Do Not Keep On Babbling

WHEN YOU PRAY, DO NOT KEEP ON BABBLING LIKE PAGANS, FOR THEY THINK THEY WILL BE HEARD BECAUSE OF THEIR MANY WORDS. Matthew 6.7.

We should all know what to pray and how to pray! That is why Jesus taught us how to pray at the request of the disciples. We should all be praying the right way the Lord taught us and get answers from our Father. If we do not get answers, it should not be because of our wrong way or words. But if God does not answer because it is not His will, then we need to learn to submit to it.

We are learning about the second mistake that you and I may make when we pray. Let us look at how the different translators put it in our various versions so that we can grasp the general idea for our benefit. Here they are: “do not keep on babbling like pagans” NIV; “don't talk on and on as people do who don't know God” CEV; "do not use a lot of meaningless words, as the pagans do, who think that their gods will hear them because their prayers are long” GNB; “do not babble vain words, as the nations” MKJV; “do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do” NRSV; “do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words” KJV; “do not use meaningless repetition, as the Gentiles do” NASB.

Praying to God is like going to our father and telling him what you need! Simple and straightforward! Perhaps you may add words to express the urgency. That is all! Should you babble, talk on and on, or vainly repeat the same thing in different ways? NO!! Many of the prayers of the Bible are very short and the Lord’s own prayers are the shortest!

Why then do we make a show of our vocabulary and a farce of our requests to our Father in heaven? He already knows our needs. He doesn’t need to be coaxed! He is only too willing to give good gifts to His children. Often Christians make a ‘hoo-hah!’ about simple things, taking ten to fifteen minutes just to pray for a straightforward need. Have you heard the joke about unnecessarily long prayers? Someone said, “I asked so and so to pray for my safe journey. He took so long to tell God all about the journey from start to finish that I missed the bus!”

Imagine a fellowship meeting where there are twenty people, each one with a need. If each prayer takes 10 minutes, the prayer session alone would take 200 minutes or three hours and twenty minutes! Someone has said about public prayers, ‘If anyone prays for one minute, pray with him; if he prays two minutes, pray for him; if he prays for three minutes, pray against him!’ Even if people do not pray against him, it wouldn’t be surprising if they are ‘not with him!’

The prayer that Jesus taught us to pray included worship, petitions, confession, requests and praise and has only 66 words and takes less than 60 seconds to pray! Let your public prayers be short and without frills and our private prayers ‘all night if you are serious’, like the Lord’s!

Pray and practise with me: Dear Lord, You know everything, even better than I. Teach me not to lengthen my prayers for the sake of making them long. Amen!