Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . . (Matthew 6:9)

How many lips have formed these words since the Lord Jesus first taught them? How many languages have uttered them? How many different people, in how many different circumstances, have bowed their heads and hearts to pray as Jesus famously instructs?

The dying have prayed it. The uneducated have prayed it. The unbelieving and villainous have even prayed it. Children have prayed it. The great and wise have found room for it. Every continent on earth has heard it whispered. Tribes in remote villages and kings in tall palaces have bowed and repeated after the Jewish prophet from Nazareth. Has there been a prayer more prayed; have there been words more often spoken?

“For some of our wandering prayer lives, the best thing for us to learn is how not to pray.”

And yet, for as many as have repeated our Master’s teaching on how to pray, how many can repeat what words come directly before them — namely, the ones teaching us how not to pray? How many realize that our Lord’s instruction on prayer is both positive and negative — that it doesn’t simply stand alone but is given in contrast? For some of our wandering prayer lives, the best thing for us to learn is how not to pray like a Pharisee or a pagan.

Prayers of Pharisees

Do you love to be noticed and admired by others when you pray?

Jesus’s first how-not-to aims at the hypocrite, embodied in the Pharisee. When the Pharisee prayed, he wanted not so much to pray as to be seen praying. As a bird in mating season, he sang forth loud, preening look-at-me prayers.

“And when you pray,” Jesus begins, “you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others” (Matthew 6:5).

Such a man pours his best zeal and focus and interest into public prayers. He positions himself on street corners or within small groups. What may seem stirring and deeply spiritual to many does not impress the one above who knows their anxious thoughts: Are others looking? Are they impressed?

Jesus shows us an example of such a look-at-me pray-er, who cannot help exalting himself even without an audience.

Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” (Luke 18:10–12)

In other words, “God, thank you that when you look at me — and when I look at me — we both behold such a pleasing sight! Unlike this man, loathsome to both Gentile and Jew alike, you have made me quite the spectacle. Twice per week my belly aches from fasting. My spice racks withhold not your due!” “Be merciful to me a sinner” lives miles from his mind in the distant town called Justified.

Do you pray to impress others? To build up a spiritual résumé? How is your life of secret prayer? Do you ever stand so tall or shine with such saintly luster as when you know others are watching? You must not be like them, Jesus teaches, for “they have received their reward.” Instead, “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:5–6).

Prayers of Pagans

Have you come to the end of your prayers and realized you can’t remember anything you just prayed? You spoke Christian-speak — observed the phrases of prayer, drew near to God with your mouth, and honored him with your lips while your heart was far from him. Prayer on autopilot.

“And when you pray,” Jesus teaches next, “do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words” (Matthew 6:7).

The pagans prayed empty mantras, stale platitudes, barren banalities. Prayer for pagans often proved little more than a formula — say these words so many times, and the gods will hear and reply. Just babble invocations in order to awaken your deity from his slumber, and he will eventually bless you. The priests of Baal modeled this in their showdown with Elijah, praying, “O Baal, answer us!” from morning until noon (1 Kings 18:26).

So too with us.

Although we do not pray to stones or wood or the sun, Jesus does not want his disciples praying true words to the true God falsely. Emptily. I don’t know about you, but mealtime prayers can be the first ones vampired of their lifeblood (what does it even mean to “bless this food to our bodies”?). Too many times, my mouth has moved, prayers were spoken — but not really from me. A pious ventriloquism.

Our Lord exposes a hidden insecurity underneath empty-phrased pagan prayers: “They think that they will be heard for their many words.” The pagans are uncertain about the divine heart toward them — so they appease or impress or update the unknowing and unconcerned gods. They try to get their attention, throwing dust at the heavens, desperately wishing for someone to answer.

Such an insecurity resonates with my say-more prayers. Am I really being heard? Prayer can seem less reliable than, say, a text message, which tells me it was delivered. Not so with prayer. I feel as though I pray carrier pigeons — as each flaps away, I hope some will arrive at the destination.

Praying empty phrases with many words, then, can turn into a probability proposition. The more pigeons, the greater the odds God receives the message. Third-times-a-charm mentality. But Jesus allays our rambling fears: “Do not be like them,” he instructs, “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8). Before you approach your Father’s throne, he knows. He knows your needs — his eye has not turned from you. The pagans pray to the unknown god. We pray to a Father.

