How to Pray

I was thinking a bit on “how to pray.” I thought I’d share some of the verses that have helped me frame prayer and thoughts I have on the subject.

Thanks to Jesus’ sacrifice, we all have a personal relationship with our Creator. We don’t need a priest to speak to God for us – Jesus is our priest (and that’s another topic maybe we’ll get around to someday). We don’t need a sacrifice to become right with the King – Jesus was our sacrifice. God wants to have a personal relationship with us because that is the reason He created us. Since God has opened the way for us to have a personal relationship with Him (by the sacrifice of the Son), we can talk to Him like He’s standing in the room. We know that God is all around us, all the time. We can speak out loud to Him and He listens. He may not act, or act in the way we expect, but He listens. He may not speak audibly, but He listens. For me, I aspire to have my prayer be simply conversing with God. Although I admit that most of the time, prayer is just a time I set aside to especially talk with God, usually when I need something. That’s not how I think it should be, just how it is for me right now.

What do I say when I pray? Jesus gave us the framework in “The Lord’s Prayer” Matthew 6:9-13.

"This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 
Give us today our daily bread. 
Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’

I can pray this word-for-word or I can use the themes to construct my own prayer. This is how I break it down:

… hallowed be your name… worship God. Acknowledge He is holy. Convince your heart, body and soul to love Him, to bow down to Him, … praise Him for his greatness. If you run out of ideas for this, look in Psalms. It has so many elegant expressions of worship.

… your will be done … of course God will carry out His will. But He can make two or three or more different choices and still be acting out His will. You’re acknowledging that He’s in control – and starting to set aside your own will, the will for which you might be praying. You are starting to think about whether or not your will matches His will and you are checking your intentions. When you are honest with yourself then you will already start changing your will to His will. And you seek His will, not your own.

… give us this day … He is our provider. He gives us everything we need.

… forgive us our debts … He already did it, through Christ, but we remember Christ’s sacrifice for us, and more importantly, His Love. We repeat this love by forgiving others.

… lead us not… even though we are saved, we still live in the world. Satan still tempts us. We want to be pure, to be Holy… we already are in His eyes, but we can mock Christ’s sacrifice if we continue to sin – so we ask for His help to not sin. This is hard to comprehend but for the sake of understanding prayer, we’re simply asking Him to help us in our humanness.

Using this framework, a simple prayer might be

"Lord you are Holy. You are the Master of Creation. Let your will be done in my life. Help me to have your will. Thank you for forgiving my sins. Help me to forgive others. Let me walk in your light and truth and love."

For me this prayer is an icebreaker. It helps me make sure my heart is right with God before I ask Him for stuff. God wants us to ask for things. Matthew 7:7-11

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

Also in James 4:1-3

"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

Asking for things may sound like a selfish act but that is Satan’s lie. When we ask for things in Jesus’ name – with the right motive, as the previous verse says - we have the heart of God and are asking in Love. When you ask God for your children to grow up to know Jesus, is that selfish? If you ask for God to bless your marriage, is that selfish? No, those are things that God wants to do for us, and even though He knows we need them, He wants us to ask so that we are consciously acknowledging His provision in our lives.

I have to cite my one of my favorite verses. Philippians 4:6-7:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Finally, prayer doesn’t have to be in words. The Spirit helps us pray. Romans 8:26:

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”