How to Pray

Prayer is necessary for maintaining a healthy relationship with God and other Christians. It has been said that “a prayer-less Christian is a powerless Christian!” Someone also said “Christians who pray together stay together” - thus prayer fosters intimacy and, fervent prayers produces great results and also changes situations!

So how do we pray?

Prayer is communing with God! The bible makes it abundantly clear that when we pray God hears and answers our prayers (@Isaiah-65:24; @2Chronicles-7:14) that makes prayer a dialogue between God and man. So now let’s look at the actual act of praying. First of all, what should be our posture when we pray and what do we say to God?

Thankfully, the bible provides us with lots of examples of people who prayed and their posture: Standing with eyes lifted up towards heaven, standing or kneeling with hands stretched out towards heaven; kneeling with head bowed, lying down, sitting down, - but the bible does not recommend any particular posture over the other so we are free to use whatever posture works in our situation.

What do you say?

It is okay to make a list of things to pray about and pray through the list. Jesus taught his disciples what to say when they pray. “Our father, who art in heaven hallowed be thy name..” (@Luke-11:2-4) and a closer look at the Lord’s prayer reveals a carefully itemised needs that covers every aspect of life! The Lord Jesus taught his disciples that when you pray ‘say Our father…..’ interestingly, the bible records some instances where the disciples prayed a long while after Jesus taught them the Lord’s Prayer (see @Acts-4:24-30), but it they did not repeat the Lords prayer word for word, but prayed in line with it. Lets compare the two prayers.

My point is to show you that the bible is our guide book on prayer. We must learn to pray God’s word and pray with the word of God. Here is what I mean: whenever we pray we must learn to pray what the bible says about what we are praying for or about. 1 @John5:14 reads And this is the boldness we have in God’s presence: that if we ask God for anything that agrees with what he wants, he hears us. 15 If we know he hears us every time we ask him, we know we have what we ask from him (Italics mine).

This is what is sometimes referred to as ‘praying the will of God’ - when we ask according to his will.

Praying with the word is having a copy of the bible at hand for when the Holy Spirit prompts you to read a verse or two in answer to your prayers or to show you something you must correct or confess.