The Seduction of Prayer: Prayer Without the Mind By J Mark Copeland

The seduction of prayer results in prayer without the mind. The ultimate evidence of the seduction of prayer is apparent when prayer becomes thoughtless and mechanical.

If we don’t engage our minds in our praying, then we certainly won’t engage our wills or our hearts in prayer. Jesus was concerned about mindless praying. He said, “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:7, 8).

Other translations of these verses indicate that Jesus warned against the use of “vain repetitions” (KJV), “empty phrases” (RSV) or “meaningless words” (TEV).

 

It is not so much long prayers or repetitious prayers that Jesus warned against. Jesus Himself spent long periods of time in prayer (see Mark 1:35) and once prayed the same prayer three times in succession. (See Matthew 26:36-44.) Rather, Jesus is concerned about the danger of thinking that prayer is effective because of its repetition and does not, therefore, need to engage the mind at all.

Jesus attributed mindless praying to pagans or Gentiles. (See Matthew 6:6.) In Jesus’ day, the non-Jewish world often treated prayer as a form of magical incantation in which the sheer number of repetitions of certain words or phrases produced the desired effect. Since the words themselves were believed to contain such power, it was not deemed important to think about the prayer. It was only necessary to say the prayer. This was mindless praying in its ultimate form.

How might we fall into the trap of mindless praying? We can fall into this trap by saying our prayers rather than praying our prayers. Dr. Robert Cook says, “All of us have one routine prayer in our system; and once we get rid of it, then we can really start to pray!”

 

Routine prayer can easily become mindless praying. One humorous example makes the point. On one memorable occasion, my mother said the blessing at dinner time. A minute or so later, she asked, “Who would like to say the blessing?” It took my dad, my brother and me to convince her that she had already had. Because grace is a routine prayer, it is easy to say it thoughtlessly. We must be careful not to pray without the mind.

 

The seduction of prayer may manifest itself in prayer without the heart, prayer without the will, or even prayer without the mind. Jesus warned us to guard against each of these pitfalls of prayer. Having told us how not to pray, Jesus then instructed us how to pray.

 

-After this manner, pray

The Seduction of Prayer: Prayer Without the Mind By J Mark Copeland

The Seduction of Prayer: Prayer Without the Will By J Mark Copeland

The seduction of prayer results in prayer without the will. If prayer without the heart is prayer lacking humility, then prayer without the will is prayer lacking sincerity.

 

Anytime we pray prayers that we don’t really mean, we’ve engaged in prayer without the will.

The Orthodox Jews of Jesus’ day could easily fall into the trap of praying without the will. Not only did scribal tradition require that they pray at three set times daily, but they were also required to pray much from memory. One such prayer was the Shema, which pledged whole-hearted love and devotion to God, promised continuous meditation upon His law and rehearsed the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience to His commands.

This prayer was to be said twice daily – once in the morning before 9:00 a.m. and once in the evening before 9:00 p.m. Orthodox Jews also prayed the Shemoneh ‘esreh, or The Eighteen, a liturgy that originally consisted of eighteen short prayers appealing to God for mercy and favor. This liturgy of prayers was to be prayed three times per day – once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once in the evening.6

You can just imagine that having to pray eighteen or more memorized prayers every day could easily become a hindrance to the vitality and sincerity of one’s prayer life.

One could become preoccupied with praying words that do not express his true sentiments. He understand what he is praying but doesn’t truly mean what he is praying. He is praying without the will.

Praying without the will is a subtle form of the seduction of prayer. Those who have disciplined themselves to set aside specific times for daily prayer and specific guidelines to follow in their prayers must especially guard against this snare. On those days when they are energetic and ready to pray, they will certainly find that their prayers are offered sincerely.

At other times when prayer requires more personal discipline, however, they may find that following the normal routine puts them in the position of praying words that do not express their true sentiments. At such times, it would be wise to be less rigid and more spontaneous in prayer. We must mean what we pray if our prayers are to be fruitful. We must avoid the trap of praying without the will.

 

-After this manner, Pray

 

The Seduction of Prayer: Prayer Without the Will By J Mark Copeland

The Seduction of Prayer: Prayer Without the Heart By J Mark Copeland

First of all, the seduction of prayer results in prayer without the heart. Prayer should always involve a bowing of the heart before God. It should always entail humbling oneself before God, casting oneself upon His mercy and receiving His grace for the meeting of one’s needs and the granting of one’s petitions. Prayer without such genuine humility is prayer without the heart.

