Matins Devotion: September 30, 2024
There’s something almost comical about the way Jesus gives us the Lord’s Prayer. Right before giving us these words, He tells us not to pray like the hypocrites who gather large audiences to watch them emote before God. He tells us not to be like the gentiles, who heap up empty phrases trying to win over their gods with lofty speech. In all of this, he’s telling us not to be arrogant when we pray. And then He tells us, “Then ask the God who created the heavens and the earth your Father to give absolutely everything He has because you’re His beloved, cherished child, unfathomably valuable to Him.”
So it’s rather funny, but it’s not contradictory. And this is something the world doesn’t understand. The hypocrites want the world to watch them pray because they think the only evidence that God hears them is if the world is in awe of them. The gentiles try to win God over with lofty speech because they don’t know how to earn His love.
But you do, Christians. You know that you cannot earn His love, but that Jesus Christ His Son has earned that love. And Jesus gave you that love as a free gift upon the cross when He bled it out for you, washing away your sins and clothing you in His righteousness, the righteousness that made you worthy to be called a child of God. You know that, in your baptism, you were covered in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You were given a new nature as a child of the Most High God, which gave you the right to call upon Him as children call upon their dear Father and trust that He will hear you because fathers love their children, and even more so does the Father by whom all fatherhood is known love His own.
So as Christians, we pray humbly not because we have no confidence but because we have all confidence. We pray humbly because we know we could not earn the right to have God listen to our prayers and yet we know that our Father in heaven has eternally given His ears to us by giving us the blood of His only begotten Son. When you pray, you don’t need to impress anyone because you don’t need to impress the God who already loves you, already cherishes you, and who has already promised to give you His name, His kingdom, His will, His provision, His salvation and deliverance.
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