Matthew 6: You Don't Need to Impress God to Pray

Introduction

Have you ever needed help without wanting to admit it? Sam Oldland, one of the pastors at St Jude's in Carlton, Australia, begins with a familiar scene: a job you can't finish while the deadline closes in, or the drive the day before when he thought he had memorized the route. Rather than ask for help, he ended up with his wife at the back of an industrial parking lot where they had no business being.

He wonders whether we do the same thing in prayer. Looking like we know what we're doing, using the right words, sounding biblical enough, maybe even a little profound. Thinking that if we pray long enough or with enough passion, God will take us seriously.

This message concludes a three-week series called "Grace and Prayer." Drawing on Matthew 6:5-17 and 7:7-12, Sam Oldland shows that prayer is not a performance. It is neither meant to impress other people nor to impress God. Because God is our Father, we come to him in humble dependence, and that is where we find freedom.

Sermon Outline

1. Don't Pray to Impress Others

In verse 5, Jesus speaks of the hypocrites who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that people will see them. In a very religious society, piety shaped social status.
Their prayer is not really for God. It says: "Look how close I am to God. Did you notice how beautiful and poetic my prayers are?"
Praying on a street corner no longer carries the same prestige today, but the temptation is still there in church life. At the home group, when it's your turn to pray, a fear rises: "What if people think I'm stupid? That I don't know how to pray? That I'm not close to God?"
Others, more at ease, feel the same desire from another angle: wanting to be among those whose prayers impress.
Jesus answers: they have received their reward. If your prayer is aimed at people, people will be impressed, and that will be all. "Many people can hear your prayers and be impressed by them, but only one can answer them."
"Prayer is not a speech we give about God, it is simply expressing our needs to the God who hears us."

2. Pray Before the Father Who Sees in Secret

In verse 6, Jesus invites you to go into your room, shut the door, and pray to the Father who is there in the secret place.
This doesn't mean you should only pray alone: the New Testament gives countless instructions to pray together. Jesus is aiming at a heart turned toward God and not toward those around you.
The pastor quotes C. S. Lewis: there is a prayer that comes before all prayer, "May it be the real me who speaks, and may it be the real you that I speak to."
Your prayer can be simple, hesitant, made of long silences or repetitions. "It's beautiful. God loves to hear it."

3. Don't Pray to Impress God

There is another audience you can try to impress: God himself. "Prayer is not about impressing God, it is about depending on God."
In verse 7, Jesus warns against the empty phrases of the pagans, who think they will be heard because of their many words. In the ancient world, elaborate invocations, prescribed formulas, and rituals were meant to guarantee the attention of the gods. The Greeks and Romans began their prayers by flattering their god, and the Egyptians had incantations to open the ears of the gods.
In 1 Kings 18, the prophets of Baal shout his name for hours, dance, scream, and end up cutting themselves so that he will listen to them.
This reflex can live in you. If you lack confidence, you tell yourself that God puts up with your clumsy prayers but lights up when he hears other people's. If you are sure of yourself, you slip toward a kind of self-importance: prayers so beautiful that God must surely be moved by them.

4. Your Father Knows What You Need

In verse 8, two truths stand out: God is a Father, and he knows what you need before you ask him. Jesus calls him "Father" six times in this passage.
"He doesn't expect us to put on a performance." You don't need to send him a calendar invitation to get time with him.
In Matthew 7:7-12, Jesus says it again: which father gives a stone to his son who asks for bread? If we, imperfect and selfish fathers, love to give good things to our children, how much more will our heavenly Father.
The pastor shares a "parent's heartbreak" nobody warned him about: the day your child finally says a word correctly. His eldest daughter kept asking for "coopers" instead of cucumbers, his second daughter loved "lundacorns" until she learned to say "unicorns," and his two-year-old son calls Thomas the Tank Engine "Toot." "God our Father is like that. He loves our fumbling, childlike prayers."
He quotes this line: prayer is not about overcoming God's reluctance but laying hold of his willingness.
A parent doesn't always understand a toddler's cries and gestures. God never fails to know what you need. According to Romans 8:26-27, the Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
Even when your prayer is reduced to "Please, God," to tears and to breaths, you have a God who listens and understands.

