THE LORD’S PRAYER PART 2 : HOW NOT TO PRAY

   “Lord, teach us to pray…,” the disciples asked (Luke 11:1). Being with Jesus all the time, they were witnesses to his prayer life and habit. It became clear to them that there was a link between Jesus’ commitment to prayer and his extra-ordinary ministry. There is no better teacher than Jesus Christ himself. Hence, just like the disciples, let Jesus teach us how to pray.


   Moving back to Matthew’s account in chapter 6, it is interesting that Jesus made some prefatory remarks before teaching them how to pray. Jesus begins with a negative comparison.

5"And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” -Matthew 6:5 (ESV)

   There is no doubt that these hypocrites were the Pharisees who were the religious leaders in the Jewish society at the time of Jesus. They were the religious fundamentalists in those days focusing on strict observance of the Jewish laws, ceremonies, and traditions. Jesus denounced them as being hypocrites because they often made a public display of their moral living, good deeds, and piousness while neglecting the heart or motives of the actions. It was a fake form of godliness, phony, and fraudulent.

   The disciples were living in this cultural and religious environment. They were familiar with the religious system and probably accepted it without much thought. No surprise then that when they followed Jesus, it turned their worldview upside down. He was completely different! His prayer life was opposite to that of the Pharisees. It was something that they had never seen before. He would pray alone. He would pray all night. By witnessing how Jesus prayed, they realized their own ignorance, misconceptions, and lack of knowledge about prayer.

   How about us today? Are we also hypocrites? As a leader, I fall at times into this kind of practice. When asked to publicly pray, I try to show my piety by composing and saying aloud great, religious sounding statements that elicit “Amens” and “Hallelujahs” from those who hear me. I measure the effectiveness of my prayer based on the number and intensity of responses I get! After all I am the leader and must be “leader-ly” when I pray – not like those immature, bumbling prayers from those who are terrified to pray in public. In prayer meetings, we sometimes use loudness and cries as the barometer of prayer effectiveness. The more shouting and crying going on, the better we feel!

   I don’t know how much of it is fake and how much of it is sincere repentance and coming from real burdens that drive people into desperation and cry out to God for help like David’s prayers in the Psalms. Take heed of Jesus’ warning in Matthew 6:5. Prayer is not a show where we are the stars.

Getting Into The Blogging Habit

    I've stopped blogging for a while because I couldn't think of anything to write about. I didn't want to write about trivial, non-essential stuff. There's too much of that going on already. I wanted this blog to be the medium by which I could put into words my experiences, thoughts, and reflections as a Christian who is living out my faith in a post-modern world. It turned out to be more difficult than I thought.

    Lately though I have discovered something worth blogging about  - books and our Bible study discussions in our small group! I began habitually reading again when I came across the writings of John Piper. Through his books, I have come to fully embrace Christian orthodoxy. Some may say it is old time religion, but it is still fully relevant today as it was in the past. God does not change and so his revelation through the Bible of sin, redemption, atonement, living a holy life, and the destiny of this world remain the same even though the world is continuing to change rapidly. The Bible says that in the last days there will be false teachers that spread unbiblical ideas and distorted interpretations of God's Word. I have found that returning to orthodoxy helps me recognize what is the truth and what is the lie in the church and the world today which I'll write about in future blogs.

     What John Piper's books helped me to do was to go back to basic Christian doctrines and understand them to such depths that I have never before reached. My long unanswered questions on human suffering, evil in this world, sanctification, and even the meaning and purpose of life were satisfyingly answered through his sermons and books which are available online at Desiring God ministries.

      So my prayer is that this blog will glorify God (1 Corinthians 10:31) and help lead readers to Jesus Christ.






   

The Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:5-13) PART 1

    As far as I can recall, I have never heard a sermon on the Lord’s Prayer. Yes, I’ve heard the prayer recited many times in church but I have never heard it expounded on and taught in-depth in order to teach and equip believers. A disciple asked Jesus, “Lord teach us to pray…” (Luke 11:1), and Jesus gave them this prayer, hence the name “The Lord’s Prayer”. The more accurate title really should be “The Disciple’s Prayer” because it was given to us by Jesus to in order to teach us how to pray correctly.

  Prayer is essential to a believer’s spiritual life. Therefore, a believer should learn how to pray and the logical starting point must be the Lord’s Prayer. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. It isn’t surprising then that there is a lot of confusion, wrong application, prayerlessness, and teaching of “prayer styles” that are not Biblical. The Lord’s Prayer has been relegated to mindless recitation or a doxology to be sung at the end of the service. Even worse, it has become to some a prayer to be repeated several times in order to pay penance for sin. Ignorance and lack of knowledge of the great truths found in the Lord’s Prayer has led to wrong theology and wrong application. Conversely, the right theology leads to right application and right thinking.

    This is the next topic in our Tuesday Bible Study group. We’ll go through and unfold Matthew 6:5-13 verse by verse. I will blog about what we learned, the points of discussion or debate, and what truth was revealed to us that night.  At the end of our study, my hope is that our desire to pray will be stimulated and that we will understand what a great privilege it is to pray to the one true God.

    These are the main references that I have used for my preparation :

1. The Prayer of Our Lord by RC Sproul
2. The Lord's Prayer by RT Kendall