How Should Christians Pray? Understanding Matthew 6 (Part 1)

Prayer can sometimes feel confusing, especially when certain passages of Scripture seem to emphasize different things. In this episode of the Q&A with Pastor Charlie podcast, we begin a two-part conversation on prayer by answering a thoughtful question about Matthew 6 and the Lord’s Prayer. Should Christians only pray according to the outline Jesus gave, or are we meant to bring our everyday needs and requests before God?

Pastor Charlie walks through Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and explains the difference between genuine prayer and the empty religious performance that Jesus warned against. Along the way, he highlights how Scripture consistently calls believers to pray often, persistently, and sincerely as people who are fully dependent on the Lord.

Whether you have struggled with prayer, wondered if God cares about the “small things,” or simply want a clearer understanding of what Jesus taught, this episode offers practical encouragement and biblical clarity on why prayer matters and how God desires His people to approach Him.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Happy Friday. Welcome back to another episode of the QA with Pastor Charlie Podcast. Today's episode was going to be one of two parts, and we're going to be talking about prayer. So here's the question that we were sent in, and we're going to answer it half of it today and half of it next week. It says, I have a question about praying. When I started reading the Bible, I started with Matthew, and that was a couple years ago. I read Matthew 6 and took it quite literally, where Jesus is describing to his disciples how to pray, depicting the Lord's prayer and warning against praying, quote, as the Gentiles do. I took Matthew 6, 5 through 13 to mean that you shouldn't just ask God for all of these earthly things to happen in your life that you are wanting to happen to keep it to keep to an outline of the Lord's Prayer instead. My wife who grew up in church doesn't pray like this. For the most part, I've tried to do what I understood until recently with the sermon teachings over Ephesians, where Paul says several times to pray to God often and for different things, which I somewhat understand, but then sometimes it seems to conflict with earlier stricter the stricter reading of Matthew. So how do you reconcile this if there's any reconciliation? Should we pray to God for the small earthy things or should we stick to the outline in Matthew 6?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Great question. I think I appreciate the fact that he's trying to figure out exactly what the Bible teaches about something and then about something that's really important, like prayer, because prayer clearly is one of the primary spiritual disciplines that the Bible gives us. That's about our communication with God. And one of the things I would encourage anybody to do is to go through the specifically the New Testament and look at Jesus' life and how he prayed and frequency, specifically in the Gospel of Luke, because Luke puts such an emphasis on that. And then one other thing I would say as we're trying to answer this question is anytime we're trying to understand a doctrine in the Bible, a topic in the Bible, it's important that we don't ever just take one passage of Scripture on it, but instead we try to look at the totality of everything the Bible teaches. And so it's always important for us to see the big picture. And so it's easy if we're not careful to focus or hone in on one passage and then use it as the standard. And sometimes that's what we have. But the best way to understand any type of doctrine is to look at all right, what is the overall teaching of all of the scripture? And if there's discrepancies in that, it's not because the Bible is uh contradicting itself, it would be because of our interpretation of it. And so we let all of it speak. Now, I will say just right off the bat to his question. I I believe the Bible tells us that we are to pray about things. We're to cast all of our cares upon him, the scripture tells us. Uh we're to we're to not be afraid to keep coming before the Lord, because Jesus himself taught that we're to pray and not give up and give a parable about a woman who just kept going back and kept going back to a judge. And he said, used that as an example of how we should not be afraid to continue to bring those petitions and requests. And so the simple answer to his question is yes, we're to pray about anything, everything, seek the Lord, not be afraid to ask, because as Jesus also said, that we have a good Father in heaven who, if we ask for a piece of bread, will not give us a stone, that he wants to give good things to his children. And prayer is a way by which we communicate that to the Lord. And it's not that God doesn't need it, as we're going to see in this passage, but prayer is the way for us to always be mindful of our need for the Lord. And so God knows our needs before we even speak them. Yet at the same time, there is a beauty of prayer by which we're acknowledging our need for God and we're expressing that we know that God holds the answers. Now, going back to the Matthew 6 passage, and this is why we're gonna do it in two parts, Jesus tells us how not to pray in one part, and then how to pray in the next part. And so we're gonna tackle how not to pray and what did Jesus mean by that, and then we're gonna look at this example prayer that he's given us in the Lord's Prayer. Now, one of the things, just to give us a little bit of context, in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter six, is Jesus is really showing the difference between the kingdom of God and how things work in his kingdom that Jesus has inaugurated by his coming to earth and the religion of men, specifically the religion of the Pharisees, who were the predominant leaders of Jesus' time, who had taken the law that God had given them and really had, in their mind, come up with a way for them to be righteous in and of themselves. And so Jesus is really step by step, little by little, showing the fallacy of what they've taught and said, don't do it this way. This is not what the kingdom of God is like. And so everything that you've really been taught is counter to what the true kingdom is. And so that's why he begins by talking about how not to pray, using the Pharisees as the example, and then the Gentiles or the lost people, the pagans, as an example. Now, one of the important things that he