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The Disciple’s Prayer, Part 1

Sermon by Rev. Doug Pratt—November 16, 2008
 

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Introduction
If we’re going to be instructed in some new skill or task, we assume that we would benefit from the counsel of experts in the field. But sometimes we have to learn from people who are far less than experts—because there are no experts around. Imagine a group of parents of teenagers gathering to talk about the joys and challenges of parenting. If the question “Who’s the expert here in child-raising?” were posed to this group, it is likely every mom and dad there would keep their hands firmly anchored on their laps. Who would dare to claim to be an expert in the incredibly-challenging and constantly-changing issues of family life?! No actual parent could ever put themselves forward as the world’s expert, because everyone learns as they go through it, by trial-and-error. The same would be true if we gathered a group of married couples in a room and asked which ones were “experts” in marriage: nobody would be so bold as to make that claim, because no wife or husband is perfect. That’s the simple fact in all intimate relationships: none of us are experts; we’re all in a continual learning process.

And that is true of one other intimate area of life: Prayer. Prayer is the means by which we enter into and experience an intimate relationship with God. Every one of us at times has failed the Lord, has made our mistakes. We’re all just in the learning process. That’s how I stand before you today: as a Fellow Novice, a fellow learner, someone who is trying to learn and grow in this area of deepening a relationship with Almighty God. I don’t pretend to have it all figured out, and I assume that none of you do either. But perhaps we can learn from one another. In fact, that’s a valuable way to learn—just as mothers of preschoolers may talk together about how to handle their children, each sharing their mistakes and learning from each other’s efforts, or as members of an Alcoholics Anonymous support group share with each other the methods they’ve found to help them stay sober.

The Only Expert on Prayer
There was only One Person who ever walked the earth who was truly an Expert at prayer—only One who understood completely and perfectly how to sustain a daily intimate relationship with God. And, thankfully, this Sole Expert took the time one day to share a few principles of prayer with His friends. We have those words recorded in Matthew 6 in our Bibles. I’m beginning this morning a series of three messages based on this well-known passage. I’m calling these messages The Disciple’s Prayer, and I’ll explain why in a couple moments.

Let’s read our Lord’s words carefully. And as we do so, I want you to listen carefully for the two common mistakes Jesus warns us to avoid.

⁵And 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 men.
I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. ⁶But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. ⁷And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. ⁸Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:5-8)

The common blunders are flagged for us by the stark warnings, “do not…” These are classic, often-repeated beginners’ mistakes. We tend to fall into these because of our imperfect human natures—unless we’re on guard against them. And each one can be countered as we understand them and develop the right attitude for prayer:

Mistake #1
Thinking that prayer is for the purpose of impressing other people
 
Mistake #2
Thinking that we can pressure, convince, bribe or browbeat God
into doing what we want Him to do

Mistake #1: Using Prayer to Impress Others
Let’s look more closely at the first of these blunders: using prayer to try to impress others. Jesus uses a very loaded and powerful word to label the people in His time who had fallen into this trap. He calls them “hypocrites.” Today we think of a “hypocrite” as a charlatan, a fake, a phony. Its original meaning in the ancient language was “actor” or “actress”—describing a person who plays a part on a stage, pretending to be someone they are not in real life. We see this today in television commercials, when an actor in a white lab coat pretends to be a doctor while recommending a drug for us to buy, or an actor in uniform pretends to be a real police officer while recommending some home security alarm.

We’re used to people posing as something they’re not. But in the spiritual realm it’s especially dangerous. And it is, of course, ultimately pointless and doomed to failure. To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, you can fool all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool God a single time. Pretending to be someone we’re not to Him only makes us look ridiculous.

The most notorious hypocrites of the First century were the Pharisees. We don’t have any of them around today, but we all have to be on guard against the same mistake they made. When you try to use your church life or your eloquence in prayer or your piety to impress other people, you may fool them for a time, but it’s ultimately a failure. Because of the danger we can fall into of cheapening our prayer into a performance for others to gain their praise and admiration, Jesus recommends that we do everything we can to avoid that temptation. And the best way to do so is to keep our prayer life private and personal.

If we have grasped this first warning about being a hypocrite and praying for the benefit of other people to impress them, we realize that the path to true prayer leads in the opposite direction. The first attitude we must have, then, if we’re really going to experience prayer, is humility. It doesn’t matter how eloquent or how stumbling our words are when we pray. What our Heavenly Father cares about is not our words but our heart, not our posture but our attitude. Be real and genuine and honest with Him. Let Him in to your inner thoughts and feelings.