Prayer for Christians

Jesus introduces “Our Father who art in heaven” with “Pray then like this” (Matthew 6:9). Then connects the instruction on how not to pray with the how-to Lord’s Prayer.

I believe Jesus gives us this prayer, in part, to contrast with the how-not-to errors of the hypocrites and pagans. In his short prayer, Jesus gives us an alternative to the look-at-me prayer of the Pharisee and the say-more prayer of the pagan.

Against hypocrite prayers, he teaches us to pray,

Our Father in heaven,hallowed be your name.Your kingdom come,your will be done,     on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:9–10)

Jesus teaches his disciples to pray that God in all his glory be seen, not us. Instead of our names being hallowed, our kingdoms coming, our righteousness being seen and praised and admired — or the various ways we ask for these — we want God’s to be imposed and cherished. This prayer, spoken from the heart and not just the mouth, transforms hypocrites to worshipers, deorbiting the heart from revolving around self to God. And when God’s fame is truly our heart’s desire, we will come to love secret prayer.

Against pagan prayers, Jesus adds,

Give us this day our daily bread,and forgive us our debts,     as we also have forgiven our debtors.And lead us not into temptation,     but deliver us from the evil one. (Matthew 6:11–13)

“When God’s fame is truly our heart’s desire, we will come to love secret prayer.”

Instead of waking a snoring deity, anxious to appease the god we do not truly know, we pray to a heavenly Father. And therefore, instead of seeking to impress or play probability games with the divine ear, we can pray simple, childlike, and even concise prayers to our Father (this prayer totals 57 words in Greek, 38 in Luke’s account), knowing that we have his ear through Jesus Christ. We ask him for the needs we already know he knows about. He is a Father, bidding his sons and daughters come close to tell him all the requests of their hearts.

One of the best ways to pray is to know how not to pray. Instead of praying self-exalting prayers that cry, Look at me! we pray in secret, and we pray for God’s glory to be loved and admired. Instead of praying empty-talk, babbling, insecure prayers, we pray about daily bread and forgiveness, knowing that he knows our needs and has forgiven us in Christ before we ask him.

Remember that old beer commercial? A father and son are fishing on a pier in a stereotypical guy situation. On the verge of tears, the grown son pronounces to the father, “Dad, you’re my dad, and I love you, man.” It’s super awkward, until Dad gives the punchline: “Johnny, you can’t have my beer.” It was humorous, and went viral, because guys know you don’t do that. Why is encouragement so awkward for guys?

I can hazard some guesses. It’s emotional. Guys get uncomfortable when guys get emotional. And when emotion goes over the top, they look silly. Men don’t like silly. Moreover, in today’s gender-confused world, guys wonder how to express themselves to other guys. So we don’t. At other times, it can make the one you’re trying to encourage uncomfortable. I remember trying to complement a young pastor who preached an excellent sermon, and his response was a mild rebuke: “You know, Mack, flattery is a sin.”

Why go out of my way when it’s easier just to stay quiet? Besides, most guys seem to be doing fine anyway, right? Encouragement, however, is not just a good idea, but a biblical command — yes, even for men.

We could come at encouragement from many angles, but I’d like to learn from how God encourages the apostle Paul while he was under arrest, headed for trial in Rome. The risen Christ stood by him and said, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome” (Acts 23:11). Encouragement here came in three parts: past, present, and future.

Revisit Past Faithfulness

If there’s anything I have learned in my life, it’s how forgetful I am of Christ’s care. I have never risked for God without seeing his faithfulness. From taking that big scary step to lead a dorm Bible study as a new believer to moving to Iraq to pastor a church when I was 60, God was with me in those steps (and thousands of others). Yet with every step, I needed encouragement from friends and family and deep dives into Scripture to remember God’s trustworthiness.

I’m not alone in my forgetfulness. The Bible often encourages us by calling us to remember God’s faithfulness. This shines particularly brightly in the Psalms as the writers encourage God’s people, even amid despair and fear, to remember our Lord’s salvation (see Psalms 42–43).

