How NOT to Pray: Lessons from the Lord’s Prayer

Before Jesus teaches us how to pray in the Lord's Prayer, he offers a short but sharp critique of how not to pray. He outlines three ways prayer can go sideways: when used by hypocrites as a means to an end, by publicists as image management, and by pagans as divine manipulation.

Drop the Act: On Prayer, Hypocrisy, and Honesty with God

"When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites." It’s a line that rings through the ages, echoed today in discussions of spiritual authenticity. But what exactly did Jesus mean by calling out "hypocrites," and what does this have to do with how we approach prayer in our lives?

Hypocrites: A Word Reclaimed

The term "hypocrite" as Jesus used it didn’t initially mean what we think of today. In the Greek, hypokrites referred to an actor—someone performing on a stage. It wasn’t until the 13th century that the word took on its modern English meaning: someone who says one thing and does another.

But Jesus wasn’t simply calling out liars. The people he was criticizing were indeed praying. They were giving to the poor. They were doing good things. The issue was that they were doing it all as a performance, to be seen and admired. The prayer wasn’t about communion with God; it was about applause.

Naming Our Mixed Motives

And so, the warning isn’t against praying with imperfect motives. The truth is, most of our motives are mixed. Maybe we want to do good, and we also want to be liked. Maybe we want to serve others, and we also want some recognition. This doesn’t make us hypocrites; it makes us human.

Hypocrisy, in the way Jesus is using it, is when we give ourselves over to playing a role, when the act becomes the identity. It’s when we forget who we are outside of the performance, and our spirituality becomes a transaction: a good prayer earns divine favor, a good deed earns community clout.

Dropping the Performance

Many of us have found ourselves wondering, "Was that prayer good enough?" Or we’ve tried to say the right words to convince God to act on our behalf. But Jesus reminds us that God is not susceptible to sweet talk. God doesn’t need us to impress; God wants us to be present.

And here lies the freedom. When we recognize that prayer isn’t a performance, we can drop the act. We can sit in silence. We can stumble through our words. We can stop mid-prayer and simply say, "I’m done. I’m just going to listen now."

There’s something deeply healing about that moment. Making peace with the fact that we cannot impress God makes prayer sustainable. It turns it from an obligation into an invitation. A relationship.

So if you find yourself trying to craft the perfect prayer, if you worry that your motives aren’t pure enough, remember this: God already knows. And you are already loved.

Drop the act. Just pray.

The Problem with Public Prayer (and Why It Misses the Point)

In Jesus' world, public prayer was a form of social capital. It elevated a person's standing in the community and, like many public religious actions, shaped how others viewed you. But today? If someone started praying on a busy street corner, it's more likely they'd be viewed with skepticism than admiration. As of 2025, Gallup's trust survey places clergy below auto mechanics in terms of professional trust. That says a lot. So, is Jesus' warning about public prayer still relevant?

Absolutely. We may not be praying for social status, but many of us still fall into the trap of performative prayer—just in subtler ways. How many of us have prayed just to check it off a list? Or have whispered a sleepy, half-hearted prayer just so we can feel we've done our part? We might even think, "Maybe God noticed. Maybe I get points for trying."

This is the quiet danger of viewing prayer transactionally. It's the idea that God's love is earned or scored—that we can bank spiritual credit by praying, even poorly or half-heartedly. But that's not how it works.

Jesus insists that prayer is not a performance. It's not an obligation. It's not a tool to earn favor or manipulate divine grace. And God's love is not transactional. It's infinite, inexhaustible, and freely given. No amount of prayer can make God love you more. No absence of prayer can make God love you less.

That's the radical grace at the heart of Jesus' message. We don't pray to be noticed by God. We pray because we have already been noticed, loved, and welcomed. Prayer isn't about earning God. It's about resting in what is already true.

Don't Babble Like the Pagans: The Pitfalls of Manipulative Prayer

Jesus' caution against meaningless prayer in the Sermon on the Mount may be one of his most striking. "Do not keep on babbling like pagans, who think they will be heard because of their many words," he says. But what exactly is the concern here? Two specific Greek terms help us dive deeper: batalogeo and polulogia. Respectively, they refer to meaningless and excessive words, but they carry nuanced implications that reveal much about the posture of our hearts when we pray.

Fluaria and the Danger of Gossip

The first word, batalogeo, meaning "meaningless speech," is closely associated with the Greek concept of fluaria — literally "nonsense" but often used to describe malicious gossip. Scholar Ulrich Luz suggests Jesus isn't just warning against the quantity of our words but also the content of them. Particularly, he's addressing the kind of prayers that seek to elevate oneself by subtly (or overtly) diminishing others.

These prayers aim to manipulate God’s perception of others, as if divine favor can be twisted by carefully curated narratives. It’s an absurd notion, but a deeply human impulse. Who hasn't, at some point, slipped a request into prayer that functioned more as a side-eye critique than sincere supplication?

Formulaic Faith and the Illusion of Control

The second term, polulogia, points to the repetitive, formulaic incantations found in some pagan traditions, where specific word patterns were thought to compel divine response. As John Nolland notes, this suggests a mechanical approach to prayer—say the right thing, in the right way, and you unlock God’s favor.

This formulaic mindset has made its way into Christian practice, too. From rote repetition to overemphasis on spiritual "posture" or specific phrasing, we sometimes treat God like a vending machine, inserting our prayers in hopes of receiving the precise outcome we desire.

The Heart of the Matter

Whether it's gossip dressed up as piety or repetition masquerading as faithfulness, these are attempts to manipulate rather than commune with God. And while we may not consciously think of our prayers this way, the underlying assumption remains: that we can shape God's will to match our own.

But true prayer is the opposite of manipulation. It's not about conforming God to our wishes, but opening ourselves up to be conformed to God's love.

As Jesus reminds us, God already knows what we need before we ask. That means we can release the performative, transactional, and manipulative tendencies in our prayer life. We don’t need to impress. We don’t need to convince. We simply need to show up—honestly, humbly, and ready to be transformed.