What Is Prayer and How Do I Do It?[1]

            There can be no rules for private prayer, only hints. Yet no one need blaze a new trail. Others have gone down this road before us, and they can be our guides. Of course, Jesus is the guide. This is the reason there are no rules, just helps. What we pray and how we pray are always at the prompting of the Spirit of Jesus.

            So what is prayer? Prayer is friendship with God. Now, friendship is not a formal, “you need to follow these steps in this order” kind of thing. Yet friendships don’t tend to be loosey-goosey either. We work at our friendships. There are things we know will hurt our friendships and things that will help them to grow and mature. At times, friendships even ask for sacrifices from us. Similarly with prayer. What is offered in this article is a guide, and a guide only, to how private prayer may be conducted.

            Many think that prayer is all talking, all telling God our burdens, asking for help, seeking guidance in dealing with life issues, and so on. Certainly we do that in prayer. But that is not all there is to it. And it’s not always helpful to begin there. A helpful way to begin is often to take some moments of quiet to settle ourselves in the presence of God. If quiet is new to you, you may find this an unsettling time at first, with your mind running here and there all over the place, certainly not a mind settled in the Presence. A helpful exercise to try to bring some stillness and focus to your distracted mind is to notice what your mind is distracted with and then release each thing over to God. At this point, your prayer might go something like this: “I release to you, God, my anxious thoughts about my sick child; I release to you, God, my distress over the fight I just had with my neighbour, I release to you, God, the pressure I feel about getting done all that I have to do today”, etc. You keep going until your mind has run out of concerns. This may take a while. Don’t be bothered about that, as you’re not alone. In time, your mind will learn to drop all its concerns at once and draw quietly into the presence of God without this process. But it needs to learn that. When your mind has run out of things that it’s concerned about, you will probably find yourself in a peaceful focused place, and God will have all your anxious thoughts and concerns and will be looking after them for you (a peaceful place to be, indeed).

            Once centred in the presence of God, it may be helpful to remind yourself that God is very, very close indeed. In fact, He is in you. He is out there in His heaven, yes, and He is everywhere. But He is also in you, and that is where He is closest to you. The following Bible verses show that it is the triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - who lives within you:

1 Corinthians 3: 16 “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” 

Colossians 1:27 “To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

John 14:23 “Jesus replied, ‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.’”

            Once you are settled in the presence of God, it is also helpful to remind yourself of God’s promises concerning prayer so that your prayers will be faith-filled. Following are a few, but there may be others that are more relevant to you personally:

Hebrews 4:16 “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Matthew 21:22 [Jesus speaking]: “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

Matthew 6:6 “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

            Once you have settled into the presence of God, and have reminded yourself of the faithfulness of God to come to you and to your assistance when you pray, what next? Again, there is no fixed order. But the experience of God’s people tells us that thanksgiving is a great place to start. The reason for this is that human beings have a tendency to see the negative and not the positive. For example, if I were to put a small smudge on a blank sheet of paper and ask 100 people what they saw when I showed them the paper, most would say they saw a smudge and say nothing about the huge white space all around that smudge. Similarly, we have a tendency to see our troubles but not the joys and the evidence of God and His grace that are all around our troubles. There is an ingratitude in us that notices what hurts us but forgets the widespread mercy that saturates our lives. We need to deliberately call to mind the joys of our life’s journey, perhaps even write down all the blessings in our lives from just one day. This will serve to remind us how great are God’s love and compassion toward us.

            When giving thanks, it is a good idea to be specific: “Thank you, God, for this friendship, for the resolution of this problem, for the beautiful sunrise, for the meal I just shared with my family, for the truth you showed me this morning as I read from the Bible”, etc. More general prayers of thanksgiving, such as “We are thankful for Your great mercies, O God” are fine for corporate gatherings, but not for private gratitude. Even in corporate gatherings, the general reminder of thankfulness can elicit from each member thoughts of their personal gratitude for certain specifics in their lives. If, in our private prayers, we offer up just general thoughts, we may find that, in the end, we are thankful for nothing and offering empty words.

            Remember, when giving thanks, not to overlook life’s abiding mercies as well as the temporal once. This frees our gratitude from our changing circumstances and anchors it in things that can “never perish, spoil or fade” (1 Peter 1:4),[2] and in life beyond this life.

            Having given thanks, consider asking God to “seal this gratitude within my heart, on my face, in my words, in my attitude toward You and toward my neighbour, in my every thought and act”. In other words, consider asking God to help you not to forget, but to live out of a heart filled with gratitude to God.

            Prayer may next become confession. This often is simply a natural progression from thanksgiving. As we take time to ponder how kind God has been to us, we may also remember how often we have repaid His love with selfishness and sin. As human beings, we tend to two extremes with regard to sin: glossing over our sin and living as if there’s nothing wrong with us, and beating ourselves up mercilessly because of our sin. Neither of these is good or godly, the first because the cross tells us that there is, indeed, a lot wrong with us and the cost to God was too high for us to snub our noses and say that we don’t really need the sacrifice, and the second because there is forgiveness and to beat ourselves up over our sin is to deny that (Romans 5:20-21).[3]

            Confession to those against whom we have sinned is not always wise. Sometimes that simply aggravates the hurt. But confession to God, whom we have wronged even more deeply, is always wise. And He receives our confession with understanding and love (Hebrews 2):

14  Since the children have flesh and blood, he [Jesus] too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death - that is, the devil -

15  and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

16  For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants.

17  For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.

18  Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

            Confession, like thanksgiving, should be specific: “I confess this sharp remark, this jealousy, this cowardice, this sinful habit”, etc. Confession should not be ruthless, but neither should it excuse away our guilt. In confession, we take responsibility for our sin and evil.

