Meaningful Prayer

“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” (Matthew 6:7, ESV)

In my previous devotion, we looked at two reasons that prayer will miss the mark in connecting with the Father. The first was an obvious one, PRAYERLESSNESS.

The Second is one that we frequently allow to sneak in when we pray in a public setting. It is to pray for show. That is to impress others with our flowery words and theology. Praying to elevate ourselves in the sight of others is not effective prayer directed towards the Father.

In the Lord’s teaching on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, there is another principle that hinders effective prayer. Jesus stated it.

“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” (Matthew 6:7, ESV)

In the Gentile or pagan world, there were certain wrote prayers or mantras that people would recite to their pagan gods (which by the way are not gods at all). Their prayers were empty because they prayed to nothing and even if they had prayed to a real entity, their prayers had no real substance.

In the verse, the word translated as “empty phrases,” is battalogeo, which means to stammer, to repeat the same things over and over, to use many idle words, to babble (Strong, G945). The “New Bible Commentary” suggests that this word is what we mean when we say someone’s speech is gibberish.

We would consider anyone who speaks repetitive or nonsensical gibberish to a person as incoherent at best or unstable. We would not speak to people on this earth in such a way unless we were drunk or out of our minds.

Prayer is the believer’s heartfelt communication with the Father. Jesus indicated that must be characterized by a meaningful and intelligent conversation with the Father.

Thus, when we pray, we are to speak from our hearts to God. He does hear the prayers of our heart. We should try to avoid the pitfalls of religion in which we pray certain types of things or written prayers because it is the thing to do. The prayers that are effective are those with are the genuine things that come from our heart.