayer of mere repetition — "babbling like pagans," heaping up empty words, thinking we will be heard because of our many words. Some imagine that prayer is a matter of wearing God down, as though He were a reluctant official who must be pestered into action. Jesus corrects this with a beautiful reason: "Your Father knows what you need before you ask him." Do you see the freedom in that? We do not pray to inform God of things He does not know. We do not pray to twist the arm of a distant deity. We pray to a Father who already knows our need and already loves us, and who invites us to come and talk with Him as a child talks with a good father.

This is the heart of it, and I want you to feel the weight of the privilege. The God who flung the stars into space, before whom angels veil their faces, the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth — this God invites you to call Him Father. There is no higher honor available to a human being. Under the old covenant, the high priest could enter God's presence only once a year, with blood and trembling. But the Lord Jesus, by His death, has torn the veil in two from top to bottom, and now the lowest, weakest, most ordinary believer may come at any hour, in any need, and say, "Father."

Then Jesus gives us the model prayer. "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name." He is our Father — near, personal, loving. But He is in heaven — exalted, holy, sovereign. True prayer holds both of these together. We come with the confidence of a child and the reverence of a creature before the Holy One. If we lose the nearness, prayer becomes cold and formal. If we lose the reverence, prayer becomes casual and small. The Lord's Prayer keeps us balanced: close enough to say "Father," low enough to say "hallowed be your name."

Notice, too, the order of the petitions, for the order is itself a teaching. Jesus teaches us to begin not with our needs but with God's glory: your name be honored, your kingdom come, your will be done. Only after we have set our hearts on God's concerns do we turn to our own — daily bread, forgiveness, deliverance from temptation and evil. This is a quiet rebuke to the way we usually pray. We rush in with our list of requests and never lift our eyes to God Himself. Jesus would have us first seek the Father's face before we seek the Father's hand.

And look how honest the requests are when we do reach them. "Give us today our daily bread." We are taught to depend on God for the most ordinary things — bread for today, like Israel gathering manna, enough for the day and no more. "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." Here is a searching word: we cannot hold forgiveness from others with one hand and reach for God's forgiveness with the other. A forgiven heart must be a forgiving heart. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." We confess our weakness and ask for protection, acknowledging that we are no match for the enemy on our own.

So let me give you some simple counsel on prayer, drawn from the Master's own teaching. Keep a secret place — a room, a corner, a quiet hour where you meet with your Father alone. Come as a child; lay aside the idea that you must impress God with fine words. Begin with His glory before you pour out your requests. And pray often, for the word is "when you pray," not "if." I have leaned on prayer through every season of my life, and the Father has never once turned me away. The door He has opened through His Son is always open. He knows your need before you ask. He loves you more than you know. So when you pray — and may it be often — go to your room, close the door, and speak to your Father who sees you in secret. He is listening.