How should I pray?

PrayerIn theological review

The short answer

Simply, honestly, and to the Father, in the pattern Jesus gave. His own prayer starts with God's name, kingdom, and will, and only then asks for daily bread, forgiveness, and protection. Prayer is not a performance or a formula. It is talking to a Father who sees in secret, at whatever length the moment actually needs.

The fuller answer

Jesus taught a prayer, and it is deliberately short. Addressed to a Father in heaven, it begins with God's honour, kingdom, and will before it reaches our needs at all. Then it asks for bread for today, forgiveness tied to our forgiving, and protection from temptation and evil. If your prayers are mostly long lists of needs, the Lord's Prayer is a rebalancing, not a rebuke: God first, then us, briefly and honestly.

So then, this is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.

Matthew 6:9 (BSB)

Jesus also stripped away the two common styles of his day and ours. Prayer is not a performance for an audience, and it does not work by repetition, as if God were informed or persuaded by volume. Go into your room, shut the door, and speak to your Father who sees in secret. Elsewhere he commands the opposite of giving up: ask, seek, knock, with the promise that the Father gives good things to those who ask him.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.

Matthew 7:7 (BSB)

A workable pattern, used by Christians for centuries, simply follows the shape of that prayer: praise first, then confession, then thanks, then asking, for others and for yourself. There is no sacred formula, and the public prayers of the Bible range from long psalms to Help, Lord. What makes prayer Christian is not its shape but its address: through Jesus, to the Father, in honesty.

Sources

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)

Review status: in-theological-review. Every Contend page passes a human theological review against the Statement of Faith before it is published as approved teaching. This section is in that queue.

Dig deeper

No answer here is a dead end. Follow the question on, test it in practice, or work the method yourself on the Dig deeper page.

Why doesn't God answer my prayer?Sometimes he has answered, and the answer was no, or not yet; sometimes our own refusal to listen or obey blocks the conversation; and sometimes heaven is silent for reasons we are not given, as it was for Paul and, in Gethsemane and on the cross, for Jesus himself. What Scripture never teaches is that unanswered prayer means an absent God, and the same Bible that records the silences commands us to keep asking, seeking, and knocking. Bring the unanswered prayer itself to him. That too is prayer.Why pray if God already knows everything?Because prayer was never mainly about informing God. Jesus says the Father knows our needs before we ask, and in the same breath teaches us to ask, because prayer is how children speak to a Father, how our wills are bent toward his, and one of the means he has chosen for doing his work in the world. A wise father who knows what his child needs still wants the child to come and ask. So does God.What is faith?Faith is trusting God's word and God's Son with your whole weight. Hebrews defines it as the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see. It is not believing without evidence, and it is not mere agreement that something is true. It is the hand that receives what grace gives.Lesson: Context changes everythingTwo of the most quoted verses in the Bible are usually quoted wrong. Read them in context and watch what changes.