Do You Pray the Way Jesus Taught? Praying and Preying! Update.

Do You Pray the Way Jesus Taught?

“People pray many different ways across the various denominations of Christianity. How do you pray? How did Jesus pray? What did Jesus say about prayer?

Most would agree that one of the basic elements of Christianity is prayer.

But when you survey the wide variety of forms of Christianity, you find that there are many different practices and ideas about prayer. Consider:

• Those who are Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox typically see prayer as the recitation of prewritten prayers. Roman Catholicism has hundreds of these prayers for people to recite in a variety of situations. For instance, there are specific prayers for Catholics to recite before and after meals, when dealing with depression, and in many other situations. Catholic and Orthodox traditions include the practice of praying to Mary, angels and saints as intercessors between God and man.
• In general, the Protestant world is less liturgical about prayers. There are many different forms of praying in Protestantism—from emotional prayers spoken from the pulpits of churches to prayer groups meeting together to pray about specific issues.

Though the way people pray varies within mainstream Christianity, all major branches frequently pray “the Lord’s Prayer” found in Matthew 6:9-13. Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants will pray the Lord’s Prayer many times throughout their lives because they believe that Jesus instructed His followers to pray this prayer verbatim.

But is this what Jesus Christ intended when He taught His disciples about prayer in the Sermon on the Mount? What did Jesus really teach about prayer?

What did Jesus say about prayer?

The Lord’s Prayer is found in the middle of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount—the heart and core of what genuine Christianity is all about. Christ broached the subject of prayer in a portion of the sermon that explains Christians should not flaunt their good deeds for everybody to see. He said that good deeds—giving to charitable causes, serving others, etc.—should be done “in secret” (Matthew 6:4).

He didn’t mean that we should be embarrassed about doing good, but that our motivation should be to do good because we are trying to please God and do the right thing. Our motivation should not be for other people to see us!

After making that important point, Christ transitioned to the topic of prayer. He gave a number of points that are very important for all Christians to understand—and that contradict many of the practices found in Christianity today.

Prayer is not for show

Jesus applied the same principle He made about good works to prayer: “And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men” (verse 5). In other words, we shouldn’t use prayer to show off our spirituality to others.

Pray in private

Instead of a public show, Jesus taught: “When you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly” (verse 6).

In order to build a strong relationship with our Creator, we need to spend daily, concentrated time praying to Him privately, one-on-one. Instead of praying publicly to be seen by others, prayer is to be done primarily in private. There is an important reason for this. Prayer is designed as a means of communication to “draw near to God” (James 4:8)—to deepen our personal relationship with Him. In order to build a strong relationship with our Creator, we need to spend daily, concentrated time praying to Him privately, one-on-one.

Jesus Christ didn’t just teach about this; it was a regular part of His life (Matthew 14:23; Mark 1:35; Luke 6:12).

(Note that there are times when praying in public is appropriate, such as at a family meal, church service, wedding or a funeral.)

Pray to the Father

Jesus was very clear that our prayers are directed to God the Father: “Pray to your Father who is in the secret place” (Matthew 6:6). Now that Jesus Christ is in heaven as the Mediator between God and man, we pray “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20; 1 Timothy 2:5). Jesus said we can ask the Father for anything in His name (John 14:13-14).

Though Christ was very clear, it is amazing how many churches pray in ways that directly contradict this instruction. Prayers are not to be directed to angels, Mary or any saints!

Pray from the heart

Jesus made another clear statement that is widely ignored: “And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words” (Matthew 6:7).

Christ was referring to the pagan form of recitation and chanting prayers based on the idea that repeating a prayer will bring favor from God (or the gods). This form of repeating or chanting prewritten prayers is practiced extensively in the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

God doesn’t want prewritten prayers to be repeated over and over. This does nothing to fulfill the basic purpose of prayer, which is to develop a close, personal relationship with God.

If you do a study of the many prayers recorded in the Bible, you will notice that they are distinct, personal and heartfelt communication between the individual and God. Here are a few prayers that are helpful to study:

• 1 Samuel 1:11; 2:1-10: Hannah’s prayer requesting a child and her prayer of thanksgiving to God after He provided her a son named Samuel. 
• Psalm 51: David’s heartfelt prayer of repentance for his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah the Hittite.
• 2 Kings 19:15-19: King Hezekiah’s prayer for God to deliver Judah from being conquered by Assyria.

To learn more about how to have real, meaningful prayers to God, read the article “Prayer From the Heart.”

Jesus Christ provides an outline for prayer

Then Jesus got more specific. He said, “In this manner, therefore, pray” (Matthew 6:9).