Mistake #2: Trying to persuade God
The second common blunder Jesus identifies for us: thinking that the purpose of prayer is to try to persuade, pressure or bribe God into giving us what we want. One of the common ways people have tried to influence God, since the time of Christ, has been through the volume of their prayers. Maybe if I keep on saying it over and over it will get through—like trying to get through to a telephone switchboard that gives off a busy signal: we keep pressing “redial” until we get a connection. The Pharisees would repeat the same prayers over and over in the temple, assuming this would make a difference to the Lord.

Even in our own times we find people falling into this mistake. I attended a wake for the mother of one of my parishioners once. She was a devout Roman Catholic, as were many of her family members. The speed with which the folks at that wake could rattle off the “Our Father” and the “Hail Mary” was incredible. But I had to wonder if they were actually thinking about the words they were saying. Sometimes Presbyterians fall into the same trap: we rattle off the “Lord’s Prayer” without any comprehension of its meaning.

So if humility is the right attitude for resisting the common blunder of trying to impress God through our prayers, then developing the attitude of surrender would be the corrective for the second common mistake, that of trying to persuade God.

This secret to true prayer is confirmed in one of the great classics of Christian literature, written over 100 years ago by a devout man of prayer named Oliver Hallesby. In his small book with the simple title Prayer, reprinted dozens of times, Hallesby tells us that the heart of prayer is found in surrendering our needs into God’s hands and trusting in His gracious provision. If we quit trying to bend the Lord to our purposes and plans, we will find that He conforms our mind to His will—and, ultimately, this becomes so much more satisfying. It makes prayer a true relationship.

A few years ago Jim Carrey starred in a film called Bruce Almighty. The theology of the movie isn’t perfect, but when Hollywood even comes close to reflecting spiritual truth it’s an amazing occurrence—and worthy of our applause. This film comes close. Bruce (Jim Carrey) is a self-centered guy who thinks God is letting him down because the Almighty isn’t answering Bruce’s selfish prayers in the way Bruce wants. So the Lord says to him, “Okay, Bruce, you try it.” He lets him try to be God. And Bruce fails miserably … but learns some powerful lessons in the process. At the end of the movie comes his true moment of change or conversion: Bruce comes to the point of saying, “I surrender to Your will”; it was then he learned what it meant to really pray from the heart, according to the will of God.

The End of the Beginning
We have not completed our study of prayer. This is not “the beginning of the end,” as Churchill said, “but the end of the beginning.” We have heard Jesus’ warning about two common mistakes in our prayer life. It is essential we avoid and/or repent of those. We need to clear them out of the way, like rocks in the soil of a garden, before we can plant the healthy seeds and watch them bear fruit.

Right after our passage for today in Matthew 6, Jesus begins what may be the most famous and well-known words in all of the Bible: “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done…” (6:9ff).

And this is what we'll address in succeeding messages. The well-known “Lord’s Prayer” is actually intended to be “The Disciple’s Prayer.” It’s been given to us, His followers, by our Lord as a model or example or pattern for us to follow. The actual words are not as important as the dimensions of a healthy prayer life, toward which they direct us. But the foundation for utilizing the “Disciple’s Prayer” and getting the most out of it is the proper attitude: praying in humility and surrender.

An Audience of One
In spite of centuries of confusion and abuse, the experience of prayer is, at its core, a communication between a believer and God. It is intimate and personal. It is not a performance or a speech or a sales pitch. It springs from an attitude of true humility and true surrender. It’s not a human-to-human transaction at all, but one that is God-ward. And all that matters is that we connect with Him

.

A renowned European opera singer of the 19th century had a puzzling habit. At the end of a performance, as the audience stood to applaud the cast in a huge ovation, this man would quickly and quietly slip off the stage. His fellow performers would remain to take their bows and soak in the adulation of their fans. This is, of course, what we find in every concert and play, opera and ballet, in our own times as well. Actors and singers are motivated by the acclaim of the public.

But not this man. He would silently walk to his dressing room backstage and close the door. One night a reporter for a Paris newspaper followed him, caught him as he was entering his small room, and asked him why he did not remain onstage. He replied that since he had dedicated his life to Christ, he no longer felt right about remaining for the public ovation. He explained further in these words: “I don’t want my ears to become addicted to applause from men, because I sing for an Audience of One. And as long as He is pleased with my efforts, I am satisfied.”

Ultimately all of us are performing our lives for an Audience of One. The opinions and reviews and acclaim of others won’t matter at all the moment we die. All that will matter is what our Heavenly Father thinks of us, and whether we have done our best to please Him. And that’s what prayer really is: addressing our Audience of One, communicating directly and intimately with Him.