Matthew 6

Posted on Jan 9, 2017 in Bible (NT) in a Year |

Monday

Have you ever wondered if God already knows what I am going to ask for, why do I need to pray?

The answer is really quite simple, prayer is not for God’s benefit, its for ours. Its not like God is sitting up in Heaven and hears our prayer and says “Wow, I didn’t know that about you!!! Really??? We need to do something about that situation.”  No, God truly does know everything, He knows what you’re going through, He knows all about your problems, your joys, your struggles and not only yours, but everyone and everything else you might ever pray about. So why pray? Because prayer is for us. It is to help us. We need to learn to be reliant on God for everything, to turn to Him before we do anything, to trust in Him, otherwise, we try to do everything on our own.
 
So Jesus gives us some helpful advice on how to pray. Not because we have to follow a certain pattern or set of rules when it comes to praying, but just to help us make sure that the focus of our prayer is not on ourselves but rather that our focus is on God.
 

That why Jesus warns us about the hypocrites who pray long and loud prayers – all for show. All for their benefit. “Look at how holy I am.” That’s what they want everyone to think. But here again, who are they kidding – not God. So in the Lord’s prayer, there are some guidelines for us. Jesus says, first acknowledge God, praise Him, recognized His Holiness and how great God is, how God knows all and sees all and that we should submit to His Will, His plan for our lives. Then start asking for your needs and the needs of others. Ask for forgiveness (which Jesus also elaborates on – forgiving others is extremely important – whenever we ask for forgiveness we need to ask ourselves is there anyone I need to forgive?) and strength to avoid temptations.

Just another little aside note here. God doesn’t lead us into temptation, but He will allow us to be tempted by the evil one in order for us to grow stronger in our faith. (Think about Job from the Old Testament – Job, through all his testing, never denied God or quit believing in Him.)

So you may be wondering what happened to the rest of the Lord’s prayer – shouldn’t it go on to say “for thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever”? Why isn’t that here? The ending line is known as a doxology and many of the early prayers (even in the Old Testament we find this practice, ie 1 Chronicles 29:10-13 David prays a “doxology”). The practice was very early on the doxology (a prayer of praising) was added to the ritual of praying the Lord’s prayer. It was not found in the earlies copies of the scripture and so most translations leave it out. But hey, praising God is always a good way to end our prayers. Amen.

Praising God today and every day!

Pastor Kathy