The Prayer Nobody Taught You

Every prayer you were taught has a problem. Not with your sincerity. Not with your faith. With the direction.

You were taught to aim your words upward. To send them out. To talk to someone you cannot see. In a place you have never been. And if the words didn't work, you were told to try harder. Pray longer. Call the prayer line. Get more people to say your name.

But Jesus said something about prayer that almost nobody quotes. In John chapter 16 verse 23, he says, "In that day, you shall ask me nothing." The man that millions were taught to pray to told them to stop asking. So why were you taught to ask him for everything?

Here on Decode Scripture, we don't skip that verse. And it gets worse. Two verses later, Jesus says, "I do not say that I will pray to the Father for you. Because the Father himself loves you." That is John chapter 16 verses 26 and 27. He refuses the intercessor role. The Father is not behind a locked door. You do not need someone to knock for you.

Then, in Matthew chapter 6 verse 8, he says, "Your Father knows what things you have need of before you ask him. Before you ask." So what exactly is the prayer line adding? The prayer nobody taught you is hiding in plain sight. In verses the church never reads together. And what those verses describe is not what you were told prayer is.

But to understand what Jesus was pointing to, >> [music] >> you have to see how completely the system ignored him. Imagine calling the same customer service number every day for 30 years. The hold music is the same. >> [music] >> The script is the same. And then one day, the CEO picks up the phone and says, "Stop calling this number. You have my direct line. You always did." That is John chapter 16, and the system never [music] recovered.

Think about what ask me nothing actually means. Not ask me less. Not ask me differently. [music] Nothing. Jesus is telling the people closest to him that the asking phase [music] is over. And then he says the Father himself loves you. Directly. No relay. No chain of command.

So, what did the church do with that? They built the largest prayer infrastructure in human history. Prayer lines. Prayer chains. Pastoral prayer. Intercessory teams. 50 strangers repeating your name into the ceiling. As if God is running a petition [music] system. As if he needs a minimum number of signatures before he acts.

And it goes further. In Matthew chapter 6 verse 6, Jesus gives a specific instruction. He says, >> [music] >> "Enter into your room. Shut your door and pray to your Father who is in secret. [music] Not in the sanctuary. Not on the stage. In a closed [music] room. Alone. Door shut. In secret."

Then in verse 7, he says, "Use not vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking." Do not repeat the same words [music] thinking that is what makes it work. And then the church took the very next paragraph he spoke, the Lord's Prayer, and made people repeat it for 2,000 years. That is the most ignored instruction in the history of instructions.

Jesus said, "Stop asking me." He said the Father already knows. He said, "Do not repeat words." >> [music] >> He said, "Go in a room alone and shut the door." And every institution built in his name did the exact [music] opposite.

So, if Jesus ended the begging model, what was he replacing it with? The answer is hiding in a single word. >> [music] >> And that word has been in front of you your entire life. There is a word you have used your entire life that has been lying to you. Not about what it means, about what it makes you. The word is prayer.

Open any dictionary and trace it [music] back. Prayer comes from Old French, prière. That comes from the Latin word precaria. And precaria means obtained by begging, >> [snorts] >> dependent on the favor of another. Now, here is where it gets personal. The word precarious comes from the exact same root. Precarious. To live precariously [music] means to live in a state where everything depends on whether someone else decides to help you. Uncertain. Unstable. Because you are begging. [music] Prayer and precarious come from the same family of meaning. Dependence. Uncertainty. [music] Waiting on another's favor.

The person who prays in the traditional sense is living precariously. Their entire spiritual life depends on whether someone up there decides to answer. Bill Donahue used to tell this story. An emperor was on his knees praying for wealth. A holy man walked into the room, saw the emperor begging, >> [music] >> turned around, and left. When they asked him why, he said, [music] "I came looking for an emperor. All I found was [music] a beggar."

