After This Manner Pray Ye

“But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.” Matthew 6:7-10

As difficult as it is for some of us to memorize scripture verses, most of us know a good portion of Matthew chapter 6 because we were raised in churches, whether Catholic or Protestant, that taught us to recite what we call “The Lord’s Prayer." In the verse preceding the much recited “Lord’s Prayer” is this command from Jesus Himself which very clearly instructs us to: “…use not vain repetitions…” And then He goes on to say, “after this manner therefore pray ye”. The words “after this manner” could be paraphrased to read “like this for example”.

What is most critical to us, when we pray, is that the life of God is in us; heathens [those who do not “believe” God] do not have the life of God in them.

Without Jesus residing in us, our prayers will have all the affect of “vain repetitions”, and we, like the heathens, might even “think that [we] shall be heard for [our] much speaking”; when, in fact, the opposite is true. Much speaking reminds me of much works. And nothing is accomplished by works alone as we have already seen; first must come FAITH which THEN produces APPROPRIATE works. But works by themselves cause us to miss out on the grace and mercy of God given to us. We ignore His grace and go for our works (our many vain repetitions) instead as being the thing that will “win” God’s heart for the things that we desire.

It is the life of God IN us that brings not only our wills into line with His, so that our prayers are “inspired” by God Himself, but also produces answered prayers because God, “Our Father”, desires to respond to His children.

But if the life of God in us is so critical, then how important is it to our praying, that we, ourselves, are obedient to God? I don’t speak here of sins of ignorance, as though we must be perfected before we are allowed to expect answers to prayer. What I mean is what about those sins that we are aware of, that we haven’t quite let go of, haven’t quite laid at the foot of the cross with remorse and repentance? Absolute surrender of our will to God is absolutely critical to producing prayer that is answered....every time.

The more we surrender the more the Holy Spirit is able to fill us with more of Jesus’ life in us.

The less we are willing to surrender, the longer that sin remains in our life, the less “inspiration” we will receive from the Holy Spirit to help us pray, for we are “grieving” Him by our sin, and the less our prayers will be answered, for they cannot be heard in the first place by Our Father who has turned His ear away from us because of our rebellion. He will not grant our requests as long as we are being disobedient. Similar to a father whose child desires to go out to play, even though he has not yet done his chores. The father will not grant the child’s desires, until the child has done as the father wills him to do.

I believe the Word of God uses the relationship of father to child so often when instructing us, because it is so easy for us to comprehend the earthly pattern of a child relating to his parent, whether in obedience or in rebellion.

The example Jesus gives us, regarding how to pray, begins with proclaiming God’s presence in heaven and the holiness of His name. Sometimes in prayer, we forget that God is holy. And we present ourselves to Him, in prayer, with sin-stained garments. The garments we are to put on to enter into our Father’s presence are to be the washed-in-the-blood garments of Jesus’ righteousness, which we have received after confession of all known sin and acknowledgment of our need for the righteousness of Jesus to both wash us clean and to reside in us.

When we become members of the true “church”, the body of Christ Himself, by virtue of our surrender to His will not ours be done, we have no need to memorize prayers and no need to repeat them unendingly in “hope” that God will hear us and answer us. We will "know" that He hears us and answers us, as Jesus Himself knew that the Father heard and answered Him.

When Jesus tells us that we will ask the Father all things in His [Jesus’] Name, He speaks of us becoming a part of His body, so that we are IN JESUS. So that we go forth as representatives of Jesus Christ, and in His Name, that is IN HIM, we bring the Father’s will to earth, both through our actions and because of our prayers.

We know the Father’s will, because the Spirit of the Father and the Son are residing in us to accomplish His will through our lives and our prayers. And every word of our prayer is born out of travailing that the kingdom of God on this earth will be exactly as the kingdom of God is in heaven.

Holy Spirit-inspired-praying.

No recital needed.