This is brother Ian Tavener here at Shaw Foundation Baptist Church UK.
This third short video in our New Believer series is to show you how to pray.
See there are many misconceptions, many bad teachings about prayer, often coming
from the big false religions out there. Now
praying itself is such a great blessing that we're able to do it and there's no
magic words, no special routines that we have to go
to when we pray. And there is a great passage in the
Bible which just makes it really clear about how we should pray and how we
should have prayed. So in Matthew chapter 6 and verse 5
Jesus says, and when thou prayest thou shalt not be
as the hypocrites are for they love to pray standing in the
synagogues and in the corners of the streets
that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you
they have their reward. Now there are many people in the world that pray to be
seen to be praying and Jesus is saying that's not how we
should be praying, we shouldn't be praying
to be seen by other people. A prayer is between you and God.
In verse 6 he says, but thou when thou prayest enter into thy closet
and when thou has shut thy door pray to thy father which is in secret
and thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
So the majority of our prayer life should be
private personal prayer between us and God.
Sure we all pray at church as well but but
we should be making special time to pray to God privately on our own.
In verse 7 he says, but when ye pray use not vain repetitions as the heathen
do for they think that they shall be heard
for their much speaking. So vain repetitions are empty
repetitive prayers and how often have we heard that
seen that amongst all these different religions where they're chanting things
they're not even thinking about the words they're just repeating words
chanting words reading words no that's not the sort of praying that we should
be doing. Verse 8 Jesus says, be not ye therefore
like unto them for your father knoweth what things ye
have need of before ye ask him. So God knows what we
what we want God knows what we need but he still wants us to ask
and and he likes to hear us asking but in the same way he doesn't want to hear
it's just repeating things. Think any of you that are parents how
annoying it is when a child just keeps repeating the same thing the same thing
the same thing over and over again that's pretty
irritating and you can imagine God probably isn't happy when we're just
repeating the same words without even thinking about what we're saying.
In verse 9 Jesus said after this manner therefore pray ye our father which art
in heaven hallowed be thy name. Okay so if we're a
child of God that means that God is our heavenly
father that's why we call him father our father which art in heaven. He said
hallowed be thy name. Okay that that means sacred or holy so
we're acknowledging how holy and sacred God is. He then goes
on to say thy kingdom come thy will be done
on in earth as it is in heaven. Okay so we should be praying for God's kingdom
to come and we should be praying for his will in fact everything we're praying
for is according to God's will. See there are many
people out there there are people called Calvinists
that believe that everything God wants is done in this earth but
no God gives us free will he gives us free will
and that free will means that many many bad things happen in the world but it's
not because God wants them to happen and we should be praying for God's will
to be done in the earth. He goes on to say give us this day our
daily bread so that's representing us praying for our daily
needs we should pray for the things we need in life
we should be praying for for our food and our clothing and our
and shelter and and other things that we need to live life and to live life for
God. Verse 12 says and forgive us our debts
as we forgive our debtors. So this isn't talking about salvation
this isn't talking about getting saved by God because you've
forgiven other people this is our daily life
after being saved see God hears us once we're saved
and when we're praying to God we're asking him to also forgive the sins
that we regularly do in life see we have to acknowledge our sins and we
acknowledge them in prayer and God will forgive us and if we don't
acknowledge our sins and and if we don't forgive others then
God will regularly chastise us punish us for those sins that we commit on a
day-to-day basis. He goes on to say lead us not into
temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is
the kingdom and the power and the glory forever
are men. So leading us not into temptation is basically asking God to
help us to avoid the trials and the evils in life
and he says but deliver us from evil so that's to to help us to escape from
the bad things that happen he says for thine is the kingdom
and the power and again we're just acknowledging God's
God's greatness we're acknowledging that that God is
almighty he's all powerful and then it says
and the glory forever are men and amen means
truth it's a it's a way of of ending a prayer
of sincerely ending a prayer and that's what we're saying at the end of that
prayer and this is often called the Lord's prayer
but in verse 9 he said after this manner pray ye
he didn't say pray these exact words and repeat them
daily or weekly he just gave us an example
of a way of praying and this is a great example for us but
whether or not we copy this structure or we just pray in our own words in our own
ways if we just pray throughout the day
something we should do and or if we pray with
long set prayers such as this either way God hears us and it's a great blessing
to have and it's something that we should make sure
that we grab hold of and we pray to God on a daily basis
hope that's helped God bless you