What Prayer Is Not

When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men.

–Matthew 6:5

What is prayer? Colossians 4:2 says, “Devote yourselves to prayer.” What exactly is it we’re to devote ourselves to?

Let’s define prayer by what it’s not. Jesus cleared up a lot of misconceptions about prayer in Matthew 6. He said, first of all, prayer is not a public display of our spirituality. Look at verse 5: “When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men.” Jesus used the term “hypocrites” to refer to the Pharisees. These religious leaders usually prayed in public so everybody could see how spiritual they were. Jesus was saying, “When you pray, don’t do it for public display to pretend to be something that you’re really not.”

Instead, He said, “When you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret” (v. 6). Jesus was not condemning public prayer. Some of the most powerful prayers in the Bible were public prayers. For example, in 1 Kings 18, the prophet Elijah prayed publicly on Mount Carmel, and God answered dramatically. Jesus was talking about our motive for praying, not our location. We should pray to be heard by God, not by other people. Prayer is not to be a public display of our spirituality.

Second, prayer is not a complex theological formula. In Matthew 6:7, Jesus said, “When you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.” The pagans in Jesus’s day spoke gibberish and repeated the same things over and over. A lot of people today employ the same practice even when praying to the true God. They think if they repeat the same words or sprinkle in the right vocabulary, perhaps they can force Him to act. I’ve witnessed this in public prayer meetings, where people seem to think they’re in a contest of who can say the most theological words.

Jesus said prayer is not meaningless repetition or using the right vocabulary. In fact, some of the most effective prayers in the Bible were also some of the simplest. In Luke 18, Jesus told a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector who went up to the temple to pray. The Pharisee prayed for a long time, mostly talking about how holy he was. In contrast, the tax collector prayed, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner!” (v. 13). Jesus said the tax collector, not the Pharisee, left the temple justified before God. Prayer is not a complicated theological formula.

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Today’s devotion is adapted from “Heavenly Communication” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2012.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.