Prayer: Private Talk with God

 

Prayer: Private Talk with God

 

Text: Matthew 6:5-6

 

⁵ 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 men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. ⁶ 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.

 

As a part of his Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches his disciples on how to pray (6:5-8) and what to pray (6:9-13). My sermon today, titled “Prayer: Private Talk with God,” covers the first two verses of this part. These two verses tell us one of the most crucial points for our prayers to be acceptable to God. Simply speaking, it is about the address on the envelope of a love letter. You wrote a very sweet or important letter to your lover. But you may send it with a wrong address. Jesus is saying that we should use a correct address if we want a reply.

 

In Jesus’ days, some people prayed, standing in a public place such as a synagogue or a busy street corner. It was to be seen by men and to be praised by them. Jesus called them, “hypocrites” and warned his disciples not to be like them. Then he told them how to pray. First, go into your room. Here, “your” is of a singular form in Greek, so “your room” means “a private space for you alone.” Second, close the door. Inside the room, you should shut the door behind you. This is to separate you from the world and to concentrate your attention to God. Then, lastly, pray to your Father who is unseen. Quite simple!!! Go into your room. Close the door. And pray to God who is unseen. However, this is not as easy as it sounds.

 

The biggest difficulty comes from the fact that God is invisible while people are visible around us. It is not easy to ignore what we are seeing and to pray to whom we cannot see. Look at the pictures below. Can you figure out what they are? This is a public restroom in the middle of a busy street corner in London. The left picture shows its outside and the right one inside. People outside the restroom cannot see the inside, but from the inside the restroom user can see the outside through the transparent glass wall. How would you feel if you are inside the restroom, doing business? Even though you know that you are invisible to people on the street, you may feel uncomfortable. For a shy person, it will be a great challenge to use the restroom without being distracted by people passing by within a few feet. Why? It is because we are powerfully influenced by what we are seeing even when we know that it is nothing.

 

 

 

Toward God who is invisible, on the contrary, we behave in the exactly opposite way. In this picture, the space is divided into inside and outside. You are in the inside and people are in the outside. But there is another space, which is the innermost where God our Father dwells. With regard to the innermost space, we are in the position of the outsiders. The one who is in the innermost can see us but we cannot see him inside. He is invisible. Although he is watching over us, we often ignore him and behave as if there is no one in the room, only because he is invisible to us.

 

 

 

In this way, we are easily deceived by our vision, and fail to live according to the truth that is invisible. We have an urgent business with God. But we cannot concentrate on it because of what we see around us. We are continuously distracted by outsiders. In fact, they cannot see our heart and they cannot hear our cries. Still we are conscious of their eyes, and even are tempted to please their eyes. For correctly addressed prayers, we should solve this problem. We should grow spiritually until we become able to keep us from the influence of what we see, and be able to see God who is invisible.

 

For this matter, we can find a role model in the Bible. Hebrew 11:27 says, “By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.” God said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.’” (Ex. 8:1). So Moses went to Pharaoh and told him as God commanded. But Pharaoh was not happy with the demand. Instead, he burst into anger like a burning fire. However, Moses could endure his anger because he had a more fearful one than the angry Egyptian king. By faith, he saw God who is invisible. By seeing God, he could overcome the king’s anger and obey God’s words. This is the fundamental faith required for our prayers to be addressed correctly to the Lord.

 

This is not the end of the story. We need to go further. When we pray, we need to be naked. Let me explain what this means. In the 1Samuel Chapter 1, we see the story about Hannah, Samuel’s mother. Hannah did not have a child with her husband, and her rival Peninnah provoked and irritated her for this matter. In bitterness of soul, Hannah wept much and prayed fervently to the LORD in the temple. Seeing Hannah struggling and wriggling, Eli the Priest thought that she was intoxicated with alcohol. So he said to her, “How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine?” Then Hannah replied, “Not so, my lord, I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the LORD.” She said, “I was pouring out my soul to the LORD.” This is naked prayer. Naked prayer is a prayer that pours out my soul to God.

 

Back in Korea, I was a member of a small church. Our church building was not large like this, and therefore it was not easy to find a quiet place for praying. So using partitions, we made a few small rooms in the corner of the main hall, which could barely contain just one person. If a person prayed in the room, people in the hall could hear the prayer. Knowing this, we usually prayed in silence or in a low voice. But there were some girls who were like Hannah. When they prayed, they started in a low voice, but the tone grew higher and higher and at some point they cried at the top of their voice. In the hall, we could hear every word of their prayers very clearly. What they were praying about were often very personal things hidden in their deep heart. Nevertheless they did not tone down their voice. They were naked. Still they didn’t mind how they looked or how they sounded. They were totally absorbed in their prayer to God. They were intoxicated with prayer until they were not aware of being naked.

 

While preparing the sermon, I felt curious and typed “naked prayer” in Google. Then I found the exactly the same idea presented by a man named T.D. Jakes. He says:

 

In the Word of God, we occasionally read about a place of naked prayer. People who pray in this way have been stripped of their self-consciousness, their concern about the opinions of others, and their pride. Hannah was a woman who prayed like this. When she came to the temple and poured out all her locked-up bitterness, she appeared drunk. Even the priest did not recognize this kind of consuming, passionate prayer.

 

Naked prayer is not just ignoring people’s eyes. Going further, it is baffling and ridiculing them. This is really powerful prayer that is beautiful and acceptable to God.

 

Our prayer is a private talk with our Father in heaven who is living God. So, every word of our prayer must be directed to God alone, and every word should be meaningful to Him. You cannot see him, but by faith you can feel his eyes gazing at you lovingly and caressing your soul tenderly. Talk with him, sometimes whispering, sometimes singing, sometimes crying, and sometimes in silence. Then you will find that he is just standing beside you and holding your hand.