Sunday message · If My People (A Call to Prayer) series
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Message Summary
In the second message of the If My People series, Pastor Phillip Santillan turns to Matthew 6:5–8. From an early age we learn to measure value by quantity: the most presents under the tree, the most Halloween candy, and later, how many kids, how much retirement savings, a person’s net worth. Church life is no different. Phil admits that when asked about the church’s student Bible study at a local high school, he is quick to say how many came, because that is easier than telling how God’s word is changing students’ lives. Our culture is obsessed with convenience, sometimes at the expense of what is truly valuable.
He cites a university anthropologist, not writing as a Christian, who urges us to stop counting everything and ask about the qualities that give life meaning. It is easy to blame consumerism or technology, but people have always valued quantity over quality. So Jesus told his disciples not to pray like the hypocrites, who pray on street corners to be seen, or to babble, imagining they will be heard for their many words, but to pray to the Father in private, who knows what they need before they ask.
Public prayer is not the problem, Phil notes; Jesus prayed at his baptism and before feeding the five thousand. The hypocrites prayed to make others believe their prayers mattered, rather than because God already values them. Phil wonders how often we calibrate our faith to how people will react, bolder in some circles and quieter in others. That reveals a lack of genuine intimacy with God, treating prayer as a means to acceptance rather than a relationship with the God who knows us by name. The private room is less about geography than an atmosphere where “vulnerability can meet divine grace.”
The series title comes from 2 Chronicles 7:14, which Phil says is not about nationalistic ideals but about God’s people repenting. When believers pray together, God shows up, as in Acts, when the Spirit fell on the praying disciples and when Peter was freed from prison while the church prayed for him. The church is offering a prayer guide and a prayer journal, and in a video a friend who journals encourages beginners to treat it as a tool, let go of perfectionism and write whatever is on their hearts.
Reflecting on a funeral he attended for a longtime church-planting leader, Phil points to the deeper, exchanged life described by missionary Hudson Taylor, in which we trade our life for the one Jesus offers. Prayer is the doorway to that life, as we exchange our desires for God’s instead of treating him like a genie in a bottle. The goal is not to shame anyone who does not take part, but for hearts set on God and united as a church family, so that Jesus’ prayer in John 17 for his followers to be one is realized. As the church seeks what God wants to do through it, Phil says, it will take all of them, and it will take prayer.
Questions about prayer in Matthew 6
It is God’s promise to his own people: if those called by his name humble themselves, pray, seek his face and turn from their wicked ways, he will hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:14). God spoke it to Solomon at night after the temple was finished (7:11–12). Pastor Phil, whose prayer series takes its name from the verse, says it is about God’s people repenting, not nationalistic ideals.
No. Jesus’ warning in Matthew 6:5 is about motive, not location: the hypocrites prayed on street corners “to be seen by men.” Pastor Phil points out that Jesus himself prayed in public, at his baptism and before feeding the five thousand. The problem is praying to make others believe our prayers matter, instead of praying because God already values us.
It means pray to be with your Father, not to be seen by people: “go into your inner room, shut your door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen” (Matthew 6:6). Pastor Phil says the private room is less about geography than an atmosphere where “vulnerability can meet divine grace,” a real relationship with the God who knows you by name rather than a performance.
Because prayer is a relationship, not a way to inform God or win him over with many words. Jesus says, “your Father knows what you need before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:8), so we can stop babbling. Pastor Phil calls prayer the doorway to the exchanged life, in which we trade our desires for God’s instead of treating him like a genie in a bottle.