No wonder our Lord has built remembrances into the believer’s life, from the Passover meal in Exodus to the meal instituted by Jesus. Alongside these, we ought to regularly speak encouragement to one another. Paul, for instance, tells the Thessalonians, “Encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).

Over and again, in both the Old Testament and the New, we’re encouraged to remember the great salvation we have in Christ. That’s the key: the gospel. We’re called to encourage one another by remembering the work Jesus has accomplished on our behalf. So, encourage others specifically by reminding them of how God has worked in their past.

Take Heart in the Moment

The Bible also calls us to be encouraged in the moment. The greatest discouragements meet us in current moments: the hard news of a wayward child, the cancer diagnosis, the job loss, that unexplained darkness that descends upon our minds.

In Psalm 27:14, David says, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” This is patience in a moment of discouragement. The “take a deep breath; the Lord is with us” moment. When God encouraged Moses, the great promise was “I will go with you” (Exodus 33:14). God promises his presence in our consecutive moments.

“What a difference it makes to be surrounded by faithful believers during our hardest days.”

One repeated way encouragement happens in the Bible is through fellowship. What a difference it makes to be surrounded by faithful believers during our hardest days. Paul tells the Corinthians of the comfort that came to him “by the coming of Titus” (2 Corinthians 7:6). When Paul arrived in Rome and awaited trial, some faithful believers gathered where he was staying. “On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage” (Acts 28:14–16). No wonder the Christians I’ve known who have lived in discouragement were often out of fellowship.

Look Far Ahead

By far, the way Christians are most encouraged in the Scriptures is to be pointed to our future. Again, Paul writes,

The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:16–18)

This verse is a direct command to encourage others with future grace.

So here is a basic summary of biblical encouragement: First, remember God’s past faithfulness in your life. Recount to yourself (and others) the marvelous salvation that has come to those who love Jesus. Second, take a breath when discouragement comes, and wait on the Lord. He will come to you. He says he will be with us always. Practice being in fellowship with others. And third, take hold of our future hope in the gospel — that nothing we face will outstrip the glory for those who persevere to the end.

Practicing Encouragement as Men

How about some practical steps, especially for men encouraging other men? Here are five ideas to overcome the awkwardness. With each, keep in mind the past, present, and future divisions of encouragement.

1. Build a culture of encouragement.

Elders, in particular, should take the lead and make efforts to encourage other men. I don’t mean giving out the “tried real hard” awards like the toddler soccer team. No, encourage those who take real steps to grow in the faith: a first sermon, a first teaching in a Sunday school class, or taking initiative to disciple a younger believer.

I spoke at a church recently, and after the evening prayer time the pastor asked the congregation for any encouraging words from the morning sermon. I have never had that happen before, and it was, well, encouraging. But what I most appreciated was the pastor’s intentional development of a culture of encouragement.

2. Gossip good things about other men.

Men can be analytical creatures, which quickly devolves into criticism. Fight this by spreading good reports of other believers who are being faithful.

In Colossians 4:7–8, Paul says, “Tychicus will tell you all about my activities. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister, and fellow servant in the Lord. I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts.” Think of positive things to say about others, as Paul did for Tychicus. True, short, and genuine comments are enough.

3. Remember to encourage yourself.

I’m not taking you to the self-help section of the bookstore. Instead, I’m speaking more to a maxim that I find helpful: talk to yourself; don’t listen to yourself — much like the psalmists do. The psalmist asks himself, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” (Psalm 42:5). Then, he answers himself by encouraging himself with the truth about God.

Tell yourself God’s truth. Don’t listen to the voices in the night that plague you. Instead, talk to yourself about the gospel and the promises of God. Notice how much of the encouragement in the Scriptures — where the actual word encourage is used — doesn’t pretend circumstances aren’t dire or that everything will work out. Rather, it reminds us how great is our hope and how fantastic our future in Christ.

4. Encourage godly action.

Sometimes encouragement to righteousness is a kick in the pants. For example, Paul writes concerning the freeloaders in the Thessalonian church, “We command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living” (2 Thessalonians 3:12).

