“This, then, is how you should pray:
” ‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
-Matthew 6:9 (NIV)
Here we find Jesus teaching the disciples about prayer. He concludes the talk with a prayer template, if you will, which starts off with the phrase, “Our Father”. The original Aramaic word here is “Abba”, which means “Daddy” in today’s language. So Jesus says first and foremost, prayer should be a simple conversation with your Daddy, not thoughtless babbling with an impersonal god.
But do we really treat it that way?
I know that I often find myself using words during prayers (especially those given out loud) that I would never use when speaking to a friend, let alone my daddy. It’s like I have some magic formula that I have to follow, repeating specific lingo and phrases a specific amount of times for it to be a “good” prayer. I mean, “hallowed”, really? What does that even mean?
It’s kind of ironic that a verse about prayer not being mindless repetition is arguably one of the most repeated verses in the Bible.
As a youth minister, I am constantly asking teenagers to pray out loud. Whether its during prayer requests or to close out a Bible study, more often than not I get silence and stares at the ground.
But some of the time I do find a youth that will pray, and it’s almost always sloppy, candid, and uneloquent. And I absolutely love it.
Prayer isn’t about being poetic. Prayer isn’t about impressing others. Prayer isn’t about getting people to say, “Hmmm” or “Amen”.
Prayer is about warm, intimate, face-to-face conversation with your Daddy. And that’s almost always sloppy, candid, and uneloquent.
As Jesus said, that’s how you should pray.
