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Matthew 6:6

"But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
(NIV)


I can remember this one particular guy in my church as I grew up, and his prayers were always so eloquent. Now, I am in no way saying that this particular guy had any wrong motives in his praying, but I will say that it affected me. I always felt inadequate to pray, after I had listened to this guy.

But prayer is not for other people. It was wrong for me to be intimidated, simply because this guy used a lot of big, theological sounding words when he prayed. Our prayers are a conversation between God and Man. And if there was a quota of intelligence required to pray, then none of us would qualify.

Also, to any pastor that might read this, don't let your prayers at the end of a sermon be an additional sermonette. I know that it can be easy to use prayer to try to "be" the Holy Spirit at the end of a sermon. I would like to caution you to avoid that.

When you pray, pray to God.

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