"When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites..." (Matthew 6:5). Before teaching us how to pray, there are number of things Jesus tells us about prayer as a warning.

First of all, hypocrites love to be seen praying. “They stand and pray in synagogues and the street corners in order to be seen. They have their reward in full.” The principle here is that if you pray in public, and your aim is that other people should appreciate your prayer, that is seeking honor from men. Almost everybody who begins to pray in public will have to admit that they are seeking honor when they pray.

Ask yourself, do you pray in public in the same way that you pray in private? When you are kneeling by your bed alone, how do you pray? What do you say to God? Is that what you say when you’re praying in public? Or do you make your language more flowery and bring a little tremor into your voice and behave like an actor, like a lot people do when they pray in public, to impress people that they are very earnest or they’re very emotional?

It’s all hypocrisy. God hates it. I wish we would realize that type of public praying is detestable before God. God detests it and won’t even listen to it. Most public praying in churches falls under this category, where people are praying in order to demonstrate how well they can pray before other people. This is completely against the teaching of Jesus, and people do it because they have not been taught all that Jesus commanded.

How shall we cleanse ourselves from it? We should judge ourselves each time we pray. I remember the first time I prayed as a Christian in public. I have to confess that I was seeking honor from people when I prayed. When I went home and judged myself, I said, “Lord, that is not the way I should pray.” The next time I got up and prayed in public, I was still seeking honor, and so I went home and judged myself again. It took me a number of years before I could cleanse myself from this desire to seek honor from men in public prayer, but finally, after many years, I learned to pray to God Almighty alone, to my Heavenly Father. Have you come there? If not, I want to encourage you to work out your salvation from seeking the honor of men.

Then Jesus said, “When you pray, go into your inner room; and when you shut your door, pray to your Father in secret.” How do we do this in public? We can do it in public if we have a door in our mind that we can shut. Even when I am standing in the midst of 100 people, there is a door in my mind. I shut it, and then I say, “I am now standing before Almighty God, my Father, alone.” There may be people around me, but I don’t want to be conscious of them. That’s one reason we close our eyes when we pray. There is no law that says you should close your eyes when you pray. You can pray with open eyes, because even Jesus did that sometimes.

We close our eyes so that we don’t get distracted by our surroundings, so that we don’t seek honor from the people around us. In a sense we are shutting out people when we shut our eyes. We need to shut our mind, too, and say, “Father, I have shut the doors now and I am praying to You.” That’s the way to pray, and we can do that even in public. We pray to our Father in secret, and our Father, Who sees in secret, will repay us. You can be absolutely sure that if you are praying to God your Father, and not seeking honor from men, He will definitely repay you and answer that prayer.

Jesus gives us more advice concerning how not to pray in Matthew 6:7, “Don’t use meaningless repetition like the heathen do because they think they will be heard for their many words.” One of the mistakes that the heathen make is to use meaningless repetition. Some religions have a habit of chanting something. They repeat some religious phrase, and it becomes a meaningless thing.

It’s possible to take some spiritual language and repeat it. It is possible for us to say, “Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah,” and it becomes quite meaningless after a while. It becomes a ritual. The same is true for phrases like, “Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord.” Jesus said, “Do not use meaningless repetition.” If you read the New Testament, you discover the word Hallelujah only comes in Revelation 19, and it says, “Hallelujah because of this,” and then it goes on to say another time, “Halleluiah because of this.” There must be a reason why we praise the Lord, and so we should not just say "Halleluiah” meaninglessly. We must give thanks in everything, but if it is meaningless repetition, it can be pretty foolish, and it doesn’t amount to anything before God. It can even be taking the Lord’s name in vain because the last part of Hallelujah, 'yah,' is a short form of Jehovah, and the Jewish people were very afraid to even mention that name, lest they take the Lord’s name in vain. I believe a lot of Christians are taking the Lord’s name in vain, when they say “Hallelujah” meaninglessly. I often say it when I praise the Lord, but I seek to say it meaningfully every single time. I am not against using that word, and neither is God, but it must be meaningful, and not a meaningless repetition.

Do you see how Christians have not taken a simple command like this seriously? Jesus said that it‘s the non-Christians who repeat something meaninglessly like a chant, and that must not be true in our lives. We need to reverence God and say what we mean. You can’t go before a king, or the president, or the prime minister of India and just repeat something, when you don’t even know what you are saying. We must have much more reverence for God. Avoid meaningless repetition.

Jesus also says, “Don’t think that you will be heard for many words.” That’s another mistake a lot of people make in prayer. They think that if they pray for a long time, God will certainly hear them. “I prayed for 3 hours, so definitely God will hear me.” That’s a lot of nonsense, and that’s what non-Christians think - if they pray for long time, then God will definitely hear them. It’s not true.

On Mount Carmel, the prophets of Baal prayed for many hours -- maybe six hours or more -- but nothing happened. Elijah got up and prayed for half a minute and the fire fell. It’s not the length of a prayer that makes Lord hear. It is very important to understand that.

A lot of people think that they will be heard for praying all night. “Well I prayed all night, so of course God will answer my prayer.” Who said that? It’s faith that brings an answer to prayer and a heart that is free from sin. Those are the most important things. “If I regard iniquity in my heart,” Psalm 66:18 says, “the Lord will not hear me”.

It doesn’t matter if you pray all night, and it doesn’t matter how wonderful your prayer sounds. If there is sin which is not settled, if there is unconfessed sin in your heart, if there is a wrong relationship between you and your brother, if you hurt somebody and you come and pray to God, God will not listen to your prayer. Go and settle that matter with your brother. If there is a sin between you and God, or between you and your brother, that is not confessed and settled, you can be absolutely sure that you are wasting your time praying, whether you pray for 1 minute or 10 hours.