The Basics of Prayer
Spiritual Disciplines for 2024
One topic that involves a lot of confusion in the Christian world is that of prayer. Don’t be dismayed or confused! Let’s dive into this topic for a few weeks to clarify some of the misconceptions.
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, through our Lord Jesus Christ and through the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in prayers to God on my behalf. Romans 15:30
Why should we pray?
The answer to this is fairly simple. There are 3 main reasons.
We pray because it is our way of communicating to our Father and King in heaven. Every day we communicate with someone. For example, I live with my dogs. So you already know I talk to them every day. “Are you ready for breakfast?” “Do you need to go outside?” (Very mentally stimulating conversations over here.)
Likewise, we communicate with those close to us in our lives, whether it is a spouse, a parent, or a friend. In 2024 we have so many different methods of communicating, too: in person, calls, texts, emails, letters via the old fashioned snail mail, even via social media sending funny memes or reels.
Yet remaining in close communication with God is even more important as He is our Creator and Sustainer.
We pray because we want to be more like Jesus. We are told countless times in the Gospels that Jesus often went out by Himself to pray. If He needed to do this, we most definitely do. Jesus was fully God, just as the Father is fully God, and the Holy Spirit is fully God. Jesus held that same omniscient, all-knowing ability while He was on earth as He always has. But He still made time to go to the Father in prayer. If I try to think too much on the logistics of this, my brain starts to hurt. So let’s just leave it at- I want to be more and more like Jesus every day. You should too. In order to do this, we need to be in prayer all the time.
As if you need any other reason to pray, we also pray because God delights in our prayers.
Proverbs 15:8: The sacrifice of the wicked is detestable to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is his delight.
God takes pleasure to hear us talk to Him in prayer. Can you think of any other person who always takes pleasure in listening to you talk? I mean I even will get tired of hearing myself, so it’s hard for me to imagine how our loving God is delighted to hear from us- EVERY SINGLE TIME.
How do we pray?
The most basic answer to this question is that we pray by talking to God. This can be done out loud or using the voice inside our head or even writing out prayers. (Side note: according to some fancy researchers, not everyone has an inner dialogue. Only 30-50% of people have conversations in their heads. Um, really?? I have days where I can’t make my inner dialogue stop inner dialoguing.)
The words we use in our prayers will differ tremendously depending on a variety of things. Our age and vocabulary varies, so it makes sense that the verbiage of our prayers will too.
When I was little, around 5 years old, my prayers would be mostly of thanksgiving. I would thank God for all sorts of things- my toys, the doors, the windows, the trees, the bed, the chair, etc. As an adult, sadly, my prayers often lack this innocence as I may thank God more for the “big” things in life rather than the doors and windows. By no means were my childish prayers less significant to God or ignored by Him. Remember earlier when I said God delights in our prayers? He wants to hear from us. That includes the children.
So there are rote prayers and original prayers. Rote prayers are the prayers that may be routine and repeated. These may be the first kinds of prayers we teach children to pray. They may include praying Bible verses or repeating prayers that are written in the Bible.One such example would be the prayer I was taught to say before meals as a child: “God is great. God is good. Let us thank Him for our food. By His hands, we all are fed. Give us, Lord, our daily bread. Amen.” Original prayers are more unique, where we pray the words we feel are on our hearts to pray. Both types of prayers are good and have their purposes. And if done with a humble heart, God hears them all!
Prayer is meant to be done both alone and in community.
But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Matthew 6:6
Sometimes we are able to do this- go into a room alone and shut the door. If you have the space and ability to do this in your home, FANTASTIC. Do it! If not, maybe taking a walk outside by yourself gives you that alone time. Or, as I’ve heard from many moms over the years, if the bathroom is your only alone time, use that time to spend in prayer with God. He won’t get grossed out, I promise.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. Acts 2:42
In this verse, we see the early church spending time together in community learning, eating, and PRAYING. So we are supposed to do it together as well as by ourselves. Hopefully when you are attending worship services, your Pastor is leading the congregation in corporate prayer. You may also want to gather with a group of friends to be in prayer together or do so with your spouse and family. God wants to hear all of our prayers, together.
I know a great majority of people who are simply afraid to pray out loud in front of others. This makes me incredibly sad every time I hear it. It may be due to insecurities speaking. Or it may be due to how intimate our prayers are and by allowing others to hear them, we are allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. One way to overcome this fear would be to use a rote or standard prayer that you use when you are asked to pray out loud. We have to keep in mind that no matter who is around us and may hear our prayers, they aren’t ever for that person. They are for God alone.
Y’all, prayer is VITAL. We have to do it. Imagine going days without talking to your spouse or someone who lives in the same house as you. It’s not healthy. The same is true of our relationship with God- we need to be in communication with Him. Maybe it’s hard for you to make time and calm your mind to pray to God. If so, I challenge you to simply ask God to help you.
In the next few weeks of blog posts, we will share different types of prayers that we may pray depending on our needs and life circumstances.
