Flourishing by Following: The Ears and Heart of Prayer - Matthew 6:7-10
Introduction
Do you ever feel like God doesn’t hear your prayers? Do you feel that He is not listening to you at times? When you make requests that seem to align with His will—such as the healing of a child with a terminal disease, the repair of a marriage, or the freeing of someone you love from crippling depression? I have prayed for some of those things and have seen God not answer them. I believe we have all found ourselves in a place where we have been disappointed with the results of our prayers, which leads us to wonder if God is listening with a caring ear.
Perhaps the lack of answers to your request has led you to ask another question: “Am I praying for the right things?” Do you find yourself struggling with what you should ask for? Do your prayers feel more like an Amazon wishlist or a child's Christmas list? Like an order given to a drive-thru speaker at a fast-food restaurant rather than a conversation with your Father? I know I have. We all have. What should we prioritize in our prayers?
Today, Jesus will answer both questions: Does God hear us, and what should we pray? I admit that I like the answer to the first question, but I am not thrilled with the answer to the second. Yes, God hears you. He is attentive to your prayers, just as the best father is to the cries of his children. Jesus assures us that we are heard and guides us on how to pray. In teaching us how to pray, He reveals what we should prioritize in our prayers. Our priority should not be the removal of pain, but the unfolding of God’s plan to be worshiped by all nations.
Big Idea: You have God’s ear; heaven should have your heart. Prayer isn’t about getting God to bend to our will, but about aligning our hearts with His. It’s about praying not at God, but with Him. Prayer is like riding the wave of God’s will, not asking the ocean to change directions. It’s like dancing with God, not trying to change the music He is dancing to. He wants you to experience the exhilaration of riding the wave of His glorious plan and the intimacy of dancing with Him hand in hand. The wave sets the direction for the surfer, and the lead guides the steps of the dance. We must hear the tenderness of His invitation to join Him and follow where He leads. In our passage today, we will see that Jesus assures us that God is listening and that we should pray in alignment with Heaven’s agenda.
Passage
Matthew 6:7-10, 7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
You Have God’s Ear (vv. 7-8)
Jesus begins by contrasting the prayers of His disciples with those of the Gentiles. Interestingly, Jesus moves from warning about how the “hypocrites” pray to not praying like the Gentiles. Comparing the prayers of the Jews to those of “pagans” would have been very jarring to Jesus’ audience. In the pagan world, the Gentiles often relied on repetitive incantations, believing that the sheer volume of words would somehow magically compel the gods to act. They thought that louder, longer, more elaborate prayers were somehow more effective. They were praying at the gods, hoping to manipulate them. They were screaming at the drive-thru speaker, hoping their pestering would clear the static they were hearing and assure them that their exact order got through.
Now, Jesus is not against repetition in prayer. Think about Jesus himself in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39-44). He repeated His prayers, wrestling with the weight of what lay ahead in His crucifixion. He spent the entire night in prayer (Luke 6:12). Lengthy prayer is not the problem. The problem is the motivation behind the prayer. It's the heart posture. Do we trust that God hears us? Must we arm wrestle God with our words to get Him to give in to our demands? Jesus assures us that we don’t need to annoy God to get Him to answer. He is aware of our needs and is eager to hear our requests. Jesus teaches this point by referring to God with a controversial title.
Jesus calls God “Father” and stretches that language to include His followers, saying that God is “your” and “our” Father. This simple phrase is revolutionary! The Jewish people used reverent titles for God—"Sovereign Lord," "King of the Universe." But "Father"? That’s intimate, personal, and a relationship of deep trust and love. It reflects a relationship completely unlike the moody and indifferent gods of the pagan world. Jesus presses this language even further by referring to God as “Abba” in Mark 14:36. Which is a title Paul says in Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6 that the Spirit prompts us to use to address God. This is an Aramaic term that a Jewish child would use to refer to their father. It is like calling God “Dad” or “Daddy.” Jesus makes clear that God is not indifferent or distant from us. We have the ear of our heavenly Father.
And then Jesus adds, "...for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." This isn't a license for laziness! It's a reminder of God's boundless love and unwavering care. He sees us; He knows our needs even before we articulate them. James 4:2 reminds us that we often do not receive what we pray for because we ask with the wrong motives, not because God isn't listening. Prayer isn't about informing God; it's about aligning ourselves with Him. It's about cultivating a heart posture of dependence and trust. We never drop signals or experience static in our prayers. Dad hears us! The Father is not bothered by our requests, nor does He need to be bothered for our requests to be answered. If it is true that God hears us and cares for us, why don’t we get everything we want? This is where Jesus challenges the heart of our prayers. Jesus will show us that prayer is not just giving our list to God; that is a part of prayer, but first receiving His list for us. This is how Jesus starts His model prayer for His disciples.
Heaven Should Have Your Heart (vv. 9-10)
This isn’t a prescriptive formula; it’s a model. Jesus says, “Pray then like this” (v.9). He doesn't say, "Pray only this." He is giving us a pattern, a framework, a heart posture to adopt in our prayers. It’s about the way we pray, not just the words we use. The essence is connection, communion with our Father. When we get near to His heart, we pray for His priorities. God wants earth to look more like heaven, a place of worship and obedience.