 

Jesus warned against prayer without the heart. He said,

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for 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” (Matthew 6:5).

Such people as Jesus described here were not bowing their hearts before God in humility. Rather, they were exalting themselves before men in pride.

The hypocrisy of prayer without humility was easy to spot among the Jews of Jesus’ day. Orthodox Judaism specified three times per day that were to be devoted to prayer. Every believing Jew was to pray at 9:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.

Any Jewish person who wanted to flaunt his spirituality might schedule himself to be in a public place surrounded by many people at the hour of prayer. He would then stand still, raise his arms into the air, turn the palms of his hands heavenward, bow his head and begin to pray with a display of great devotion.

Although onlookers might view this public prayer as a sign of deep devotion, Jesus called it hypocrisy. Why? Because it was prayer without humility. To God, it was prayer without the heart.

We must guard against prayer without the heart. It is easy to become self-conscious about prayer. I’ve heard people say that they do not want to be called on to pray in a public place without being notified in advance so that they can prepare for it. I’ve heard others willingly pray in public but\ later apologize about the quality of their prayer.

These are just two examples of the tendency to use prayer as a means of impressing others with one’s spirituality rather than as an opportunity to humbly approach God’s throne.

Such prayer without humility is prayer without the heart.

 

-After This Manner, Pray

The Seduction of Prayer: Prayer Without the Heart By J Mark Copeland

The Salvation of Prayer: The Focus of Prayer by J Mark Copeland

The Focus of Prayer

If our prayers are to be salvaged from seduction, we need to be clear on the focus of prayer. And what should be the focus of our prayer? It should be the Kingdom of God. Both the context of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew’s gospel and the Lord’s Prayer itself are concerned preeminently with the Kingdom of God.

We must make the Kingdom of God the focus of our praying.

We do that when our prayers aim at bringing God’s will to do done upon the earth as it is in heaven. Robert Law says, “Prayer is a mighty instrument, not for getting man’s will done in heaven, but for getting God’s will done in earth.”

Now this is an important point to grasp in understanding the value of prayer. People often talk as though God’s perfect will is going to be done regardless of whether we pray or not, but this simply is not so.

When the Kingdom of God is the focus of our praying, the will of God established in the earth is the fruit of our praying. When God’s Kingdom is the focus of prayer, God’s will is the fruit of prayer. God wants us to pray the price for His Kingdom to come and His will to be done in our lives, our families, our churches and our communities. But, so much of our praying is ineffective because we pray with the wrong focus.

Our prayers for others may be focused upon the desire to see people live together in love and harmony and experience the blessings of productivity and prosperity. While these are admirable desires, they are not necessarily evidence of submission to God’s Kingdom rule.

Therefore, such worthwhile desires are not to be the focus of our praying. We should pray rather than those for whom we petition will say yes to God’s Kingdom rule and allow the blessings of life to issue forth from His hand as tokens of His divine favor. We must be diligent and earnest in making the Kingdom of God the focus of our praying.

– After this manner, Pray

The Salvation of Prayer: The Focus of Prayer by J Mark Copeland

The Salvation of Prayer: The Effect of Prayer By J Mark Copeland

The Effect of Prayer

If our prayers are to be salvaged from seduction, we need to understand the effect of prayer.

If the focus of prayer is the Kingdom of God, then the effect of prayer is personal submission to God’s reign in our lives.

If we are praying right, prayer will change us from being self-serving people to being true servants of God concerned with His interests.

It is easy to make ourselves – our needs and desires – the center of all our praying. But our praying is to be larger than ourselves.

We must grasp the big picture. John Wesley said, “Thy kingdom come…is a prayer for that time when God will put an end to all misery, sin, infirmity, and death.”

I would modify Wesley’s statement to say that we are not simply praying for a future time when God will bring the woes of humanity to an end. We are praying that the Kingdom of God would intervene in the lives of people now and put a stop to such works of the enemy. As we pray for God’s Kingdom to come in the big picture, we will find that it will touch our lives and meet our needs as well. At the culmination of the very chapter in Matthew in which the Lord’s Prayer is given, Jesus said, “Seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (6:33).

Our prayers will be salvaged from the danger of seduction as we learn to make God alone the object of our praying, the Kingdom of God the focus of our praying and personal submission to God’s Kingdom reign the effect of our praying. This is the salvation of prayer.

 

-After this manner, pray

The Salvation of Prayer: The Effect of Prayer By J Mark Copeland