I want to begin with something Jesus said about prayer that I have been thinking about lately.
In Matthew 6:7, Jesus says:
“But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”
That phrase caught my attention: “Vain repetitions.”
Because repetition is actually a huge part of religious life. Christians repeat the Lord’s Prayer. Catholics pray the Rosary. Buddhists repeat mantras. Jewish worship includes prayers and passages that have been recited for generations. Muslims pray at prescribed times each day and repeatedly recite passages from the Quran. And even those of us who don’t follow a highly structured form of prayer tend to repeat ourselves.
We pray for the same people. We ask for the same things. We use many of the same words.
So I started wondering:
Is repetition the problem?
And I don’t think it is. In fact, repetition may be one of the most powerful tools we have for changing our lives. Think about almost anything you have ever learned to do well. You learned to walk through repetition. You learned to speak through repetition. An athlete repeats the same movement thousands of times. A musician plays the same scales again and again. We learn multiplication tables through repetition. We develop physical strength by repeating the same movements.
And our character develops in much the same way. We become generous by repeatedly practicing generosity. We become patient by repeatedly choosing patience. We become grateful by repeatedly looking for things for which we are grateful. Eventually, something we once had to consciously choose begins to become part of who we are. So repetition itself isn’t the enemy.
Repetition is one of the primary ways human beings are formed.
And this is where I think Jesus’ choice of words is important. He doesn’t simply warn us about repetition. He warns us about vain repetition.
And then he tells us what makes the repetition vain:
“For they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”
In other words, the problem wasn’t simply that these people repeated themselves. The problem was what they believed their repetition was accomplishing. They thought the quantity of their words somehow increased their influence over the divine. More words. More prayers. More repetitions. More likelihood that the gods would listen.
Prayer could become almost transactional.
If I say enough… If I pray long enough… If I perform the ritual correctly enough… perhaps I can produce the outcome I want.
And Jesus immediately challenges that idea.
In the very next verse he says:
“Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.”
I think that is the heart of this entire teaching.
Jesus is saying:
You don’t have to earn God’s attention.
You already have it.
You don’t have to overwhelm God with words. You don’t have to discover the right formula. You don’t have to accumulate enough prayers to move your request to the top of some heavenly scoreboard. Your Father already knows.
And yet, interestingly, Jesus doesn’t say:
“So don’t pray.”
He teaches them how to pray. And immediately afterward he gives them what we now call the Lord’s Prayer.
“Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name…”
And Christians have repeated that prayer for nearly two thousand years. There is something almost ironic about that. Jesus warns us about vain repetition and then gives us one of the most repeated prayers in human history. But maybe that tells us something important.
The question isn’t whether we repeat something.
The question is:
What is the repetition doing?
There is a profound difference between repetition as formation and repetition as transaction.
When repetition is formative, I am not trying to change God. I am allowing the practice to change me.
Imagine that I am anxious about something in my life.
And I pray:
“Thy will be done.”
Then ten minutes later the anxiety returns.
“Thy will be done.”
The next morning I wake up worrying about it again.
“Thy will be done.”
A week later I am still struggling.
“Thy will be done.”
I might say those words a hundred times. But I’m not saying them because I believe God needs to hear them a hundred times.
I need to hear them a hundred times.
The repetition isn’t working on God. It’s working on me. Every repetition becomes another opportunity to surrender. Another opportunity to trust. Another opportunity to bring my mind back to what I believe. And I think this is where we can learn something from religious traditions beyond our own as well.
In Buddhism, for example, mantras and other repetitive practices are often used to focus attention.
The wandering mind wanders. And the practitioner brings it back. It wanders again. And the practitioner brings it back again. The repetition provides an anchor. Christians have developed similar practices throughout history—repeated prayers, memorized Scripture, hymns, liturgy, contemplative prayer.
And there is something deeply human underneath all of them.
Our minds wander. Our intentions wander. Our priorities wander. Our behavior wanders. And sometimes we need something that repeatedly brings us back. So perhaps repetition can serve a very beautiful spiritual purpose. It can become a way of returning.
Returning to gratitude. Returning to humility. Returning to forgiveness. Returning to compassion. Returning to God. But there is also a danger.
Because something that begins as meaningful repetition can gradually become mindless repetition.
We can say words without thinking about them. We can perform rituals without remembering why. We can attend church without really being present. We can sing hymns while thinking about lunch. We can say “Amen” without having paid attention to the prayer. And perhaps even more dangerously, we can begin keeping score.
How many prayers did I say? How many days have I completed? How many chapters did I read? How many services did I attend? How many boxes did I check? There is nothing wrong with measuring a habit. Measurement can help us develop discipline.
But eventually we have to ask:
Is the practice producing the person it was intended to produce?
Because it is possible to complete the repetition while missing the transformation. I can repeat prayers about forgiveness while refusing to forgive. I can repeat prayers about generosity while remaining selfish. I can say “Thy will be done” while spending my entire life insisting upon my own will. I can pray “Give us this day our daily bread” while never noticing the person beside me who doesn’t have any.
At that point, perhaps the repetition has become exactly what Jesus warned about. It has become vain. Not because it was repeated. But because the repetition stopped reaching the heart.
So I’ve started thinking about repetition in a different way.
Before repeating a spiritual practice, maybe we should ask:
Am I trying to change God, or am I allowing God to change me?
Am I praying because I believe enough words will produce the outcome I want? Or am I praying because returning to these words is slowly forming me into the person I am called to become? And this principle extends beyond prayer. If you want to become grateful, repeatedly practice gratitude. If you want to become generous, repeatedly practice generosity. If you want to become forgiving, repeatedly practice forgiveness. If you want to become compassionate, repeatedly notice the suffering of other people.
If you want to trust God, repeatedly practice surrender. Because what we repeatedly do eventually influences who we become. So perhaps the lesson isn’t:
Don’t repeat yourself.
Perhaps the lesson is:
Repeat what forms you.
Repeat what brings you back. Repeat what reminds you who you want to become. Repeat the words when you need to hear them again. Repeat the behavior until goodness becomes habit. Repeat the practice until the practice begins shaping your character.
But don’t mistake repetition for righteousness. Don’t turn spirituality into a scoreboard. And don’t imagine that enough words will give you leverage over God. Because according to Jesus, we don’t pray to a God whose attention must be earned through our performance.
We begin somewhere entirely different:
“Our Father…”
A Father who already knows. A Father who already hears. And perhaps that changes the purpose of prayer. Prayer is not simply an instrument through which we attempt to bend heaven toward our will.
Sometimes prayer is the place where, through returning again and again, our will is slowly brought into alignment with heaven. And maybe that is one of the greatest gifts of repetition. Not that by repeating something enough times we finally change God’s mind. But that by faithfully returning to what is good, true, loving, and holy… we gradually allow our own minds—and eventually our lives—to be changed.
