Submitted by Pastor Kailea Nauman, Rock Port First Christian Church

I have been doing a lot of study on prayer this last month and with our conference coming up about prayer I thought I would just give some insight. I know sometimes we find it hard to pray. Maybe we don’t know what to pray, or that we don’t or can’t find the time to pray. The Lord wants us to meet Him in the secret place. He commands it. Jesus tells us how to pray.

Matthew 6:5-8 – “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”

Jesus isn’t saying that we shouldn’t pray together in our church settings, He is saying what is our motive behind it? Has it become repetitious? Has it become something that we just do on Sunday mornings and never again throughout the week, or even have our daily prayers become the same stale thing? The Lord knows our needs but often we just bring Him our words, things we think He wants to hear.  Jesus wants to hear our hearts. He wants us to bring our needs to Him, our need for Him. He wants our praise and adoration and our love to pour out to Him.

In the secret place we are more likely to be real with Jesus, raw with Jesus, where our emotions might pour out of us. In public we try to be more reserved and put together. But Jesus says if we pray in public let us do it with the right heart posture, with the realization that we are calling on the God of the Universe and that we have a right to because of what Jesus did for us. Let us never take for granted the gift that is prayer, the fact that we are able to call on the God who created everything and the God who loves us and wants to meet with us. Prayer is a gift that we don’t utilize enough in church. Jesus said, “It is written: My House will be a House of Prayer.” So, we must ask ourselves, is it? Do we want to hurry through the very thing Jesus commands us to do in church? Let us get back to the basics church, Jesus commands it.

What a gift we have to be able to sit and chat with our Father, with Our Creator, with our Lord.