How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

by Pete Greig

In the words of Abraham Heschel, “Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.”[2]

Prayer is nothing at all unless it is a matter of vast and all-consuming importance for each one of us.

Wherever you find your chair, try to visit it daily. Let it become your thin place, a sacred space that helps you walk and talk with God through the many twists and turns of life.

THE BEST BIT of advice I ever received about how to pray was this: keep it simple, keep it real, keep it up.

You cannot grow in prayer without some measure of effort and discomfort, self-discipline and self-denial.

No one is designed to live at a peak of emotional intensity for years on end. It wouldn’t be healthy. It wouldn’t be sustainable or real. Delight without discipline eventually, inevitably dissipates. It runs out of steam. But when delight and discipline learn to dance, relationships thrive. They mature and endure.

Where and when did you last feel close to God? Try to identify and pursue the particular people and places, the music and activities, that speak the mother tongue of your heart. By prioritizing these things, you will live with greater joy. For Olympic athlete Eric Liddell, it was running. “[God] made me fast,” he said, “and when I run, I feel his pleasure!”[23]

Praying in the name of Jesus means wanting what God wants, aligning our wills with his will, our words with his Word, and our personal preferences with his eternal and universal purposes. It also speaks of family privilege. To ask in the name of Jesus is to approach the Father in the company of his own dear Son.

If you lack faith, it’s futile trying to stir it up from within. You can’t fake it or make it materialize by clenching your buttocks and trying to believe three impossible things before breakfast. Faith is found in the person of Christ. If you want to trust Jesus more, get to know him more. Look at him more, listen to him more, spend more time with him. It really is that simple. The more you see Jesus, the more you will trust him, because he’s the most reliable, loving, and powerful person you will ever meet.

And in the Old Testament, God makes an astounding promise regarding the importance of prayer at times of national disaster: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”[4] The forgiveness of sins and the healing of the land are entirely contingent on the intercession of God’s people. What task could possibly be more important, more urgent for our world today?

He is slow: we are swift and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and He has been from eternity. Thus grace for the most part acts slowly. . . . He works by little and by little. . . . There is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not disquiet them. . . . We must wait for God, long, meekly, in the wind and wet, in the thunder and the lightning, in the cold and the dark. Wait, and He will come.[5]

The heart and soul of prayer is this: The God who made you loves you. He longs to walk and talk with you in ever-deepening friendship.