I bet I can guess exactly when you pray. Before meals and before bedtime, right? Do you pray at church when someone else is “leading the prayer”? Do you pray when things get rough? Do you pray when things are wonderful? Do you pray before reading/studying your Bible or before starting your day?

When we first examine Jesus’ teaching on prayer in Matthew 6, we typically see how He tells us what not to do in prayer. But if we are carefully reading then we will see that we’ve already missed His first point. Jesus says, “When you pray.” He does not say, “If you pray.”

Why is this so important to point out? Because there is a great different between those two phrases. If Jesus said “if you pray”, then He would be leaving the choice of prayer up to his audience. It would be of no consequence whether one prayed or not. The idea of if has a connotation of wavering and unknown. Saying if makes it sound like “it’d be nice if you prayed, but if not that’s cool, too.” But that isn’t the language Jesus uses here. Instead, He says “when”. This phrase tells us that Jesus expects us to pray. Jesus makes the assumption that we will pray.

Therefore, the first thing we should know about Biblical prayer is there is an expectation of prayer – Christ expects us to pray. In other words, prayer is not optional. It is a duty of the believer. You must pray. It is expected of you. In fact, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul says, “pray without ceasing”. We should always be ready to pray and always be in a Spirit of prayer. We as believers have the Holy Spirit literally living within us and we should be in regular communication with our God.

Extra Thought

While many of us can recognize that prayer is a necessity and is expected of us, we still find ourselves struggling to start praying anyway. Whatever the reason (fear, unconfessed sin, hopelessness) Hebrews 4:15-16 tells us, “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” We can boldly approach the throne of God in prayer because Jesus Christ (our High Priest) sympathizes without weaknesses. He is a compassionate High Priest and desires to hear our prayers.