How to Pray Effectively 

Matthew 6:5 

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O'Neill 

I would like to break, loved ones, from the studies in Romans and talk about prayer this morning, so that's why we're reading this piece in Matthew. “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men.  Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.  But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 

Pray then like this:

Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done, 
On earth as it is heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our debts,
As we also have forgiven our debtors;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil. 
For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
May God help us to begin to pray like that. Amen. 

I'd like to lead our thinking loved ones, about prayer this morning and then if there is time maybe you could ask questions. I think there are a lot of us in this room who really agree with the truths we've been sharing here Sunday by Sunday. You really do accept it but you don't quite know how to get into it in your own experience. I think there are many of us who know fine well that the reason we're disappointed and frustrated in life is because we are so dependent on the smiles of our peers. And we know that when they smile upon us, we're on cloud seven and when they ignore us, we have an identity crisis.  

We know that that is one of the reasons why we're so frustrated in life. It's because we're so dependent on the things that we have or the things that we haven't for our security, that we are so sensitive to every movement in the economy, to every movement up and down in our check book balance. We're all aware that that's why we're so disappointed in life. It's because we're so dependent on circumstances for our happiness that we find our lives are so up and down and up and down. 

So, most of us I think sense that and know that's why we're disappointed at times in life and frustrated at times. And why life seems so up and down in experience for us and we realize that we were not meant to get that happiness from those things at all. We realize that we weren't meant to get our self worth from those things. We realize we were meant to get them from our Creator who is in fact our loving Father and who cares for each one of us personally. 

We realize that we were meant, in a close loving relationship with him, to sense real security and to sense continual worth and to sense continual happiness. And yet probably most of us here in this room agree too that when we try to do that, there's something twisted inside us that won't let us. It seems that at the moment when we want to rely on God for our sense of worth and importance, we find that the smiles of our peers are desperately important to us. 

We find that somebody who is a Significant Other in our lives seems disappointed in us and, fight how we will, we cannot overcome the sense we have that we are not as good as we ought to be. So many of us have found that even though we know we should live in dependence on our Creator for our sense of worth and our happiness, yet we find that we have a crooked, perverted personality that is so used to getting this from other people and other things that we cannot live that way. And you know that we've often shared here how that's what God did in Jesus on Calvary. 

That personality of yours that won't keep its temper, that personality of yours that feels hurt and resentful at times when people seem to ignore you, that personality was put into Jesus on Calvary and in a cosmic miracle destroyed by God. Our old self was crucified with Christ so that it's possible for us now to receive the Spirit of Jesus into us and to have the same attitude to God and the same attitude toward the world as he has. It's possible for us to be recreated and made anew and have a close loving relationship with our Father. 

I think there are many of us here who say, "Yes, yes. We agree with that. We agree and we're trying to make it real", but do you see agreeing with it or realizing that it is true, does not mean you are experiencing it? Loved ones, if you think how many of us are under 30, and how many of us who are over 30 are really tending to be very thinking and thoughtful people, I think I could say that, without blowing ourselves up, I think we're a thinking group of people. 

But do you know the great danger with a group of people like ourselves? The great danger is that we'll think if we realize what we're meant to experience, we're experiencing it. In other words, it is very easy for you to sit here and listen to me tell you about a great Someone who's relationship will give you all the security and the significance and the happiness that you need in your life. And it's very easy for you to say, "Tell me it again, tell me it again. I almost got it that time. Tell me. Tell me it again." It's very easy for you to sit and listen to me telling you about this dear Father of mine and it's very easy for you to live off my experience of him or to live off other people's experience of him or even, this is ridiculous, but even to live off the idea of such a person existing. 

It's very easy for you to sit there and say, "Look, if you just describe it again. I almost comprehended it that time and I believe I can apprehend it with my mind if you just describe it to me again. What did you say? What difference does it make to how I feel in the office when other people criticize me? Tell me it again because I believe I could reproduce that tomorrow if I really knew it more thoroughly." 

Loved ones, do you see what you're doing? You're playing mental games. You're pretending that somehow you can so imagine that relationship or somehow you can so diagnose it or analyze it in your mind that you will receive the benefits of it without entering into it. So I tell you about this great guy or this great girl before you're married. And I tell you how this is just the person I think that will make your life happy and that will fulfill you. And you come back to me the next week and you say, "Would you tell me more about her?" And I tell you more about her or, "Would you tell me more about him?" And I tell you more about him and then you say to me, "Now what have you found in your relationship with her?" 

