“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” Matthew 6:7
Author Robert A. Cook wrote, “All of us have one routine prayer in our system; and once we get rid of it, then we can really start to pray!” It is quite possible to treat the Lord’s Prayer this way--to recite the familiar words without thinking about them. This prayer is designed as a pattern for our prayers.
In the model prayer, notice that there are no singular pronouns. It begins with Our Father. When we pray we should remember that we are part of God’s family of worldwide believers. An example for how not to pray is this prayer, “Lord, bless me and my wife, our son and his wife, us four and no more. Amen.”
Jesus used the term “Abba” for God. This is more like “daddy” than “father”, a warm, intimate term. God wants us to draw close to Him.
A guideline for effective prayer is to pray for God’s will. The purpose of prayer is to glorify God’s name and to ask for His instructions and power to accomplish His will. Robert Law said, “Prayer is a mighty instrument, not for getting men’s will done in heaven, but for getting God’s will done on earth.”
In Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book, “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, Ivan endures all the horrors of a Soviet prison camp. One day he is praying with his eyes closed when a fellow prisoner notices him and says with ridicule, “Prayers won’t help you get out of here any faster.” Opening his eyes, Ivan answers, “I do not pray to get out of prison but to do the will of God.”
It is proper to put God’s concerns first and then bring Him our needs. The Lord’s Prayer does not begin, “Our Father, give me.” Prayer should be more than a wish list, or “to do” list we present to God. However, we are told to ask God to meet our needs in the phrase, “Give us our daily bread.” “Bread” represents the necessities of life, not the luxuries. We probably all need a lot less than we want.
Another guideline is to pray with a forgiving heart. We ask God to “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Matthew 6:14 and 15 are very plain verses. They say, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” So, if we want to be forgiven, we must forgive others.
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