            Confession always leads to accepting God’s full and complete pardon. God does not want us to remember and grieve and beat ourselves up over past failures that He has forgiven. If we remember them, it is better if we remember in gratitude for what God has forgiven and in remembrance of our dependence on Him. God Himself chooses not to remember (Jeremiah 31:34): “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” In doing the same, we are taking a godly attitude toward our past confessed sins. At this point, if we are kneeling, we may consider rising as a token of our acceptance of God’s pardon, our faith in His absolution, and our freedom in His grace. We may also stand as a symbol of our resolve to make restoration as far as that is within our power to do, and of our sincere renunciation of our sins and our sinful ways. In other words, we end our confession by choosing new life. This turn from our old sinful, death-dealing ways is what the Bible calls “repentance” - turning completely away from our sin, and going the way of life and godliness. If repentance does not accompany our confession, then we are self-deceived in our confession, which borders on an abuse of God’s goodness. This does not mean that we always walk away clean from our sin. We may fall into the same sin again. And again. But each time we come to God with the same sin, we seek from Him a deeper cleansing from the roots that hold us to that sin [see Six Areas of Life where Bondages Commonly Need to Be Broken; What’s This Old Self / New Self Stuff – or – If God Made Me to Begin With, and I’m a New Creation in Christ, Why Am I Still Such a Mess?]. We then deal with those roots, and we renew our petition that God cleanse us from all the unrighteousness in our heart that perpetuates this sinful behaviour (1 John 1:9).[4]

            There may then follow a prayer of intercession, without which our prayers might sink into selfishness. Private intercession, like private thanksgiving and private confession, should be specific. “For the peace of the world, for the welfare of the Holy Church of God, and for the unity of all peoples, I pray to the Lord” is fine for prayer in the general congregation, where each worshipper is called into one act of devotion and pours out their own secret prayer into the general prayer being offered, but it is out of place in individual petition. Love sees faces, not the mass. The Good Shepherd “calls his own sheep by name” (John 10:4).[5] So, too, we bring individuals to God by name with their personal needs. Intercession is also pondered, that is, it asks that we bear on our own heart the burden of those for whom we pray. That said, when we are done praying, we release those burdens from our hearts to God, trusting that God has them and will carry them. We cannot carry them as we are not the Saviour of the world. We shoulder them briefly in our prayers, giving them to the One who can carry them.

            In our intercession, we would do well not to forget our enemies. Jesus told us plainly (Matthew 5:43-44): “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”. So we may pray: “Bless ___ whom I foolishly regard as an enemy. Bless ___ whom I have wronged. Keep them in Your favour. Banish my bitterness.”

            Intercession also names leaders in government, medicine, learning, art, religion, and so on, the needy, our friends and our loved ones. We may want to prepare a chart so that day by day we may pray for the needs of the world and not fail any who closely depend on our prayers.

            The fourth order in our prayer may be petition. Although it is listed last here, this is not at all because it is the least important but because it needs the safeguard of the earlier prayers. We need to lift our daily needs to God, but we also need to avoid selfishness in our prayer. If we first give thanks, confess our sins and pray for others, we have a defence against such selfishness. Then our petitions may freely flow. And, in fact, God encourages us to come to Him with whatever concerns us (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.” Again, Hebrews 4:16 says: “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

            Sometimes, when we are in deep sorrow, dread or helplessness, our petition will be a cry for help, a beating on heaven’s door with bruised knuckles in the dark. At other times it will be a friendship talk with God about the affairs of our life. Our petition will grow and mature over time so that we also begin to “eagerly desire the greater gifts” (1 Corinthians 12:31a) and “the most excellent way” (1 Corinthians 12:31b). Whatever we ask for, we do well to remind ourselves that our sight is dim and our motives mixed. A good conclusion to all petition is “yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).[6]

            The intervals between these four types of prayer may be filled by meditation. After thanksgiving, we can contemplate God’s abounding goodness and wait for any word He might give us about His gifts. After confession, we can adore the pardoning love that Christ showed us and listen for God’s guidance. After intercession, we might pause to see the world’s need as Christ saw it from the cross. After petition, we can meditate on the will of God.

            Prayer is listening as well as speaking, receiving as well as asking. Its deepest mood is friendship held in reverence. So our daily prayer may end as it began, in adoration. We may end with “In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.” For we understand God best in the name, that is, in the nature, of Jesus (Hebrews 1:3a): “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” And the name, or nature, of Jesus is the best corrective for our blundering prayers. The “Amen” means “So let it be”. It is our resolve to live faithfully in the direction of our prayers, and it expresses our faith in God’s power.

            Finally, we would do well to bear in mind that our best prayers are still imperfect and miss the mark, but God has provided for that as well (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.

27  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.

This is our confidence that we indeed approach a throne of grace when we pray.