Watch for brothers who need courage for godly action. Then be quick to commend those who act. Encourage those who share their faith courageously. Encourage other men to live righteous and holy lives in a crooked, depraved generation — even when the workplace opposes us. Let men know that God will honor them for standing up for Christ.

As an example from my ministry, I often hear a young man express a desire to go to the mission field. If men like them are in your church, please don’t needlessly discourage them from wanting to live out the Great Commission. Encourage them.

5. Seek to have the ministry of encouragement.

I once talked to a doctor about his friendships, and he told me, “My wife is my best friend, and I really don’t need other friends.” I think many men feel that way. But what about the ministry you might have if you develop friendships with other men with the intent to encourage?

“I’ve learned it’s hard to be encouraging and nearly impossible to be too encouraging.”

We understand that joy comes to us when others encourage us, but we don’t always think about how we gain joy when we encourage others. It’s easy to tear down, to disparage, to be critical. It’s hard to build up, spur others to godly action, and find the good in others. But to spur men to grow in Christ, they need to be encouraged. One of the gifts that Jesus uses to bring joy even in tribulations is the work of encouragement. Obviously, this best happens in the context of a church. Men, make guy friends in your church. Start meeting with men you want to get to know better. Then be intentional in your encouragement.

I have lived decades as a Christian. I’ve learned it’s hard to be encouraging and nearly impossible to be too encouraging. So be encouraged, in Christ, to encourage one another.

The question of the origins of the Christian tradition called Baptist has been, and to some extent still is, a much-debated issue. For example, when W.H. Whitsitt (1841–1911), the third president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, argued in the late 1890s that the earliest Baptists in both England and America did not practice immersion, he set in motion a controversy within the Southern Baptist Convention that eventuated in his dismissal as president.

Whitsitt’s leading opponents held to a position known as Landmarkism, of which a cardinal tenet was the assertion that there had been an unbroken line of baptisms by immersion (sometimes colloquially called “The Trail of Blood”) that went back to Christ and that were necessary for the existence of true churches. In other words, there have always been Baptists, it was alleged — though they might have used different nomenclature, such as Anabaptist in the sixteenth century or Waldensian in the late medieval era.

Whitsitt lost his presidency over this issue of Baptist origins, but his argument against Landmarkism was sound. In the past century or so, few historians have found Landmarkism to be a credible explanation of Baptist origins. The two major explanations today link modern-day Baptists to the continental Anabaptists of the Reformation era or the Puritan renewal movement within the Church of England.

Anabaptist or Puritan?

There are certainly similarities between the Baptists and the Anabaptists: both emphasize believers’ churches and credobaptism, and both are critical of church-state unions. But there are also significant differences. Some of the Anabaptist communities were fundamentally unorthodox on some basic issues like the Trinity and the person of Christ. The mainstream Anabaptist movement — that is, the Mennonites and the Hutterites — is strongly committed to pacifism, a perspective that has never been a significant part of the Baptist tradition. The Sabbatarian ethos of the Baptist movement is largely absent from Anabaptism. Finally, there are next to no major organic historical links between the continental Anabaptists of the sixteenth century and the English Baptists of the seventeenth century.

On the other hand, the ties between Puritanism — which emerged in the 1560s as a renewal movement within the Anglican state church — and the Baptists — who arose as General (i.e., Arminian) Baptists in the mid-1610s and as Particular (i.e., Calvinistic) Baptists in the late 1630s — are patent and multiple. All the leading Baptists of this era — men like John Smyth (d. 1612) and William Kiffen (1616–1701) — began their careers as Puritans. Like the Puritans, most of the Baptists of this era were convinced that the Lord’s Day is the Sabbath of the new covenant. And Baptists, like their Puritan contemporaries, wholeheartedly believed that a political life could be a Christian’s vocation. Finally, most of the Baptists of this era firmly rejected any connection to the continental Anabaptists.

Calvinistic Seedbed

The forebears of most modern-day Anglophone Baptists are the Particular Baptists, who emerged from the womb of English Puritanism in the 1630s. For me personally, these Puritan origins of the Baptist movement offer the best historical explanation of where the tradition of my spiritual forebears came from. I do not assert this because I, like those seventeenth-century Particular Baptists, am a Calvinist. I affirm it because the historical data leads me to this conclusion.