I tell you how she has been a great blessing in my life and how she'll be that to you and you say, "Oh, that's great. That's great. Oh I am going to think about that and I know if I think about it enough, it will be true in my life too." And so it goes on week after week after week, me telling you more about this great person who will make all the difference to your life and you continuing to juggle your thoughts around to try to pretend that you're in a relationship with her or relationship with him. And you know that way you'll never marry them. You'll never marry them. 

Eventually, there has to come a great day when you take a step forward and you say that, "I am John" or whatever, but some day you have to step forward and you have to introduce yourself to this dear person and you have to speak to them. And there's going to be no hope of you ever marrying each other or ever having any kind of relationship unless you actually speak to them yourself. Loved ones, it's the same with this relationship that we've been discussing here for years. 

You cannot make it real by imagining it. You cannot enter into all the benefits of this relationship with your Creator as your own loving Father by proxy. You cannot enter into it by mental or intellectual analysis. You have to sooner or later approach him yourself. Sooner or later, you have to speak to him. You have to begin to approach him yourself. You know you may say to me, "Oh do I have to do that? Can I not somehow just drift into this relationship by being with all of you Sunday by Sunday and just learning the way you all behave? Can I not start behaving the same way? Is that not what faith is?" 

No loved ones. Faith is, well, it's in Hebrews if you would look at it and it's what you have to do yourself if you're to initiate the relationship with God as your Father. It's Hebrews 11:6, "And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”  Speaking to God in prayer is the initial proof that you really believe he exists. 

It is interesting loved ones, we can do an awful lot of I-it relationship here. We can. We can share an I-it relationship. I can share with you the difference that dying to self makes to your life and you can grasp that with all the empathy and sympathy that you have. And you can feel so close to me because you say, "Yes, that makes sense. It is an answer obviously to the problems of life. I agree with it." That's an I-it relationship. It's the relationship that every student has to his subject. 

We can even have an I-him relationship. I can tell you about God. You know he's like this and he's like this. And you can say, "Oh yeah, I think he's like that and it's good of him to do that." And all the time we're talking like that, we're talking about him as a third person, as somebody way out there about whom a lot of things are true. But that is absolutely and utterly different from an I-thou relationship. 

An I-thou relationship is two persons facing each other face-to-face and respecting and acknowledging each other's existence. An I-thou relationship is the only kind of experience that will make all the things that we've shared here Sunday by Sunday real in your life. In other words loved ones, sooner or later you have to leave me back here and leave the rest of us back here and leave all the books back here and you have to start going up that mountain as Moses did alone. And you have to approach this God for yourself and speak to him. Speak to him. 

You may say, "I don't know how to speak to him." And all I'd like to share in a very simple way, because I wish somebody had shared it with me simply, is how do you speak to God? How do you speak to God? Be yourself, be yourself, that's the first thing. Just be yourself. Be honest and real, really. You know I am sure there's some loved one here who thinks, "Pastor if you knew me, you would know that no God worthy of the name would have anything to do with me. If you knew what my life has been like and really what it is still like in many ways, no one would listen to me." 

Loved ones, God promises that if you cry to him, he will answer you. God will hear you if you'll be real. Just be real and honest with him. So it doesn't matter when you do it. You could do it at the end of this service or you could do it when you go home but the thing is, to go before God and just speak in your own words. I don't know how many of you think you need special words. I think some of you do and in seminary we used to get tripped up over the 'thees' and 'thous' which we thought we had to produce with all the rest of the King James people. But you don't need to use 'thees' and 'thous'. You don't need to use flowery language, you can just be real with God. 

You can just say, "God, I hardly even believe you're there at times. But God I am tired thinking about you and walking around you and never showing you that I believe in you personally. So God, I am speaking to you now and I just thank you for being my God and I just thank you for all the things that you've given to me." And that's a place to start.  Just thank God for the things he has given you. I often do that when I am starting in prayer because it gets your mind on to some thing that God has given to you. And it gets you on to concrete things so that your mind can focus on something definite. Be real with God. And loved ones, if you have difficulties understanding things say that to God. 

