Effective Prayer: Letting All Our Pretenses Go

    By A. W. Tozer

  You try to look like saintly men, but underneath those
    pious robes of yours are hearts besmirched with every
    sort of hypocrisy and sin.           --Matthew 23:28

       The basic artificiality of civilized human beings is hard
    to shake off.  It gets into our very blood and conditions
    our thoughts, attitudes and relationships much more
    seriously than we imagine.

       The desire to make a good impression has become one
    of the most powerful of all the factors determining
    human conduct. That gracious (and scriptural) social
    lubricant called courtesy has in our times degenerated
    into a completely false and phony etiquette that hides
    the true man under a shimmery surface as thin as the oil
    slick on a quiet pond. The only times some persons
    expose their real self is when they get mad.

       With this perverted courtesy determining almost
    everything men and women say and do in human
    society, it is not surprising that it should be hard to be
    completely honest in our relations with God.  It carries
    over as a kind of mental reflex and is present without
    our being aware of it.

       Nevertheless, it is an attitude extremely hateful to
    God.  Christ detested it and condemned it without mercy
    when He found it among the Pharisees. The artless little
    child is still the divine model for all of us.  Prayer will
    increase in power and reality as we repudiate all pretense
    and learn to be utterly honest before God as well as before
    men!
    ________________________________________________

   Yours in Christ,
    Paul N. F.