I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. However, this is leap year and it does not list a passage for February 29. So today is a bonus reading. I decided to do a study on an area where I need work, prayer. In particular I decided to read Matthew’s account about Jesus teaching His disciples how to pray.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 6:5-15.

    When Jesus began teaching His disciples how to pray the first point He made was that we should not pray for show. While His instruction here is primarily about our personal prayers, there is a principle which can apply when we lead a group in prayer. We should not pray in order to impress others with our holiness. Jesus instructs us to pray as a way to communicate with our Heavenly Father.

The second thing Jesus teaches us is that our prayers should be to the point. We do not need to repeat ourselves, God heard us the first time. We, also, do not need to explain to God in exquisite detail what we are praying about, not about the reason we are making the request, not about why we believe He will grant our request, not even a detailed list of things we would consider as fulfilling our request. God knows what we are asking for before we ask Him. I thought about going into how we can form prayers based on the model prayer Jesus gave here, but there are many people who have done a better job of that than I am able. Here is one based on Luke’s version.