At our Bible study we looked at the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:1-24, part of the Sermon on the Mount. Here, Jesus deals with a wide range of topics, ranging from giving and money, our atittudes to wealth and treasure, to prayer and fasting and religious observance. In every instance, He reminds us that our primary allegiance should be to God, and that anonymity and humility are pre-requistes for living well. We should be willing to live unobtrusively; our financial giving, our public prayer and our religious observance are not to be done to win people’s favour or to impress them (the modern term is ‘virtue signalling’) but should be done quietly. Ostentatious living may bring earthly rewards, but if we live to please God, our rewards will be eternal. God may be invisible, but He sees what is done in secret and rewards accordingly.
In the midst of these words we find the Lord’s Prayer, a framework for prayer which keeps us from babbling mere words and which grounds us in worship. Prayer should begin with worship and an acknowledgment of who God is and our relationship to Him (‘our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name‘), and continues through the surrender of our wills to God (‘Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven‘) before ever petition is reached. Daily dependence is the key to living in God’s kingdom (as the Israelites’ dependence on manna in the wilderness demonstrated), something we often find hard to do in our modern society with its reliance on preservatives, refrigerators and freezers.
Jesus also emphasised our need for God’s forgiveness (and the subsequent necessity to forgive others freely) and for His help in overcoming temptation and in being delivered from the evil one. Prayer is both private and public, but always a sign of our relationship with God. We are called to live out God’s kingdom values and not be hypocrites, actors with masks that change according to circumstances. God is looking for authenticity and integrity in our lives.