starts verse or chapter six with is that they're not to let their righteousness be shown before others. And so the Pharisees love the praise of men. They love to be recognized for their knowledge, for their religious fervor, uh, for just the way they carried themselves, and they didn't do it for God. They did it for the applause and praise of men. And Jesus saw right through that. It's why Jesus, when he spoke his woes to them in the Gospel of Luke, one of the examples is he said, You're like whitewashed tombs. On the outside you look clean and pristine, but on the inside you're full of death and decay. He said, You're like a cup who on the outside seems clean, but on the inside is filled with filth. And he basically says, I see beyond your clean exterior, and I see to your heart. And he's wanting prayer then to be from the heart and not just an outward act that men do. And so he says this in verse 5 Whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Truly I tell you, they have the reward. But when you pray, go into your private room, shut the door, and pray to your father who is in secret, and your father who sees you in secret will reward you. And so the hypocrites that he's referring to are these religious leaders who love to stand on the street corners, they love to pray with their powerful words, with their knowledge, which I'm sure was quite impressive because of what they all knew. But Jesus says the only reason they're doing that is so other people will look at them. It has nothing to do about their connection with God, there's nothing about worship there. And he said, I'm telling you that the only benefit that they're going to receive is the applause and praise of men. And so instead, what he tells them uh believers to do is don't do this so other people can be seen, but instead go home, go into a private room. And I think he's not being literal as far as we always have to go into a closet or a private room and shut the door. What I think he's saying here is this let your prayer be between you and God, not about other people. Uh, I heard someone say before, you know, if if your prayers are better in front of people than they are when you're alone, then you've got a problem with your prayer life. And I think there's some truth to that. I mean, I know sometimes in my own experience, like you know, when you're called upon to pray, sometimes I can pray more powerfully when other people are around than maybe the time that I spend thoughtfully praying in private. And when that's the case, I've got to stop and evaluate my own personal prayer life. And so the first thing is don't pray to be seen by men. Don't pray for recognition of people, but instead pray to connect with the Lord and voice your needs before him. The second thing he says is when you pray, don't babble like the Gentiles, the pagans, the unbelievers, since they imagine they'll be heard by their many words. Don't be like them because your father knows the things you need before you ask him. Now, in pagan prayer, in the type that Paul, or excuse me, Jesus is referring to here in this passage, is a meaningless repetition that is speaking for the sake of speaking. And the idea is the more I keep saying something, the more this God that I'm praying to is going to hear it. There were incantations that they would pray with, you know, formulas that they would use. And essentially it was this way to try to get their God's attention, get them to pay attention to them, and then maybe through through grabbing their attention, then they're going to heed and grant them their prayer. And Jesus is saying, you don't have to pray like this to your Father in heaven. Matter of fact, he's not going to know what you need because you say it more and more in Babylon. He already knows your needs. Prayer is about you acknowledging that you have a need. It's about you accessing this relationship that you have that Jesus is going to show us here in a minute in this example, prayer. And he is going to, he knows what's going on in your life and he wants to meet it. He's not going to meet it because you keep talking. He's going to meet it because he loves you and he knows what you need and he cares for you. Now, the thing I want to point out as we end this portion is two things that Jesus says here. Whenever you pray, and then he says it again, when you pray, as you look through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is going to talk about like when you give. And so like there are these expectations that Jesus is saying, I expect you to be doing these things, when you fast. And so, really, there's these spiritual disciplines that he weaves in and through out of it, and the expectation is always you're doing these things. And one of the things that I want to draw attention to in this passage is the expectation of Christians, of God's people, is to be praying to him. And Jesus modeled that all throughout his life. I mean, you see Jesus getting away into a lonely place. He would go away maybe into a garden, he would go away to a hillside. But Luke just continues to point this out in his gospel of how Jesus made it a habit of praying. And if the sinless, perfect Son of God knew he needed that type of communion with the Father, how much more so are we who are not perfect need that time? And so to anybody who's listening, I think one of the most important things that we can develop, and I will tell you as a pastor, as a guy who's been a Christian for the vast majority of his life, this is still an area that I'm having to work on. This is still an area that I can be weak in. And partly because I trust so much in the sovereignty of God that I'm like, God, you're gonna do what you're gonna do, and I'm okay with it. But that's not the what the Bible teaches that while God is sovereign, he still wants his people to cry out to him, commune with him, bring their petitions and requests before them. Don't give up in praying for things, not be afraid to express our needs. And so I'm gonna leave that there before we go into the Lord's Prayer and really just call us as a people to be mindful that we are called to pray and never be afraid to approach God in that way.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

That's good. Um, we hope that you guys will join us for the next episode where we continue to look at this passage together and talk about prayer. And if you have more questions like these, we would love to help you understand the scripture more and your spiritual life better. Send them in to questions at virtual.com.