"It will be seen that the fundamental difference between various
kinds of prayer is in the fundamentally different images of God which
lie behind them. The tragic mistake of Pharisees and pagans, of
hypocrites and heathen, is to be found in their false image of God.
Indeed, neither is really thinking of God at all, for the hypocrite
thinks only of himself while the heathen thinks of other things. What
sort of God is it who might be interested in such selfish and mindless
prayers? Is God a commodity that we can use to boost our own status, or
a computer that we can feed words into him mechanically."
John Stott
The Message of the Sermon on the Mount
