Christian Living

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Not long ago I asked a young man I was talking with how often he prayed and he just stared at the floor. Eventually he admitted that he didn’t know how to pray. I Googled “how to pray” and got 11,100,000 results. No wonder there might be some confusion. But, there is one undeniable fact; the prayer that does not get answered is the one that is never prayed.

I was curious to see if there were any statistics on prayer on the Internet and stumbled across an online pole that might shed some light of the prayer habits of people. Out of 771 respondents to the question “How often do you pray?” 545 or 70.69% said that prayer was a regular part of their life. Only 96 or 12.45% said that they prayer every day and 63 or 8.17% a few times a week. 7 or 0.91% omitted to praying once a week 19 or 2.46% only prayed when they needed something. It should be noted that Internet poles are not very accurate because they only measure people who visit specific sites and who are willing to participate, but still it is interesting.

Although there are millions of suggestions on how to pray, I thought I would share a few of my own. First, prayer isn’t just a morning thing or an activity to be performed before you go to sleep at night. Prayer should never be a rigid ritual but an ongoing conversation. 1Thessalonians 5:17 (NIV) encourages us to “pray continually.” Maintaining that constant connection with God throughout your day is the best way to stay on track, the greatest bulwark to the world and sin.

Secondly, develop a grateful heart. Spend as much time praising God as you do petitioning God. Develop an eye for seeing answered prayer. When I make prayer requests I pray with the expectation that God will answer them as Mark tells us in the NIV translation of 11:24, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Learn to look for God’s answers in your life and in the lives of the people you pray for.

I spend the majority of my prayer time petitioning God on behalf of others. I discovered, very soon after accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior, that He is actively pursuing me, that He is actively changing me, and that most of the things I would ask for myself, God is already actively providing. I discovered early on that power of prayer is most effective when it is on behalf of the needs of others.

Most of all, prayer should be a active, heartfelt conversation between you and Jesus: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8, NKJV)

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