He then gave an example prayer that, sadly, has been misused by many in mainstream Christianity—in direct contradiction of His instruction in verse 7 to not use repetitious prayers! This is commonly called the “Lord’s Prayer” and is recited repetitively in many denominations.

But Christ did not give this prayer for us to repeat over and over.

So what was Christ teaching us in the so-called “Lord’s Prayer”? Essentially, Jesus was providing an outline to show the general structure and topics that should be included in our regular prayers to God. This outline would more accurately be called a model prayer.

Study the accompanying graphic to better understand what Christ was teaching through this example prayer.

God wants a deep, personal relationship with you. To build that relationship, you need to communicate with Him through prayer. In order for those prayers to be “effective” and “fervent” (James 5:16), we must allow Jesus Christ to teach us how to pray and remove traditions that contradict what He taught!

To learn more about the Bible’s teachings on prayer, read “How to Talk to God.”

View larger or download infographic PDF of Jesus' Model Prayer

Learn More About God

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Praying and Preying!

“Even during a crisis, our society cannot escape human nature.

Transcript of YouTube: https://youtu.be/xN4fpdlm7R4

[Steve Myers] This is a time that we have to be careful about praying. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, there’s a couple of different kinds of praying. Certainly, right now, during this difficult time of all the health challenges that we face, we definitely want to be praying. We have to be a praying people. We should be praying for our families. We should be praying for our communities. We should be praying for our government leaders. We should be praying for the church. Absolutely, we should be a praying people.

But there’s another kind of praying that we’ve gotta be very careful about. And that’s this kind of praying. Yeah, believe it or not, during this time, there are those that are out there that are preying in this way. They’re preying on people. There is cyber criminals out there that are taking advantage of the Coronavirus. If you ever get an email that says, “Click here for a cure,” be careful, it’s probably a scam. If you get a text or an email that says, “Get your COVID-19 tax refund,” don’t do it. It is a scam. You’ve gotta be careful if you hear from the WHO, the World Health Organization, be careful. They don’t send out personal emails. That is probably a scam as well. And if you click on it, it’ll record every keystroke on your computer and they can steal your information. So, watch out. In fact, I’ve also heard about people that are going door-to-door. And they’re claiming to be able to come in and sanitize your home, so that you won’t be infected. That is a scam. They’ll come in and they’ll steal you blind. So, watch out.

What this reminds us of, these two kinds of praying, it reminds us that even during a crisis, there are people out there that cannot get away from their human nature. The Bible talks a lot about our human nature. A passage that specifically comes to mind for me is one that’s found in 1 John 2:16. It tells us about normal, everyday human way of thinking. It says, “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father but is of the world.” It is against God and there are those that are out there that would take advantage of you.

So, be careful. And of course, it’s a reminder for us, too. We need to be careful. Don’t be a hoarder. Don’t take advantage of others. Be selfless. Try to serve others during this difficult time. That’s the Godly thing to do.

So, let’s be sure we recognize the difference between praying and preying. And let’s be a people that’s praying to our God.”  From: https://www.ucg.org/beyond-today/beyond-today-daily/praying-and-preying

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Update

Like everyone else who is ‘sheltering in place’ there isn’t much going on here.  My neighbor and I ventured to Tractor Supply, mostly to get some of the good pet food that they sell.  I had something to return anyway.  My neighbor has a sweet Westie, West Highland White dog, they look like a white Scottie. We have to go past our little Walmart to get there, so we went in, donned in masks and gloves. That seems to be everyone’s uniform these trying days.

Yes, I still have the cat that nearly died.  I am pretty sure that he has Feline Leukemia, among other things, but I want to give him some happy time as a beloved housecat before he gets too sick and has to be PTS.  He has lots of scars on all four legs where he must have gone through some awful trauma, but still has a very sweet personality. He finally realizes that he is going to be fed canned and dry food regularly, and doesn’t try to pry open the dry food bin anymore.  He had chewed through the bag when I got him, so I had to put it in a lidded pail. I have to mix canned pumpkin in with his canned food to help his digestion and elimination.  That works for people too.

Bible study was on Zoom, and I finally figured out how to make that work, but I didn’t know how to turn on my camera. When I was given this laptop, I was told to tape over the camera, so that “Big Brother Couldn’t Watch Me”, so had to take that off.  But that was OK, they didn’t need to see me.  The folks’ faces participating in the Bible study were so distorted anyway, their cameras didn’t do them justice.  I watched several church’s services on my computer, and spent more time watching them than I would have if I had gone to church.

Now we just have to do our best to help slow the curve, so that we can all live for a better day.