Lockdown Day 22: PRAYER:  BEWARE OF BABBLING

Matthew 6:7  “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.“

Today, 17 April 2020, more than 135,000 people have already died because of the COVID-19 virus with more than 2 million being infected.  What do we pray in circumstances like these? Do we pray at all?  Will it make a difference?  And if we do, will our prayers be meaningful and Kingdom-focused?

Jesus’s words in Matthew 6 verse 7 is quite convicting and speaks more about the heart of the one who prays than about prayer itself.  It reveals that prayer is the mirror of the soul.  HOW we pray reveals our intimacy.  WHAT we pray reveals our insight. Nothing reveals theology more than when we talk to our God.  A transformed life will not only be revealed in HOW we talk to our Father in heaven but also in WHAT we talk to Him about.   Can it be that the right prayers with the wrong heart might be an offense to God instead of a relief to the people?

The Biblical answer is YES, absolutely. Prayer could be as much a ‘vessel of victory’ as a ‘business of babbling’. Thoughtless prayers can be offensive to God and should be to us as well.  In Scripture, we find that prayers that do not reflect the heart of Christ are as meaningless as much as they are a menace.

• In Matthew 6:5, the false prayers of the hypocrite bear no reward.
• In Matthew 6:7, the pretentious prayer of the pagan is described as babbling
• In Luke 18:10, the Pharisee, who had confidence in himself before God and proudly justified his requests according to his perceived understanding of the will of God, offended God.

However, the tax collector humbled himself before the will of God, knowing and confessing his own fallibility and inability to approach the throne of God as a sinner. The tax collector did not believe in the power of prayer as much as he understood the power of God, who answers prayer.

So, in this global pandemic, how do we stop babbling and start paying?  On the website DESIRING GOD, Matt Bradson encourages believers to “Pray something bigger”.  Although prayers for wealth, health and safety have their place, Bradson says, “they’re generally the small fry of what we could be praying for. They are the mint, dill, and cumin of prayer requests. Jesus didn’t condemn tithing mint, dill, and cumin, but he said, “These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”( Matthew 23:23  ) There are weightier matters to attend to. If we pray only for health and safety, we’re missing out on something big.  So, what are the weightier prayers?

Consider one prayer from the Bible to see how it sounds.  When Paul prayed in his letters, he didn’t mess around with small requests. He drove right to the heart of what people really needed. At the beginning of Philippians, for example, he writes: “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

A transformed life will pray for “the bigger things”.  Paul prayed, first and foremost, that God would cause the Philippians’ love to “abound more and more.” During this pandemic we have a chance to ask for the big things — that God would turn our hearts to love more, to do good and to be a vessel of hope. We should be eager for others to ask God to make us more like Christ. We also can be excited to pray the same for them. These are the weightier matters. These are the prayers we need even more.