That is what Donahue saw in organized religion. People who had been turned into spiritual beggars, kneeling outside the palace, calling the prayer line, waiting [snorts] for someone else to open a door that was never [music] locked from the outside because Jesus said the kingdom of God is within [music] you. Luke chapter 17 verse 21. Not coming, not arriving, not above the ceiling, within you. [music] And the door was always open.

The older root of the word carries the sense of begging, entreating, [music] depending on another's favor. And that is the exact posture Jesus appears to be breaking. So, if prayer is not begging, what is [music] it? Jesus gave the instruction. He named the room, and the room has an address.

There is a word in medical school that every first-year student learns. [music] It is the name of a brain structure, and it means the inner chamber. The structure is called the thalamus. It sits at the center of the brain. Two egg-shaped masses of gray matter that form the walls of the third ventricle. According to Stedman's Medical Dictionary, the thalamus functions as the main relay center for sensory impulses to the cerebral cortex. Everything you see, hear, and feel passes through it before reaching your conscious awareness. >> [music] >> It is the gatekeeper of perception.

The word thalamus comes from the Greek word thalamus, [music] and thalamus means an inner chamber, a bedroom, a private room. In Homer, the thalamus was the innermost room of the house where valuable things were kept. [music] Now, go back to Matthew chapter 6 verse 6. Jesus says, "Enter into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your father who is in secret." Not the sanctuary, not the stage, a private room, a closed chamber, door shut. Jesus describes a hidden room [music] you enter alone in silence. And in the center of the brain sits [music] the thalamus, the inner chamber. Same image, same instruction. The room [music] within, and the instruction to shut the door is not about a wooden door. When you close your eyes and stop responding to the outside world, you are shutting the door of the thalamus. You are cutting off the relay of sensory input. You are entering the inner chamber.

Hebrews chapter 10 verse 19 says, "You have boldness to enter into the holiest." Not permission, boldness, authority, no priest [music] needed, no chain of command. You walk in, and in verse 20 it says through the veil. The veil that separates the outer court of the brain from the inner chamber [music] has a medical name. It is called the arachnoid membrane, a thin web-like layer between the outer covering of the brain and the inner structures [music] where the pineal gland sits. The anatomy gives the symbol of physical echo. >> [music] >> Luke chapter 11 verse 52 says it all. Jesus says to the religious leaders, >> [music] >> "You have taken away the key of knowledge. You entered not in yourselves, [music] and them that were entering in you hindered. You never went within, and you blocked the door for everyone else."

The instruction to pray in the inner room is not just a devotional image. It points to a hidden pattern. Jesus described a private room with the door shut. Anatomy [music] named the brain's central relay station, thalamus, the inner chamber. The scripture and the body point [music] to the same image. The secret room inside man. And nobody showed you.

But there is a problem. >> [music] >> You cannot just walk into the inner room. Something is in the way. And Jesus described it as the heaviest burden a human [music] being carries. Picture a man standing at an airport security gate. He is wearing four coats, two backpacks, three hats, and carrying a suitcase in each hand. The gate is narrow. He cannot fit. And he will not put anything down. That man is in your Bible. Matthew chapter 19 verses 23 through 26. Jesus says [music] it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of [music] God. The disciples are shocked. They say, "Who then can be saved?" [music] And Jesus says, "With men, this is impossible. But with God, all things are [music] possible."

Now, the standard teaching says this is about money. The rich man loves money too much. But Donahue was teaching this for years, and the decode [music] goes deeper. The rich man is not rich in cash. He is rich in cargo. Loaded with doctrines, traditions, pride, anxiety, religious programming, >> [music] >> self-will, and mental noise. He is carrying everything he was ever told by every [music] institution that ever had authority over him. And he cannot fit through the narrow passage while carrying it.

The kneeling is not defeat. It is the posture of meditation. [music] The cargo comes off when you stop carrying it. When you sit down, [music] shut the door, and let it go. And with men, this is impossible, does not [music] mean humans are helpless. Romans chapter 8 verse 7 says the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. The carnal mind [music] cannot fix what the carnal mind created. You cannot think your way into stillness. You cannot argue your way past the gate. Only the stillness itself works.

