But whenever you pray, go into your innermost chamber and be alone with Father God, praying to him in secret. Matthew 6:6 (TPT)
Public Prayer – Teach Us How To Pray – Part 2
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From what's recorded in the Gospels, it seems that Jesus preferred quiet and private prayer. “In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house and went off to a lonely place to pray.” (Mark 1:35; also in Matthew 14:23 and Mark 1:12-13). He prayed privately before almost all big events. Before his “ministry started” he spent forty days in the desert… praying.
Praying AND missing the family-based Sabbath rituals and the Temple Services and Prayers. He somewhat defied the public ritual of prayer and subverted it for something more private and interior.
We mentioned yesterday that most Rabbi's and their disciples had a “group prayer,” that somewhat identified them. But Jesus hadn't given his followers a prayer to recite yet. Perhaps something is telling in that detail…
“Whenever you pray, be sincere and not like the pretenders who love the attention they receive while praying before others in the meetings and on street corners. Believe me, they’ve already received in full their reward.” (Matt 6:5 TPT).
Not everyone who prays in public is insincere. Public prayer can be beautiful, heartfelt and powerful.
But as someone who has prayed on stages and in front of crowds, I know that it’s easy to get up and say words that you know you will be applauded and cheered; that will garner a hearty “AMEN” at the end.
It’s easy to stand before a crowd and fill the space with rhetoric and noise and claps and “Hallelujahs.” It’s easy to go unprepared and unseeing, speaking into a moment without forethought or insight. It’s easy to portray yourself, and the gospel, as something that it's not, in a moment of hyped up, intense public prayer.
We’ve all seen this on our TV screens, and Social Media feeds over the last few months (in many different countries and spaces).
The reward for public prayer is simply in its being “witnessed.” And I have to admit (confession), I’ve reveled in moments of public prayer and the respect and applause and seemingly fearless and powerful position it placed me in. Yep, it’s all too easy to use public prayer as a means of boosting your ego (ouch). I’d be lying if I said that it never boosted mine.
Jesus is trying to teach us (was trying to teach the disciples) that there is more to prayer than our public words; there is more to prayer than our words being witnessed and heard and applauded. There is more to prayer than words.
“But whenever you pray, go into your innermost chamber and be alone with Father God, praying to him in secret. And your Father, who sees all you do, will reward you openly. When you pray, there is no need to repeat empty phrases, praying like those who don’t know God, for they expect God to hear them because of their many words.”
Since most people in Jesus day had houses with only one or two rooms, this was an interesting suggestion: go into your innermost chamber and pray in secret. Perhaps Jesus innermost chamber was a mountain, a lake, and a dessert. Or even silence. His own heart and interiors.
Perhaps it was an invitation for the disciples to embrace emptiness and solitude. Instead of filling up space with noise, get quiet and alone, and enter into Presence. Allow the presence of God to fill their lives; their inner selves, not just the space around them.
It’s one thing to talk, it's another to listen, it's another thing again to simply ‘BE' in the presence of God. A place where words seem inadequate. A place that breeds inner transformation.
“Western culture has tended to be an extroverted culture and a “can-do” culture. Prayer too easily became an attempt to change God and aggrandize ourselves instead of what it was meant to be – an interior practice to change the one who is praying, which will always happen if we stand calmly before this uncanny and utterly safe Presence, allowing the Divine Gaze to invade and heal our unconscious, the place where 95 percent of our motivations and reactions come from. All we can really do is return the gaze.” Richard Rohr, from the “Naked Now.“
Your turn… Leave us your comments below.
Go to Part 3 – In Heaven »
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