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As a child, my parents taught me how to pray using a simple morning and evening routine. Along with our daily prayer request lists and prayers before meals, they sounded something like this:
“God is good, God is great, now we thank Him for our food. Amen.”
“Good morning, God. I thank you for this day. Help me to follow you in every way. Amen.”
“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Amen.”
As silly as it sounds, I think children have it right when it comes to prayer. They don’t think about what they’re going to say, they just say it. Likewise, they aren’t worried about giving a grand speech with the most eloquent words, and they certainly aren’t afraid to ask God to heal their “boo boo” and scraped knees.
In Luke 18:9-17, we see two stories that illustrate this principle of prayer well: The Pharisee and the Tax Collector and the Little Children and Jesus. In the first story, both the Pharisee and the Tax Collector are praying at the Temple. In verses 11-12 we read that “The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get” (NIV).
This man was confident and a bit pretentious. Not only that, but he felt the need to use his prayer to thank God for not being like other people. Even the Tax Collector who was in the Temple praying at the same time he was.
The Tax Collector, however, prayed to God in this way: “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner'” (Luke 18:13, NIV). Unlike the Pharisee, the Tax Collector prayed to God with humble surrender and awe of God. He knew he wasn’t worthy, but instead of trying to be something he wasn’t, he surrendered who he was at the feet of God. He called himself a sinner, didn’t compare his prayer to the Pharisee in the Temple, and kept His eyes focused on the Lord.
We read in verse 14 that though the Pharisees were to be the religious elite, it was the Tax Collector who prayed in a way that honored God: “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:14, NIV).
