“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. ... And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” Matthew 6:5,7
When Jesus was requested by a disciple to teach us to pray, Jesus began by giving the words of a prayer which is commonly referred to as the Lord’s Prayer. One version of the Lord’s Prayer is in Luke 11 and a similar version is in Matthew 6. In Matthew Jesus prefaced the Lord’s Prayer with some preliminary teaching about prayer.
In a nutshell Jesus taught the disciples to avoid 2 problems when praying: (1) Don’t pray in a way to focus attention on yourself; and (2) Don’t pray with meaningless repetition or in other words don’t pray mechanically. Ironically, there have been few prayers prayed more mechanically than the Lord’s Prayer.
Prayer spotlights God and not yourself. Prayer is more than mouthing words. It is about understanding God the one whom we are addressing.
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