Praying Through the Motions

I discovered a good sermon resource from preacher Darryl Dash in Ontario. Last night at church, I used the following outline from his sermon, The Temptations of Prayer.
Jesus taught the disciples how to pray, but He also taught them about a temptation when praying: Going through the motions of prayer.

I. Going through the motions (Matt. 6:5-15)

A. Prayers that are for show only are like the nice furniture in your grandmother’s den with the plastic. Looks nice, but not useful.

B. Or how about the show we put on when our marital relationships get rocky. When you’re away from home, you look like everything is just fine, when really you’re just a couple of phonies. That is the definition of a hypocrite. It’s a term from drama. It literally means “false face.”

C. There is a temptation for prayer to become nothing but a show or something that is not what it seems. Perhaps it has become like those couples in the restaurant. They eat in silence, and barely look at each other. They’re not trying to fool anyone, but it’s not what it could be.

II. Jesus claimed that some prayers were only for show.

A. Matt. 6:1, 5-8. They prayed, but they only went through the motions. Their prayers were useless, phony, and not all what they could be.

B. Verses 6-8 tell us how to keep our prayer lives from falling into the temptation of going through the motions.

C. Keep prayer private and meaningful

1. Private Prayer (v. 6)

i. Note first that Jesus’ answer to learning how to pray and even in watching out for temptations in prayer is to …PRAY, “When you pray,” He says.

ii. And it isn’t that public prayer is wrong; it is that private prayer is terribly overlooked. Private prayer must come first. Public prayer is to be the overflow of the prayers in private.

iii. Look at the language here to see if your prayer life models what Jesus is describing…”inner room” “shut the door” “in secret.”

iv. Notice that the Father is in secret. We might infer that we do not reach Him in prayer unless it is there in the inner, closed off, secret privacy of secluded prayer.

v. I recall Proverb 25.2, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.” In other words, God enjoys having us come after what He has hidden away in secret. And it is our privilege, our joy to discover the hidden things God has for us.

[Don't underestimate the power of private prayer as well as keep prayer…]

2. Meaningful (v. 7)

i. Some things we pray are repetitious. We pray for loved ones, sick ones, we pray for protection, and forgiveness over and over. Repetition is not a problem as long as it is meaningful.

ii. These people were praying with “meaningless repetition.”

a. (v.2) They talked to be heard by others

b. (v.7) They thought that many words would get them heard by God.

c. So prayers are meaningless when we try to persuade men when we talk to God, and prayers are meaningless when we try to persuade God by talking too much.

iii. Words don’t impress God. Fight the idea that if we say things a certain way, God will hear them. Darryl Dash wrote, “It’s better to have a heart without words than words without heart.”

a. It isn’t what you say, it’s how you come to God. Just like David wrote in Ps. 51:16-17, “For thou dost not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; Thou art not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.”

[graphic used with permission]