Not long ago someone told me that they do not know how to pray. And my response was that the Lord wants to hear from our hearts. He does not want to hear frivolous repetitious words over and over where they’re just words that come out of the mouth and not come from the heart.
In Matthew 6:9-13, Jesus says you should pray like this: Our father, in heaven, help us to honor Your name. Come, and set up Your kingdom, so that everyone on earth will obey You, as You are obeyed in heaven. Give us our food for today. Forgive us for doing wrong, as we forgive others. The main thing that many people get confused with in praying this prayer over and over again when the hint word is the word ‘like.’ He says to pray ‘like this’ not to pray those words over and over again. He says to pray like this. We ask the Lord to help us to forgive us, and to sustain us each day.
He is in heaven, and we need to pray that one day we be there with Him. With this world today as it is, we need to pray that people wake up that they see Him for who He is and obey Him and give respect to Him. Forgiveness, well, that’s a whole new subject. In the Bible, it also says that if we cannot forgive others, then He won’t forgive us. So on a daily basis, our struggles with people that hurt us means that we have to be challenged and understand how important it is to forgive them and to just go on and sometimes that is pretty hard. So on a daily basis, we have to ask our Lord to forgive us, and in that forgiveness, we can forgive others.
Give us this day our daily bread means that we have to ask the Lord to bless us with the food that we need in these earthly bodies to continue to live on this earth, as we know it one day prayerfully if we have done everything that he is asked we will have those imperishable bodies and will want for nothing. Our daily bread is more than food, it is the means to live spiritually every day! We depend on him to sustain us, to forgive us, and to seek Him. So when we pray, it really has to come from our hearts, so that He knows we are sincere. If you say a prayer over and over and over again, it becomes frivolous with no meaning, and He doesn’t like that.
In Matthew 6:5 He says, “When you pray, do not pray like the hypocrites, for they love to pray, standing in the synagogues, and on the street corners to be seen by men… but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.” He doesn’t want us to be showy in our prayers and be those people that are holy rollers in the street for attention. He wants us to pray one on one with Him privately. In Matthew 6:8 He says that your Father knows what you need before you ask Him and He tells us to pray for our needs. So when you pray you need to realize that repetitious prayers are not what He wants, but He wants you to go to Him in any and everything that’s in your heart because He already knows what you need and what you are feeling but He wants you to tell Him and to ask Him.
As our preacher pointed out several times in the past, it seems like the world will reach out to our Lord in a crisis, such as 9/11, and when bad things happen in our school systems with these killings, and any kind of bomb, threats or bombings. But on a daily basis, you see so many things on TV, such as the evil that goes on, and the acceptance of things that He hates. In this world, we should all be praying on a daily basis, and one of those prayers should include for our country to seek Him out again, and to keep Him upfront and center in our world, and in our lives every day.
Everyone in life is faced with something that they struggle with, and everyone in life has a different situation, but they have lived through. Each depends on our Lord to get us through in their own personal situations. Therefore, it only makes sense that we individually need to go to Him on a personal level because He knows exactly what you are going through and what you need. Matthew 10:26 says that He knows every strand of hair because they are counted by Him. He knows us inside and out and nothing is hidden from Him. He is the all knowing and through His suffering and dying for us, He understands our pain. We have the perfect example and guide, and we should go to Him in all things.
You cannot go wrong in your prayer to the Lord. There is no right way or there is no wrong way to pray if it comes from your heart and you just talk to Him. He wants the real you, and nothing more so when you pray, pray from the bottom of your heart, and remember that every beat of that heart belongs to Him. Open that heart to Him and let Him in and He will be there for you for eternity. He says that we are a vapor and not promised tomorrow, and we only have one shot in this earth as we know it for eternity with Him and we have to do what we can to get there, because there is only one alternative to Heaven and that is hell for eternity.