"Lord, I don't understand half of what he says on Sunday but I understand a little of what you want me to do. Lord I just tell you, I want to do that." I think of many husbands here and really many wives and many of you guys and girls who feel dreadful inferiority complexes about your ability to speak to God. Loved ones, forget that. Your God made you. He knows you far better than anybody else does. He knows every stammer that you make. He knows every lack of the right word that you've ever experienced. He knows you and he still loves you. So won't he put up with your stammering and your stuttering as you speak to him? 

The first thing is be real. Just say what is really on your heart, be real with God loved ones, that's the first step in prayer. Just speak to God from your own heart of hearts. The second thing is, it's strange, look at him. Look at him. I don't know how you were all brought up by your moms and dads but we were always taught you look at a person if you're talking to them. You have to look at them. You have to look right into their eyes and that was very hard at times as we all know. But that's what you ought to do with God. Look at God. 

Now you may say, "What do you mean?" Well, I'll tell you my own experience. I was praying for some years and suddenly one day, I thought to myself, "Who am I praying to?" and you may say, "Oh you're dumb. Did you never think of that before?" I'll tell you, I didn't. I was so caught up with what I was praying about. I learnt my prayers when I was a child. You know “God bless mom, God bless dad”, all that kind of thing, and “The dog.” And “gentle Jesus meek and mild, look upon a little child.” And “pity my simplicity.” I learned those prayers and then when I grew out of those, I just substituted other lists. So I had great lists of things that I prayed a storm up about and I prayed about those things but I was so busily involved in praying about those that I never thought for one moment about the Person who was listening. 

So my prayers tended to have the reverse effect to what God intended. They tended to get me more and more involved in my problems. And so I prayed about the person that was sick and I prayed about the examination I was going to take and I prayed about my dad and I prayed and prayed about things, things, things, until I was absolutely overwhelmed by the number of burdens and responsibilities that I had to carry. And one day God's dear Spirit got through to me and said, "Have you ever thought of looking up to the Person you are praying to?" 

Loved ones, it just changed my prayers. It really did. In fact it was the beginning of prayer for me because I see that the other experience was just the reflex reactions of my own mind. And really all I was doing was trying to auto suggest myself into some kind of success about those things. And my prayer life really began when I started to think of him. I'll tell you what I did, I wasn't a Catholic, so I didn't have the Stations of the Cross to go to. So I tried to think, "What is God doing at this moment? What is he doing?" And I began to think “What is God doing?” And I began to imagine him, I was thinking up there, well up there's good enough really, it's not important.  But I thought of him as up there and somewhere above the blue sky there was a place. 

I know it's silly. I know there isn't really a place. I know spiritual realism has not places as we have. But I began to sense somewhere there is a place of light and brightness and my God is looking down at me and watching me. And I began to think of the kind of person he is and of course, my mind went to Jesus and the kind of person that he is because he said, "he that has seen me has seen the Father." So I began to think, "Oh, God is thinking of me like that." And loved ones as my mind began to think about God, an amazing thing happened. His spirit somehow began to make me feel his eyes upon me. And the Spirit began to lift beyond where my own thoughts would carry me and began to mediate to me what God was really thinking of me. 

It was really a miracle but I had to start myself. I had to start thinking about God. So that's what I'd say to you. Begin there, look at the Person you're speaking to. In other words, don't be ill mannered. Don't be ill mannered. Sometimes God must have a dreadful time with us because we just go right into the room and we say, "Well, Lord we'd like you to take care of the examination. We'd like you to take care of our friend who is sick and then would you bless the people in India and then” and we go down the whole list. And God must at times wonder, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you interested in me at all?" And of course the whole purpose of prayer is to love God and to know him. That's why we are here on this earth, to get to know God. 

So the whole purpose of prayer is not to get things but to get to know God. Loved ones, the start is to be real yourself, be honest in what you're saying to him and then look at him. Think of what he is like. Really, the third step is, be spiritual. Now, I'll explain that. Don't be mental or intellectual. C.S. Lewis said that he discovered that he was praying purely intellectual prayers one day, when he saw himself looking inside and saying, "Did I really mean that? Do I really feel God's presence? Do I really feel his presence? When I said that, did I really pray it with all my heart?" 

