True Prayer

Have you ever been in a group of people or at church and someone gets up to pray and they go on and on and you get the feeling they just like the sound of their own voice? Then someone else gets up and prays for 30 seconds and their genuine, fumbled prayer moves you?

Charles Spurgeon says of the latter..."This is real prayer. I prefer three minutes of prayer like that to thirty minutes of the other sort, because the one is praying and the other is attempting to preach."

He goes on to quote an old preacher:

"Remember, the Lord will not hear you because of the arithmetic of your prayers, counting their numbers. He will not hear you because of the rhetoric of your prayers, caring for the eloquent language in which they are conveyed. He will not listen because of the geometry of your prayers, computing them by their length or breadth. He will not regard you because of the music of your prayers, caring for sweet voices or for harmony. Neither will He look at you because of the logic of your prayers, because they are well arranged and excellently divided. 

...But He will hear you, and He will measure the amount of the blessings He will give you, according to the divinity of your prayers. If you can plead the person of Christ, and if the Holy Ghost inspires you with zeal and earnestness, the blessings that you shall ask, shall surely come to you."

Prayer from your heart, no matter what it sounds like, when inspired by the Holy Spirit is what God desires to hear from us.

Jesus said:  

"And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?

 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" 

 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 

 "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 

The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'  

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' 

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."  Luke 18:7-14


Note:  All quotes from Charles Spurgeon's book, The Power of Prayer in a Believer's Life.