5. When Prayer Seems to Go Unanswered

For some, this is hard to hear: "If God is really my good Father, why doesn't he answer me?" The pastor acknowledges that the question is deep, sometimes heartbreaking, and that he doesn't claim to answer it in a few minutes.
The Bible doesn't hide this suffering. David cries out in Psalm 13: "How long, Yahweh? Will you forget me forever?" David, Job, Abraham, Sarah, Hannah, and Paul all went through long seasons of prayer without the answer they hoped for.
Jesus himself prays in anguish at Gethsemane: "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless not my will, but yours, be done."
Jesus does not promise that God will give everything you ask for at the moment you ask. But the cross shows that God's love is not measured by the answer you want. At Gethsemane, you discover that God himself knows the desperate prayer, because he lived it.

6. The Freedom of Depending

Dependence can seem humiliating, but depending on God is freedom, because he is solid and trustworthy.
Imagine you have to cross a wide river and there is a bridge. You can choose independence and swim, or rely on the bridge. It only works if the bridge is reliable. In the same way, for a surgical operation, it is better to depend on a trustworthy surgeon than to operate on yourself.
Dependence is the posture of salvation: we depend entirely on God to be saved. Why would the posture of the Christian life be any different?
"Don't be afraid to bring your needs to God." Don't think they aren't worth his attention.
Living by depending on yourself puts a ceiling on your life and means missing out on the power of God. A life of dependence is not a life where you do nothing: you act faithfully, knowing that you need God for everything.

7. The Lord's Prayer, a Humble and Dependent Prayer

In his kindness, Jesus gives you a prayer that teaches God's heart for prayer: not to impress people, not to impress God, but humble and dependent.
It begins by simply calling God "Our Father": no empty phrases to catch his attention, but a trusting, humble intimacy.
"May your name be kept holy. Let your Kingdom come. Let your will be done": we align our heart and our plans with his.
"Give us today our daily bread": we bring him our lives in simple dependence. Then we pray for his purposes in our lives: forgiveness, temptation, deliverance from the evil one.
St Jude's prays the Lord's Prayer every Sunday, so that, kept in memory, it shapes the prayer life of each person and of the whole congregation.

Key Takeaways

Prayer is not a performance: it is neither meant to impress others nor to impress God.
Many can admire a prayer, but only one can answer it. Pray to the Father who sees in secret.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask. He loves your simple, hesitant prayers, and the Spirit intercedes when words fail.
God's love is not measured by the answer you expect: the cross and Gethsemane show it.
Depending on God is freedom, because he is entirely trustworthy.

Personal Application

When you pray with others, are you really praying, or are you preparing a prayer that will measure up to theirs?
Do you sometimes think God listens less to your prayers than to those of more experienced believers?
Which prayer are you leaving aside because your need seems unworthy of God's attention?
In which area of your life are you relying on yourself rather than on God?
This week, will you dare to come to your Father as you are, with your own words, and trust him?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Jesus criticize in the hypocrites who pray on street corners?

Their prayer is not really directed to God but to those watching them. Jesus says they have already received their reward: people are impressed, and that is all. Sam Oldland reminds us that many people can admire a prayer, but only one can answer it.

Do you need long prayers or the right words for God to listen?

No. Jesus warns against the empty phrases of the pagans, who think they will be heard because of their many words. Your Father knows what things you need, before you ask him (Matthew 6:8). Even when you don't know what to say, the Spirit himself makes intercession for you with groanings which can't be uttered (Romans 8:26).

Why does depending on God in prayer set you free?

For Sam Oldland, dependence is nothing humiliating when the one you depend on is reliable, like a solid bridge across a wide river. God is entirely trustworthy. We depend on him for our salvation, and prayer expresses that same choice every day: relying on him rather than on ourselves.