“The forebears of most modern-day Anglophone Baptists are the Particular Baptists.”

With the rise of interest in Reformed theology among evangelicals since the 1960s, it is not surprising to find similar interest in Baptist circles. In the last sixty years, there has developed a distinct movement of Reformed Baptist churches (though the term “Reformed Baptist” is a one that was rarely, if ever, used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) as well as similar-minded congregations within such Baptist bodies as the Southern Baptist Convention and the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada. Prior to this rise of interest in and commitment to Reformed thinking among these North American Baptist communities, the regnant theology in many of them was a mixture of revivalism, non-Calvinistic dispensationalism, and pragmatism.

When these Reformed or Calvinistic Baptists began to ask about the origins of the Baptist movement, they were excited to find Calvinism and Reformed theology as a seedbed of the Baptist tradition. But some Baptists, who sought to retain what had become traditional Baptist practice and thinking during the twentieth century, reacted to this new stress on Calvinist origins by asserting the non-Calvinistic Anabaptist link. And thus, the discussion of historic Baptist origins became shaped by modern-day concerns, a good example of what historians have come to call presentism — namely, the use of the past to validate present-day positions. But as noted already, the investigation of the origin of the Baptist movement must be directed by the evidence from the seventeenth century. And to this historian, that evidence is patent: the English-speaking Baptist movement has its origins in Puritanism. (See, for example, B.R. White’s The English Baptists of the Seventeenth Century.)

Why Does It Matter?

What, though, is the importance of this assertion about Puritan origins? Does it make any difference to modern-day Baptist life and thought? For some, this determination of genesis means that as it was in the beginning, so it should be now. For this way of thinking, the theological position hammered out by the seventeenth-century Particular Baptists — usually taken to be epitomized in the Second London Confession — is the gold standard by which all present-day Baptist thought must be judged.

“To this historian, that evidence is patent: the English-speaking Baptist movement has its origins in Puritanism.”

Now, this idea of going back to the past for modern orientation was a key element in the Reformation. The watch cry of ad fontes, “back to the sources,” was an important principle that directed the efforts of the Reformers. Yet as the heirs of the Reformation discovered, this principle did not mean that one tradition could claim to be the true representation and repristination of the apostolic era. Was the purest form of the church to be found among the Scottish Presbyterians or the French Huguenots or the Calvinist state church of Hungary? The quintessential Puritan Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) was forced to recognize this truth when he found his New Model Army facing the Scottish Presbyterian military on the battlefield. As he asked the Scottish Calvinists, “Is all religion wrapped up in . . . any one form?”

Personally, I think the heirs of the seventeenth-century Particular Baptists — the Baptist men and women of the long eighteenth century, figures like Anne Steele (1717–1778), Caleb Evans (1737–1791), Andrew Fuller (1754–1815), and Maria de Fleury (fl. 1770s–1790s) — are extremely helpful here. While they clearly treasured the confessional legacy that came from the lives and thought of their seventeenth-century forebears, they certainly did not believe themselves to be restricted solely to repeating the arguments and formulations of a bygone era. They lived in challenging times of revolution — intellectual, political, industrial, and even sexual — and they needed to address these matters in ways that spoke to the men and women of their day. In other words, present-day discussion of Baptist origins must reckon with the fact that we do not live in the times of our spiritual ancestors. Some of their battles are no longer our battles, and some of our battles could never have been envisioned by the men and women of those days.

Our investigation, then, of Baptist origins cannot be driven by antiquarianism — that is, a misguided attempt to live in the past. Rather, as with any study of the past, we seek to understand historical questions — in this case, what gave rise to the Baptist movement — that we might better understand some of the forces shaping Baptist identity over the centuries (for good and for ill), and also that our study of the past might help us to live as more faithful Christian disciples in the present.

So, for example, Baptists in the seventeenth century found themselves having to differentiate themselves from their Anglican paedobaptist neighbors, and sometimes they did so with a degree of vim and vigour that frankly went beyond the pale. While we can learn from this battle against an oppressive Anglican regime and state-church union, that battle is not ours to wage. Rather, we thank God for Bible-believing, faithful Anglicans.