God Wants You to Be Real!

I was reading an article recently about a pastor who was invited over to one of his parishioner’s homes for a meal. As they sat down, the lady of the house voiced her intent to pray. As she began to pray, the pastor was appalled at the change in demeanor in the woman. She suddenly transformed from the soft, sweet little lady with a Southern accent she had been over to a King James era speaker. It was like another person had taken over her mouth and began to speak through her. He even peaked to make certain it was still her. This little lady had learned religion by rote and had her prayers down pat. 

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not condemning people who do this but it shows how we have failed to understand what praying really is all about. We have come to see it as a religious rite utilizing just the right phrases and sequences of words. Somewhere along the way, we have come to view prayer as a mere recitation of just the right words. We have recited the LORD’s prayer time and again, memorized it and quote it often. However, that was not the LORD’s intent when He taught His disciples, and us, to pray. He was giving us a pattern to follow, not a sequence of words to memorize.

When our prayers become nothing more than a recitation, their effectiveness is gone. We become like the hypocrites Jesus condemned with these words:  “When you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Most assuredly, I tell you, they have received their reward” (Matthew 6:5 WEB). There is no reward, nothing to gain, from saying a prayer that has no heart-felt meaning from the individual. Certainly, GOD hears our prayers, but GOD wants to hear our hearts.

When you pray, just be yourself. The word “hypocrite”that Jesus used means actor, someone impersonating someone else. God made you to be who you are. When you speak to Him, be your everyday self and do not be ashamed to pray because you do not have the fancy words that you have heard others use. It just may be that they are faking it as well.

You are who He made you to be and He loves you. When you pretend to be ‘holier than thou’ you are buying into a lie that you are not good enough, that God could not love the ‘real’ you, when nothing could be further from the truth. God has loved you for your entire life, through the ups and the downs. He understands, and He still loves you.

God knows who you are on the inside, so trying to flatter Him with some pretty words gets you nowhere. God is the Awesome, Omnipresent, Unchangeable, Loving, Merciful, and Patient, Creator of the Universe and He made you just the way you are. So be yourself, especially in prayer. Just pray your heart, talk to GOD as the loving Heavenly Father that He is. He desires your prayers, your fellowship, your intimacy with Him. Learn to enjoy the presence of Almighty God by learning to commune with Him in prayer.