And here is where it stops being one tradition. The Hindu sages taught pratyahara, withdrawal of the senses. [music] Enter within. The Egyptians drew the eye of Horus, >> [music] >> which maps the thalamus and pineal gland when overlaid on a cross-section of [music] the brain. They taught that the heavy heart cannot pass judgment. Same as the loaded camel [music] that cannot pass through the gate. The Buddhist path ends with samasamadhi, right concentration, >> [music] >> not petition, meditation. The Kabbalists taught [music] that prayer is received only from the cheder hapnimi, the inner chamber, >> [music] >> not the outer court. And the inscription at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi read, "Know thyself." Not pray to Zeus. Not call the oracle line. "Know thyself." Five civilizations, five independent traditions, zero prayer lines. >> [music] >> Every single one said the same thing. "Go within."

So, the burden must come off. The inner room is waiting. The five traditions agree. But there is one final instruction, and it is the most specific thing Jesus ever said about how to get there.

There is an organ inside your skull the size of a grain of rice. It has photoreceptor cells. The same kind of cells that line the back of your eyes. It only activates when the lights go out. The organ is called the pineal gland. From the Latin word pinea, meaning pine cone, because that is what it looks like. It sits in the groove between the two thalami, inside the inner chamber, at the deepest point of the inner room.

According to research published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the pineal gland contains cells that are evolutionary descendants of photoreceptor cells. In reptiles, the pineal has a direct light-sensing eye on the top of the skull. In humans, the gland still responds to light. It produces melatonin, and according to the National Institutes of Health, melatonin production increases in darkness and is suppressed by light.

Now read Matthew chapter 6 verse 22. If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. That verse comes right after the instruction to enter the inner room and shut the door. The sequence in Matthew 6 is this. Enter the inner room. Shut the door. The single eye fills the body with light. Three steps in order. The pineal gland is a single unpaired structure sitting on the midline of the brain. It contains photoreceptor cells. It activates in darkness. And it sits inside the thalamus, the inner chamber that echoes the room Jesus described.

And in Genesis chapter 32 verse 30, Jacob sees God face to face. And he names the place Peniel, the face of God. Peniel, the pineal gland. Whether that is coincidence or correspondence, the echo is hard to ignore. The place where you see God face-to-face, and the gland at the center of the inner room share the same ancient sound.

Now, here is what happens when you sit in the dark. According to a study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience by Garrettson and Band, slow diaphragmatic breathing activates the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve shifts your nervous system from fight or flight into rest. Your heart rate drops. The stress hormone cortisol drops. The burden begins to come off.

Then, according to a study by Brewer and colleagues at Yale University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, experienced meditators show reduced activity in the default mode network. The default mode network is the part of the brain that runs the self-referential chatter, the worry, the planning, the ego narrative, the noise. It is the carnal mind, and in meditation, it goes quiet. With men, this is impossible. The carnal mind cannot silence itself. But, stillness does. And in that stillness, the outer noise begins to fall away.

Darkness signals the pineal system. The symbol Jesus gave begins to make sense. The closed door, the single eye, the body filled with light. >> [music] >> Psalm 46:10, "Be still, and know that I am God." Not speak, not ask, not beg. Be still. 1 Kings 19:11-12, [music] God was not in the wind, not in the earthquake. Not in the fire. God was in the still small voice. The signal that only silence reveals.

Go into a dark room tonight. [music] Sit down. Close your eyes. Breathe slowly. In through the nose. Out through the nose. Do not try to think. Do not try to stop thinking. Place your attention gently at the brow. Then let it draw inward toward the center of the head. Start with 10 minutes. The door is shut. The eye is single. The burden is down. The inner room is [music] open.

The prayer nobody taught you is not the prayer of a beggar. It is the prayer of entry. The door was never locked from the outside. It was locked from within. By the noise, the burden, and the belief that God was somewhere else. He was not somewhere else. He was in the [music] room you were never shown. And now you know where the room is.