Day #32: “Sermon on the Mount Part 2: How to Ask” (Dave Snoke)
Matthew 6:5-7 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.…And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.”
(also)
James 1:6-8 “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”
(and)
James 4:3-4 “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?”
Yesterday, we discussed how we shouldn’t think that we need to use a special formula to get God to answer our prayers. But the Bible also tells us that certain ways of approaching God can hinder our prayers being answered. That is, God may deem some prayers, even of his children, as unacceptable. The verses above, and others, tell us that the following can hinder our prayers:
- Lack of faith. Jesus often refused to do miracles when people lacked faith (e.g. Matthew 13:58) and commanded people that faith was crucial for their prayers. (e.g. Matthew 17:20).
- Asking for our worldly passions. As James says in the passage above, our prayers need to be “kingdom-centered,” for the glory of God, not just for our own comfort and success.
- Praying as a show to others. Jesus says in the passage above that the “reward” given to the Pharisees will be just what they really want—praise by others—and not from God.
- Mindlessness. Jesus also says that just praying repetitively as a religious duty, as is common in folk religion, is not the right way to pray.
- Relational sin. The apostle Peter said that a domineering spirit toward a spouse can hinder our prayers (1 Peter 3:7); Jesus told us to go and be reconciled with a brother before approaching God (Matthew 5:23-24).
This doesn’t mean that we have to be sinless to pray to God! But it does mean that we need to re-orient ourselves toward God when we pray. This is one reason why the Lord’s Prayer taught by Jesus includes confession of sin.