All right, if you got your Bibles, and I hope you do, we're going to be, as you know,

in week seven of this series in Matthew chapter 6, and we are talking about prayer.

Again, this is last week, Jesus gives this statement in chapter 6, verse 1 that is like the banner over which last week, this week, and next week all live under.

And it's this, beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your father who is in heaven.

And he's talking about three spiritual disciplines.

Last week we talked about giving.

This week we talk about praying, and next week we will talk about fasting.

And he gives us this warning because there is a way to give, pray, and fast,

where there is only a temporary reward that you get by trying

to impress the people that are watching you give praying fast then there is another way to

give pray and fast in a way that gives some sort of supernatural reward that your father, when he sees what you do in secret,

reward you.

And so when you skip down to verse five, this is the second illustration that Jesus gives

under this banner of our righteousness, not being practiced before other people to be seen by them, but our righteousness

being practiced before God who is in heaven. And so he says this, verse 5. And when you pray,

now, not if you pray, but when you pray, Jesus assumes that we're going to be praying.

And the reality is, most of us probably don't pray enough, but everybody prays.

Regardless of what you believe in, when the building catches on fire, all of a sudden, everybody is a prayer at that point.

In fact, if you read through the Gospels, one of the things that you will see is that Jesus's

life is bathed, saturated in prayer.

Like if you just take the book of Luke, for example, that in Luke 321, Jesus prays

at his baptism.

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