S7Ep6: Are We Wasting Time Before the Lord?

When we are in prayer, are some of us wasting our time before the Lord?

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Hi everyone, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to Christian Capsules. This is your Christian Capsules podcast. I'm your host, Jimane Farrell. And as always, we use the NESB 95 edition of the Bible. Our podcast is on all platforms: Apple, YouTube, Amazon, Spotify, and iHeart. This one is season 7, episode 6, entitled Are We Wasting Time Before the Lord? And this is a good one, folks. This one is going to be an eye opener. So this capsule is based off of Matthew chapter 6, verses 7, and then verses 7 through 9, and then the Lord's Prayer after that. Now for context purposes, I'm going to summarize uh Matthew chapter 6 so we can get into what Jesus is talking about. Alright, so Jesus chapter 6 is obviously the service load up, the Sermon on the Mount, and this is after Jesus gets done doing the Beatitudes, and he goes down now, and he's talking about um being outwardly with your Christianity, right? And basically he's saying here um people who practice their righteousness to be noticed by others, who work being Christian to get uh earn a reputation or to be congratulated on being a Christian to basically to earn um reward from men. And Jesus is addressing it, and he goes down and he goes on to say talks about later on in the same chapter about doing the same thing to poor. Don't don't give to the poor to get compliments or accolades, and then he goes on down the same thing more about praying, and for the praying one, I guess this is a real sticky point back then, because then he goes in on it, right? Um, verse 5 he says, Don't pray like the hypocrites who love to stand and pray in the synagogues or the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Um, truly I say to you, they have their reward. And Jesus goes on to say, But you, when you guys pray, go into a inner room or close your door, be private and personal with the Lord. Don't pray to get applause from men, right? To be seen as righteous. Actually, go in secret, be intimate with the Lord, get private, talk to him one-on-one, get in there deep. Right? So then we're that leads us to get into verse 7. And this is pretty much what the capsule is going to cover today. Verse 7 says, And when you are praying, do not use meaningless reputation as the Gentiles do. For they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So, do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Marks of this capsule deals with uh chapter verse 7, chapter 6, verse 7. When he's talking about praying, don't use meaningless reputation. Excuse me. Now, to put this in perspective of what Jesus is talking about, um, the Israelites used to do this, it's being blamed on the Gentiles now, but the Israelites used to do this thing where they had constructed certain prayers and stuff. Um, from time from Leviticus, and they had constructed constructed certain prayers that they would pray, and they would just say them over and over again, thinking that they um that these prayers that they everybody saying the same prayer that it would reach God's ears. God actually, and the prophets Isaiah and all that stuff talks about saying these meaningless prayers over and over again. He doesn't like it. Then later on, after the Babylonian exile, the Gentiles start doing the same thing, their fake gods. Um and obviously, unbeliever Gentile fake gods, you that doesn't mean anything anyway. What they're doing is not even doesn't have any merit anyway. So Jesus is saying, don't do what these meritless people are doing, right? I want you to have meaning. And Jesus even goes on and says, uh the second half of verse 7, for they suppose that they will be heard for the many words. He's telling you right there, do not be one of those ones mumbling phrases over and over again, uh, thinking that that's reaching God's ears. For those mumbling of certain phrases over and over again, it's just stale rhetoric. Right now, as a reminder, when we're looking at scripture, we always have to look at the cultural, historical, cultural context. What it meant for then, what is Jesus saying currently for the people who are looking at him, and then what does it mean for us Christians today, right? So verse 7, when he's saying don't use meaningless repetition, what does that mean for us today? What what do we are we doing anything that Jesus is drawing attention to that we need to correct? And the answer is yes, we are, and then and you're like, Well, what do you mean? What are you talking about? People pray all the time to the Lord. Well, it's how you pray that matters. What you pray and how you pray. So in verse 9, Jesus says, which he gives you a model of what to do. He says, pray then in this way. Now notice he doesn't say, pray these exact words, use this prayer for everything that you need. This this covers it all. This use my exact words. Don't forget and don't leave out any of these words that I'm saying to you. No, he says, pray in this way. It's supposed to be a model, a template, if you will, of what to do. Like kind of like think of like a template for a resume. You're not gonna use the template's information, you're gonna input your information in the style of the template. That's what this is. Jesus gives us a template of how to pray. He says, pray in this way. And then he lays down a prayer, right? Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. But you know the prayer. But there are some worrisome lines in the prayer, and I'm gonna address it in two ways. One, I'm gonna address it for the people who think they can recite this prayer, right? And thinking that they're making headwinds with God, and then two, the people who don't necessarily quote the prayer, but uses this format and still doesn't have any idea what it means. At the beginning of the prayer says, Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Let's stop right there. I could ask 10 Christians what that means, and nobody can tell me exactly what that means. You know, guess around to it, you know, hint around to it, but they can't tell me exactly what it means. So if you can't tell me what it means, why are you saying it? Right? Or even if you don't do know what it means, which I would hope you would if you're using it, if you do know what it means to say hallowed be your name, then how is it that you're breaking your own prayer request? Let me back up for a second. Hallow be your name. Right? Let's go to AI and see what AI says about it, even though AI is not a religion, um, it's not Christian based. Let's just see what it says in general. Hallow be your name is the opening petition of the Lord's Prayer of the Bible, meaning a request for God's name to be treated as holy, honored above all things, and revered. Yeah, that sounds about right. That's what it is. Hallow be your name. The Lord's name is holy, he is the holy of holy, and he is to be treated. This is the entrance to the prayer. This is when you're first coming in, our father who is in heaven, right? You're you're starting your prayer off. Hallow be your name. Lord, I I request that you give me the ability to treat your name as holy, honored, and revered, highly respected. But do you really mean that when you pray it? You're saying it, you're asking God for it, but you don't mean it. Because every I'm I don't know how many times I've heard Christians say, oh my God. Oh my god, OMG, oh my god, this, oh my god that. Wait a minute. If God's name is so honored and holy to you, why are you using it so flamboyantly and disrespectfully? When something bad happens, oh my god, oh my god, or somebody told you a story and you're shocked to hear what's going on in the story. Oh my god! Like, why are you saying that? And people are gonna say, well, you know, it's God, the word God, and you know, I don't sign his name, so that's not what it means. But it does. When you're praying to God, don't you say, God help me, or God this or God that? You're using God, the word God, in your prayer, you're using the word God when you're talking to other people about Christianity. Well, God does this and God does that, and God's about this. That's fine. Then his name has meaning. But now you're trying to say when you use it in vain, doesn't that mean? Then why use it at all? Why put his name out there? Why are you even using his name? Why are you saying, oh my God? The Bible has things against that. He said, He says, Go back to your old testament. What'd you say? Don't use my name in vain. Right? The name that you would one minute you're calling me holy, the next minute you're using it flamboyantly. You have no respect for my name. And we need to go back to find out what really respect is all about, what it is. Go to any any ancient country, um, Orthodox people of something that they find very holy. Right? You go over there, they're gonna tell you don't touch it, don't breathe on it. Whatever it is that they revere as holy, they're gonna tell you this is the holiest of holies, don't touch it, don't breathe on it, don't look at it, don't don't anything with it, right? Don't use anything regarding it flamboyantly. When you go to North Korea and they're talking about Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader, I dare you to find me a person over there that's talking about Kim Jong-un so flamboyantly without respect, without treating him as he's the supreme leader, or using his name. Oh my Kim Jong-un! You're not gonna find it. So why we do it so much as Christians? Why we do the very thing that we're requesting, the opposite of the thing that we're requesting from God. Alright, let's move on. The next line, verse 10. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Stop. Christians, do you even know what you're praying even in that next line? Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let's go with the first part. Your kingdom come. You don't even know what that means. Like your kingdom come. What does that mean? God's kingdom come. Come, come from what? What do you mean? And again, you have to go back and say, look, we have to define what we're talking about before we can just go out there and say it. Right? Kingdom comes means you're asking God to bring his love and truth to the whole people. You bring bring the gospel. Your kingdom come, bring the gospel, your will be done. We're praying that your gospel can spread. That's the will of God, for the gospel to be spread. Well, you're saying, well, how do we know that? Because later on in this in the same book, he says, Go out and make disciples, right? Teach them all things I've taught you. Spreading the gospel. Spreading the gospel, and then making disciples. That's God's will for Christians. That's what he means. So when you're saying that you're like, your kingdom come, your will be done. That's what God's will is. And then it says, on earth as it is in heaven. You better believe God's will is done in heaven. Right? There's nothing but grace, mercy, and love in heaven. And that's supposed to translate down to the earth. As Christians, we're supposed to be the ambassadors of that, of the heavenly motto. We're supposed to bring that down and then cast it out throughout the world. How many times are we called to be the light and the salt? But we don't believe that. When we're praying it, we're not believing that. When I into it like that, when I, oh, let the gospel come and your will be done as force. We're not thinking about that. We're just saying it. We're just saying things, wasting time before God. We have the king's attention. Right? Think about the old days. When you're in you're called into the king's court, you come in, and the king, King James, King Henry, King, whoever, and you call you in, and they say, okay, you got this amount of time, so speak. You're not wasting time. You're putting your most important requests before the king while you have the time to do so. Right? You're not just wasting time. You're not just saying things. Alright? Should the Lord be treated any less than the earthy king? When you're praying, you need to be dialed in, focused, and not just wasting time before the Lord. Hollow be your name. I don't even know what I'm just saying it. Because Jesus said it. That kingdom coming up. I don't have no idea what that means, but it sounds pretty good. No. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I don't know what's done in heaven. Like, no, focus, dial in, understand what you're requesting from the Lord, then put it out there. And don't for please don't request something from the Lord and then do the opposite of it. Oh my god. Don't do that. Don't do that. But I digress. I really love this one. Give us this day our daily bread. People seem to think that that's just only referring to the basic food needs or the material needs to get by for any given day. And it does not mean that. Yes, it means you're requesting the Lord, yes, give me what I need to survive physically, but you more you really mean spiritually. Right? Every time the bread is being referred to in the Bible, it's connotation, it's spiritual, right? And Jesus, we know what the Bible is referring to 90% of the time. It's referring to your spiritual health over your physical health. And when you're asking for the Lord to give us our daily bread, yes, you're asking for the Lord to give us our means to get by physically, but you're also asking them to give us what we need spiritually to get by that day. If I'm depressed, Lord, give me what I need to get through my depression. Right? If I'm not confident in preaching the gospel and I'm going to work, give me what I need to be stronger in the faith so I can preach it to my colleagues at work. Give me whatever I need spiritually. I need whatever I'm deficiting in. Give me what I need. That's what you're praying for. Now I didn't want to go into the whole uh prayer and breaking down. I'm not breaking down the Lord's prayer. The goal of this is to show you that people approach prayer frivolously, um, flamboyantly, would have dialed into what we're saying to the Lord. We we request these things. We're like, yeah, I'm praying in a format that Jesus prayed, but you have no idea what you're asking for. Or even let's say you are quoting the prayer and you mean every word of it, right? It's not just a chant. Still, it's incumbent upon you to understand what you're asking for. You need to know that and then the the style of the prayer. Let me just throw this in there. The way Jesus constructed his prayer, it's top-down, right? We don't understand what's happening here. You address before you start launching requests to the Father, and we make this mistake all the time, we get into the prayer and we start talking about what we need and what we want. No, you need to first address who you're talking to. And I mean, we don't do that in in in our life here on earth. We don't just run up to people to start asking them for something, start talking to them. We address who we're talking to. Hey, so-and-so. Hi, you know, whatever it is we're doing, we're talking to. Right? We're talking to the judge, your honor. I would like to say, whatever. God deserves no less. The prayer is top down. Our father who are, we address the father who we're talking to, we address his holiness as a king creator, our Lord. Right? And the respect that he deserves. We're coming at him with that. Then we say, okay, Holy Father, yes, you're my Lord, you're the most high God. I love you and revere you. Let your will be done, right? I pray that your will be done. You want what God wants, basically. Right? Then, after you've covered the heaven part, the God part, then you start going into what you request from the Lord. The first part of it is addressing the Father in heaven and his will. The second part of it is then how, you know, what we need to do. Give us this day our daily bed for us now. The second part of it is for us. You know, give us our you know, forgive us our dads, and we forget, blah, blah, blah. So we go down the list for us. First part is having God based, the second part is for us. You have to understand that, but you can't just go in there and say, God, I need, no, you're disrespecting the Lord. You have to know who you're talking to. God is not your chap, your pal, your comrade, a friend of mine, me and the old man was talking the other day. No. He's the Lord of the universe, creator of all. It doesn't surprise me that people don't give the Lord respect in their prayers. We don't even give each other respect for the people we see every day. Parent parental respect is gone, respect for our elders is God, respect for our teachers and officers and court officials are gone. I hear I was watching a court thing the other day, and the guy was saying yes, ma'am, to the judge. Not yes, your honor. There's no respect anymore for anything. So it doesn't surprise me that there's no respect for God. Especially in one mouth we're saying, God, I need you, I love you. And then in the next breath, oh my god. So we need to start being hypersensitive to what we're saying, what we mean, and stop wasting our time before the throne. Because that's what it is. Because here's here's the real truth of the matter. Some person aren't getting heard. If you're asking for the God, if you're asking for God to give you the ability to respect his name, right? And you're saying to God, Hallow be your name. And then the next breath, you're saying, Oh my god, or talking frivolously about God. GD this or GD that. That person's not being heard. You're not gonna have that ability. God's ignoring you. Just like he said, if you were just chant the prayer, if you're just saying it top top down, and just don't even really apply any meaning to it and just saying it just for the words to be heard, that prayer's not getting heard. If you're not even understanding what you're saying in the prayer, and just singing it just because Jesus said to say it, that prayer is not getting heard. Stop wasting your time before the Lord. Alright, so that's all I have for now. I'm your host, Jermaine Farrell, and I'll talk to you next time.