That's intellectual praying. Do you know what Lewis says? He says, "The moment I did that, the moment I looked at myself, the moment I became conscious of the workings of my own mind and I began to ask, was that real? Was I really serious? Did I really feel God's presence?" He says, "That moment I took my eyes off God. And all I was experiencing was the mental track of the previous worship that I had been involved in." Now do you see that? 

That spiritual prayer is absolute faith preoccupation with God. It is not going forward saying, "Do I feel him? Do I feel him?  No, I don't feel him. Oh, is that him? Yeah, that’s him. No, it's not!” It's going right in throwing your arms around him and saying, "Lord, I want to tell you about these things." It's an absolute trusting preoccupation with God. It is not one of these slippery slimy slides forward into his presence. "Lord, I worship you.” Did I really mean that? “Lord, I worship you." 

No, it isn't that. Your worship of God and your prayer does not depend on how you do it. It does not depend on how real you think you are. It does not depend on how serious you think you are. It does not depend on what words you've used. It does not depend on whether you feel his presence or not. Worship is absolute and utter preoccupation with God. 

It'll be plain to you if you don't mind me using the illustration. When we first loved a person, a guy or a girl, and we first kiss them with all our heart, we didn't step back and say, "That was a pretty good kiss."  We don't! And those of us who are married to one another know that love is out the window immediately you become self-conscious about it. Immediately you're self-conscious about how you are loving, you are no longer loving. You are putting on a performance and you see it's the same with prayers. 

Loved ones, I don't know how many of you got lost the way I did in wondering, "Am I really in God's presence? Do I really feel God's presence? Did I really pray there? Was that a good prayer that God could answer?" That's silliness. Prayer is not performing in a way that will please God or enable him to answer you. Prayer is just talking to God with an absolute trusting heart. That's the first step in praying spiritually. Don't get preoccupied with the unimportant mental registration that may or may not follow your spiritual worship of God. Don't take your eyes off God, pray spiritually. 

The second step in praying spiritually is pray consistently. If you say to me, "Well, I mean God hears all our prayers but what determines whether he answers them or not?" Well certainly not the way you pray them, but your faithfulness and believing in him. Your keeping appointments with him, your being consistent with him, that's what spiritual prayer is. It is consistency in your approach to God. It is saying, "Lord God, I'll meet you here 6 o'clock every morning."  And you're there. 

God does not spend his time examining your mind to see was that a serious thought or a good feeling, he doesn't. But he looks at your life and he says, "Does this person really believe in me day in and day out? Does this person really believe I exist? Does this person really treat me as respectfully and reverently as they treat a good friend? Do they keep their appointments with me or did they make an appointment with me for one morning and just not turn up and really show me, that they don't believe I was waiting for them anyway?" 

Spiritual prayer is consistency in prayer, keeping your appointments with God, that's what God looks at, loved ones. See, we're so silly, we love to think God is involved in all kinds of tricky little mental activities with us. He isn't. He is a great big open God. He looks at us and says, "Does this person really believe in me? If they did, they wouldn't fail their appointment like this, this morning. They'd be here on the dot. They wouldn't let me down." 

Spiritual prayer is consistent prayer. And then there's another thing about spiritual prayer and you can see it if you look at John 15:7, "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you." So you see ask in prayer whatever you will and “If you abide in me and my words abide in you," and that means God's commandments. Make your life obedient to God's commandments. As your life is, so is your prayer. Live in obedience to God, then when you come into his presence you feel immediately at home. 

There's an immediate sense of oneness between you and him and you know that he hears your prayers. But if you come in loved ones, with half a dozen sins trailing behind you that you haven't dealt with and that you are refusing to deal with, you will feel uncomfortable in his presence. You won't be able to sense that he is listening to you at all and you know many of you have trouble realizing that God is hearing you. It's because your conscience is checking you. Your conscience is convicting you of the inconsistency in your life. Your conscience is saying, "How can God possibly hear you if you're living your life in a way that brings him pain?" And then you come into his presence and you expect him to treat you as if you're living your life perfectly. 

Make your life obedient to God's commandments. Get the sins out of your life and then you'll be amazed at the ease with which you can exercise faith in God's listening to your prayers. Lastly I'd say this, set a time apart every day, do that. Set a time a part every day because prayer requires relaxation from external pressures. It requires peace and quietness. That's why the Bible says that Jesus rose a great while before day and went alone into the mountain to pray. He got away from everybody and he was alone and quiet. 

