Your Father Knows Your Need

YOUR FATHER KNOWS WHAT YOU NEED BEFORE YOU ASK HIM. Matthew 6.8.

What great confidence this promise should afford us and how great an encouragement it should be to you and me in our daily prayer life! There are some who say, “If God already knows what we need, then there is no need for us to pray!” But in today’s passage, the Lord dealt with that myth by encouraging us to pray and even teaching us how to pray for our daily needs. When you read from the Bible about prayer and learn what the LORD Jesus teaches about it, you will find it to be very simple. It is so straightforward that even a little child could understand and begin to pray!

I am interested in prayer and I am always eager to learn more about prayer. It is because I want to pray better and of course I want to get all my prayers answered – prayers for myself and for others. It is also because of the disappointments and frustration I experience when ‘I don’t get some of my important prayers answered’. I often wonder why it should be so when the Lord told us that prayer is just ‘asking God and receiving!”

Let us take a fresh look at the things about prayer that the Lord Jesus taught and seek to follow them. They are fundamental to your prayers and essential for God’s answers.

“When you pray” - You and I must pray and continue in regular daily prayer if we expect answers from God.

“Do not be like the hypocrites. They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full” – You and I must be sincere when we pray and pray to God and not for people to hear, if we want God our Father to answer!

“When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen” - You must find a definite place so that you can pray in secret without being disturbed and pray there regularly. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Hypocrites love to pray in public but saints pray in private!

“When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans”. They think they will be heard because of their many words – Be natural and tell your Father what you need. There’s no need to beat around the bush! Doesn’t God know even before words are out of your mouth? He knows all the details!

“Do not be like them” for your Father knows what you need before you ask him – Repeating the same words or the same thing in different words are what pagans do. Praying by rote or rosary is not what God wants. Let your prayer be humble, straight to the point and from your heart.

"This, then, is how you should pray,” said the Lord, and gave us what we know as the Lord’s prayer – which is to be ‘Our prayer to the Father’.

We have the simplest of prayers here, taught by the ‘Master Pray –ER’ Himself in today’s passage. I never cease to wonder at its simplicity and straightforwardness and pray it often.

Pray and practise with me: Dear Lord, teach me to pray like You. Help me to pray like You. Father in heaven who sees and hears my secret prayers, grant me the things I need in life, which You already know. Amen.