The heart of the Lord's Prayer, the core of what Jesus wants us to focus on, isn’t a shopping list of our own desires but three powerful petitions that direct our attention heavenward. The phrase in verse 10, “on earth as it is in heaven,” modifies these three requests. It is easy to read this phrase as only clarifying the last request, “your will be done.” However, the grammar actually supports a different interpretation. The repetition and parallelism of the three requests indicate that they should be considered together. The linguistic structure acts as grammatical glue that tightly bonds the three requests and prevents us from seeing the last phrase as solely connected to the third petition. This implies that each request aims to make Earth resemble heaven more closely, a place where God is worshiped, obeyed, and honored as King. The three requests are closely connected yet still make unique contributions to our understanding of prayer. In these three requests, Jesus will emphasize our present behavior and our future hope.
“Hallowed be your name.” In the ancient world, a person’s name was inextricably linked to their character and authority. To “hallow” God’s name is to treat it with reverence, to live in a way that reflects His holiness. In the Old Testament, God’s name is described as dishonored when His people rebel against Him. This request is about worship. Jesus teaches us to pray that God would be worshiped. This is interesting; although this request is made to God, it involves us. We honor God by living lives of obedience and integrity, reflecting His character in our words and actions. This petition is a plea for God's help in living a life that honors Him. We can understand this request as, “Dad, help me and others worship you as the pure beings of heaven do.”
“Your kingdom come.” This refers to the future fulfillment of all God's promises as described in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). When the kingdom is fully established, Jesus’ followers will be comforted (5:4), inherit the earth (5:5), be satisfied (5:6), receive mercy (5:7), see God (5:8), and be called His sons and daughters (5:9). It expresses a yearning for a world where God's promises of comfort, inheritance, satisfaction, mercy, intimacy, and adoption as His children are completely realized. We perceive and experience the kingdom now but await God to fully bring it into being. The first request focused on our Father helping us to worship him. This request centers the hope of our hearts on the future that God will bring. We can’t wait for John’s revelation to be a reality. Revelation 21:3, “3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” The third request speaks to our obedience.
“Your will be done.” This is often misunderstood. It’s not about God guiding the course of history. Of course, He does this, and the second request points to this idea. This third request is more about our wills being aligned with His. The emphasis here is ethical, how we behave and act. This ethical interpretation aligns with how the terminology of “will” is used in the closing of the Sermon on the Mount, which emphasizes obedience to the Father's will, acting in His name, and inheriting the kingdom. Matthew 7:21-23, “21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” This request is a plea for God to help us and others obey His will. We can understand this request as, “Dad, help me and others obey You as the pure beings of heaven do.”
These three petitions, when considered together, have profound ethical and eschatological (end-times) implications. They are calls to action and hope for the future. They call us to live in a way that reflects the Kingdom of God, even now, while simultaneously looking forward to its ultimate fulfillment.
Conclusion
You have God’s ear. He hears your prayers, even before you speak them. But He also wants your heart. He wants your focus, attention, and love to be on Him. It's not just about getting what we want; it's about becoming who He created us to be, reflecting His holiness, yearning for His kingdom, and living according to His will. He wants you to pray that He would be worshiped and obeyed like He is in heaven. This is to be the priority of our prayers. We can and should pray for the removal of pain and the blessing of prosperity; we will see this in the second half of the Lord’s prayer (vv.11-13), yet these concerns must submit to a greater priority, God’s glory. This is an uncomfortable prayer. Praying this way may mean God answers your request with a cross, not comfort, as He did with His Son in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Steps
As followers of Christ, we must first pray that God will be worshipped and obeyed; this is where our true flourishing is found. You may be experiencing sickness, stress, or sadness in your life right now. I invite you to pray, “Dad, help me and those around me to worship You in this season. In worshipping You, we find satisfaction. We hope for our healing, but Your name being ‘hallowed’ and honored is our deeper concern. Dad, help me to see how I can obey Your will in this trial. And, Dad, I long for the day when heaven and earth align and are made new. A place of no pain. Amen.”
I invite you to an opportunity to live out Jesus' teachings here. This Good Friday, I invite you to a time of focused prayer. As a church family, we will pray for those we love who are not yet following Jesus. We will pray that they hallow God's name and do His will. Imagine the joy of seeing a loved one, far from God, come to know Him. We ask you to join us in fasting and praying for just one person in your life who desperately needs God's grace. Our church will be open for extended prayer times this Good Friday, from 7:00 am to 4:00 pm, and we will gather for a special service at 6:00 pm. Let’s join together on Good Friday in praying that those we love will come to know the joy of worshiping God.
You may be here today and do not yet call yourself a follower of Jesus. You are curious and still trying to figure out where you stand with God. I am so thankful that you are with us on this journey. My greatest prayer for you is not for health or wealth, but that you would come to know the God of heaven, the Father who loves you with infinite love. I, as well as your friend who invited you here, pray that God protects you from pain and grants you prosperity. I want to be honest with you and say those things are not at the top of my list when I pray for you. My greatest concern is not that God would fill your life with good things that will eventually perish, but that He will keep you from perishing by forgiving your sins in Jesus Christ. I pray that you will worship Him, trust Him, obey Him, and receive the hope of eternal life in His kingdom.
Life-Level Application
Head: Read Colossians 4:2-4. Where is Paul when he prays this prayer? What is Paul’s primary concern in this prayer, and how does that reflect the first half of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-10?
Heart: Read Mark 14:36, Romans 8:15, and Galatians 4:6. Jesus calls God “Father” in Matthew 6:9. How does understanding God as “Abba Father” reshape your personal relationship with Him, especially during times when prayers seem unanswered?
Hand: Read 1 Peter 1:13-21. How does Peter describe the future hope of the followers of Christ? How does this hope encourage their present-day holiness? How does the truth revealed in verse 18 empower us to be holy?
Habit: Read Matthew 26:36-46. How does the petition “Your will be done” (Matthew 6:10) challenge you to seek God’s will over your own desires?