How Should We Pray?

A few years ago I heard about a conversation that took place between three pastors about prayer.  The pastors were discussing how a person should pray and in what positions each of them felt like they really were able to connect with God.  The three men gathered next to a telephone pole and one of them made the comment, “I have found that my prayers are much more effective when I bow down on one knee.”  One of the other pastors chimed in, “Well, I have found that the most effective way to pray is by laying on the ground face down really crying out to God.”  The third pastor had to make his opinion known and retorted, “I don’t agree with either of you.  I have found that prayer works best when I am standing with both hands stretched up toward heaven.”  The three men did not realize that a man working up on the telephone pole was listening to their whole conversation when they heard another voice coming from above saying, “All three of you are wrong.  The most effective prayer for me was when I was hanging upside down from a telephone pole.” 

Often times we all ask, “How should we pray?”  A person can interpret this question many different ways.  How should we pray?  This can mean, “What should we ask for?” or “What formula, if any, do we use?”  It can also mean, like in the joke above, “What is the correct posture when praying?”  Regardless of the many different interpretations, this is not a new question to humanity.  The disciples themselves said to Jesus, “LORD, teach us to pray.” 

The way that Jesus responds to their petition tells us something very important about how to pray.  Jesus did not focus on the posture of the person praying.  Many people have taken Jesus’ response to mean that we should recite the example of prayer that he gives, known as the Lord ’s Prayer.  However, Jesus never instructs his followers to repeat the prayer verbatim.  Jesus says, “When you pray, pray like this.”  He proceeds to say, “Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.  Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.  For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” (Matthew 6:9-13 NKJV)

The word “like” highlights the importance of not so much the exact words that are spoken or the posture when spoken but rather the person’s heart and intent.  One can think of the very word pray as an acronym to see the areas that Jesus feels is important to speak with God about. 

The P stands for praise.  Jesus initiated the prayer by praising the father.  Essentially Jesus said, “God you are so holy.”  The word holy means to be set apart, different from anything else.  When we approach God in prayer we should acknowledge that God is set apart.  God is very different from us.  We are created beings and he is uncreated.

The R stands for request.  Jesus prayed, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  The very first thing that we should request of God is to understand what his will is in our lives.  We can also make our own request but we must be aware that when our wishes contradict his will there is a problem.  We also have the ability to request from God what we need in life.  This is reflected in Jesus statement, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

 The A stands for admit.  We need admit the areas of our lives that we fail to measure up to God’s standards or our own standards.  Jesus said, “Forgive us our trespasses.”  We need to be vulnerable with God enough to verbalize our shortcomings.  Fully recognizing that God willingly forgives those areas of struggle within our lives.

The Y stands for yield.  To yield means surrender.  This is the portion of the prayer when Jesus states, “Lead us not into temptation.”  God is willing to lead but we must surrender to his direction in our lives.  This is like giving up control of our lives to God.  Jesus demonstrates the importance of aligning our actions in life to the belief that God’s master plan is better than the self-destructive plans that we sometimes make for our own lives.

The bottom line is that prayer is about speaking to and listening to God.  Prayer is much like a conversation that we have with a close friend or relative.  Prayer is most effective when our intent is to discover more of God and to reveal more of ourselves to God.  Prayer can be scheduled or spontaneous.  Prayer, like many things in life, gets better the more that we practice it.