Wednesday 15th May
Read Matthew 6:7-8
“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.” (NIVUK)
There are religious traditions in many faiths that require adherents to engage in long acts of prayer involving the repeated use of the name of their deity. Jesus thinks that naïve and foolish. God does not hear prayers because His name is repeated often, as if He is hard of hearing and needs to be invoked often in order to respond. Prayer is not a formula, it is a conversation. It is personal – ‘your Father knows what you need…’.
It is also personal in another sense. Jesus declares that endlessly informing God of our needs is not for God’s benefit – He already knows. Yet prayer remains an essential part of faith and should not be abandoned. Luther captures the essence of prayer succinctly and simply, ‘By our praying…we are instructing ourselves more than Him.’. In that sense also then, prayer is personal. It teaches us what faithful dependence on God looks like and trains us in patience and faithfulness ourselves. In that way we become more like God.
