Pretentious Prayers

I was sitting in a prayer meeting recently and I heard this guy start praying. You know the type; the guy who begins to pray using a speech pattern and word choice that is so not like him. All flowery and theological. His tone changes into this ultra pious and stoic sounding manner. Putting off this “holier than thou” posture. As I heard it and became aware of it, it made my skin crawl.

“Who do you think you are?” ran through my mind. Why does he feel the need to sound super religious. We all know better. God certainly sees right through this façade.  “You do know that you can’t manipulate God by speaking in this ridiculous manner, right?”

Ok I’ll admit my cynicism now. And in truth, I really don’t know what was in his heart. He actually could have been completely sincere. But it got me thinking.  I have to confess, this pompous, pretentious prayer reminded me of…well…me.  In self-examining my own prayers, I began to ask this question, “why do I think I have to put on a show for God when I am praying?”

I know that I am not alone in this. Most of us know those that pray in the “King James English.” Some use all the Christianese they can come up with. Others want to remind God of all that they have sacrificed for Him. Still others want to pile on all the theology they can.

Sometimes I need the reminder that I cannot impress God with my knowledge, my language, nor my speech pattern. He sees through that, He sees my heart. He sees your heart. And what He sees is not pretty (Jeremiah 17:9).

It reminded me of the parable Jesus told about two approaches to prayer (Luke 18:9-14). The Pharisee came boastful to God, thanking Him for how good he was. The tax collector came with the simple acknowledgment that he was so undeserving and begging for mercy.

One came with pride, the other with humility. One came on his own merit, the other saw his bankruptcy. One walked away unchanged, the other walked away justified. One’s future held humiliation, the others exaltation.

Over and over Jesus condemned the “leaven of the Pharisees,” that is, self-righteousness. He rebuked the religious leaders who thought that they had earned God’s favor. He pointed out to His disciples to avoid the deceptive lies of self-righteousness. And that is the very thing that we fall to all the time.

Christians like to point out sin, but we hate to be reminded of our own sin. We like to pray publicly in such a way that causes others to think of how righteous we sound, but in doing so we are demonstrating our own unrighteous desire to be praised by man.

What would happen if all of our prayers began sincerely with “God be merciful to me a sinner!”? What would happen if we through off the pretentious attitudes and came to God in humility? How would the God use us when our prayers actually glorified God instead of tried to displace God?

Jesus demonstrated for us true humility (Philippians 2). He was willing to lay aside what He deserved to offer us what we did not deserve. James tells us (4:7-10) that when we humble ourselves, God will lift us up.

So I tell myself, stop playing games. Stop acting like you have it all together. Stop trying to show off. After all, we are all underserving sinners and our Savior wants to pour out His blessings on all who come humbly come to Him.