Babble No More – Mt 6:5-8
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Jesus’ teaching is simple. Prayer is not for show but for the intimate places of communication with the Lord. The Lord rewards the latter. And babbling like the pagans do misrepresents the character of God. It’s not quantity that gets his attention. It’s his children that do.
Simple enough. Not much to extrapolate but more to obey.
Then the last verse, “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
From this comes hundreds of articles on, “Why pray if he knows what you need?”
From it, there are thousands of good reasons we can list:
- Relationship
- Dependency
- Countless reasons more
But the bottom line is this, God has instructed us to pray. It’s the way he wants it. God has his reasons and his reasons are always good. And well, in the arena of prayer that’s enough for me.