So, set a time a part every day. You know if you have to get up at 5 o'clock to go to work, then set the alarm for a quarter to five and start with just 15 minutes by yourself with God. I don't know how you do it, I just do the old thing of getting on my knees because it helps when I put my whole body in a position of submission to God and then bring my life into submission to him. But you don't need to kneel on your knees. I would just say, get out of bed otherwise you'll find prayer becoming one of those beautiful drifting experiences and you'll get up and say, "The time just flew." 

Get out of bed and get on your knees at a set time each day.  And at the beginning what I did was to force myself, it was hard at the beginning. None of us appreciate Beethoven's 5th the first time we hear music. None of us is able to discover what is the essential thing that makes a good Quiche Lorraine right at the beginning. All those things are tastes that you have to gradually enter into, so it is with prayer. You just won't find yourself able to go to prayer like that. 

So, at the beginning I used to set my alarm for five minutes after I started and I determined I would stay on my knees before God for those five minutes. And at the beginning that's what I did and many of us have started with just 5-7 minutes which we've given to God. We've been at peace. We've said, "Lord, here is this time, I give it to you." And then loved ones, be active in your prayer. Be active in your mind. That's the difference between real prayer and TM. 

Transcendental meditation involves primarily bringing the mind and the emotions and the will into passivity, almost annihilating them, letting them sink into a passivity. And then do you know what happens? Then there's nothing to guard your spirit from the evil spirits and the elemental spirits of the universe and what happens is, elemental spirits of the universe pour into the vacuum that is left there and create all kind of counterfeit symptoms of the supernatural. 

Now, prayer to God is absolutely different from that. Prayer to God is not passive at all. It is an active exercise of your mind and your emotions and your will and your spirit together in worshipping God. So when you go to prayer, don't drift into a kind of mystical passivity. Be active, express thoughts to God at the beginning and later on, he will lift you out of that and lift you into higher and higher realms of prayer but be prepared to deal with him where you are at this time. 

Well, loved ones, I could talk for another hour, but maybe you have just a couple of questions. Are there any questions that anybody feels they just have to ask? If you don't want to ask that's good. The book “How to Pray” by Torrey, I think it's the best and the simplest. It is in the bookshop. It's just good and simple and straight. 

Q: <inaudible> 
A: Sis says someone once told her that repeating prayers shows God that you don't really trust him. Well, you have to set that alongside you remember the woman who constantly pleaded with the judge and pleaded and pleaded and pleaded and I think Jesus said, "She will be heard because she kept on persisting." And so you have to level those two together and the truth is this. That most of us have found that we need to get into God's presence and know him in order to know what his will is for different people's lives. And to do that takes time and often in the course of it, we pray prayers that are wrong prayers and we pray prayers that he doesn't want us to pray at all and we keep on praying them until either God shows us that that is the right prayer to pray or he shows us that it's the wrong prayer to pray. But I agree with the general input of what the person said that there comes a time when you know God has heard you.  

All I would encourage us all to do is don't be superficial about it, be real about it. Don't say, "Oh well, I’ll just pray it once, okay Lord, do this" and that's it. No, that's unreal. That's “penny in the slot machine” stuff and don't be like that with God. Do pray and pray as long as you feel you need to but it is true that there ought to come a time when the spirit says, "I have heard. Now just believe and just walk in faith and thank me that I have answered." But I would encourage us to be real about it rather than following little tricks and techniques you know. 

Well loved ones, what I am saying to you is there's only way to learn to pray and that's pray. Will you start today? Start today. Start approaching God yourself today. Otherwise loved ones, all that we've shared here will not be real in your life at all and what you may think you're experiencing of reality is only a shadow of what it can be.

 Let us pray.

Dear Father, I would ask you to listen as really I know you have always been listening especially for some dear person here today who has never, never spoken to you before. Lord I would ask you by your Holy Spirit to help them this week. Help them as they begin a real relationship with you, a personal relationship day-by-day through prayer. Help them Lord, I pray, and I would pray for them each day myself and so would many of us so that we will all come into a person-to-person, one-to-one relationship with you. We ask this in Jesus’ name and for his sake. Amen.