How to Pray

Too much of prayer is talking at God—that is, not really expecting a reaction or response from Him. Public prayer is sometimes worse when quite a bit of the prayer is talking to others in the group. So how should we talk to God and, even more so, how should we listen? How do we learn to listen?

Recently I had the opportunity to share my thoughts on this topic to a men’s group. Bottom line: most of our prayer should be asking God questions and then listening for His answers. The lie: God is an impotent, silent observer. The truth: His Word is living, active and sharper than a two-edged sword (Hebrews 4.12) and He is here now and His kingdom is here now. When you talk to someone, it’s rarely one-way communication. Yet most of the advice on how to talk to God focuses on what we say to Him. There are various acronyms that remind us of an outline to pray: PRAY, CPR, ACTS, THUMB, ARISE, SOAP, HEAR, TRUST... The first one listed is perhaps the closest wherein Y = Yield and some have suggested this means to listen (while others may suggest it means to consecrate oneself to however God will show up and guide you in the future).

Anyone who practices any prayer or hangs out with religious people will end up with a long, long, long, long list of prayer requests to honor. Thus, there’s a great temptation to just talk at God and not hang around for the answer. And then, if you’re like me, we end up babbling to God and trying to sound like the tele-preachers or some good friends who pray glibly and often times formally. Then we violate Christ’s guidelines about not babbling like the Gentiles (Matthew 6.5-13).

I encourage you instead to ask God open-ended questions: what, how, when, where? (Avoid ‘why’.) Such as, “First, Lord, how should I pray for my friend, Ralph, in his situation? What do You want to happen here? What might my role be? What does his family need?” Instead of telling the Lord of the Universe what He should do, ask Him what He plans to do so that your eyes will be open to what’s about to happen. And then honor what He has said by committing that you’ll do your part, and give Him greater glory and honor as you seem Him act in these situations.

If you need to organize your long, long, long list and maybe prioritize it, consider a template that inspired me recently. After praise, adoration and then consecration to act on what He reveals, I went through the roles that I have. I then asked God what attributes, character traits I needed to emphasize or gain in order to fulfill the role and what circumstances are my responsibility or under my influence or in my sphere of concern. For example, I can pray about my role as a disciple, husband, father, son, grandfather...various vocational roles, church member, board member, community member, citizen, friend, mentor, discipler...and so on. In each of these, since I believe God is more concerned with who I am, how I behave in those roles, I ask Him to show me where I need to grow, change, repent, etc. Under Circumstances, I’ll list the answers to ‘where’, ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘who’.

I tried praying through this for an hour...and didn’t finish. I think I need an 8-hour retreat or more to really dialogue with God about all this. Therefore, I think the list can be broken down and He and I can work on a category, or just one role, in each prayer session.