How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

by Pete Greig

Second, our prayers shift away from our personal priorities toward topics we might never otherwise have addressed.

Third, we hear him speaking to us more clearly as we stop reading the Bible and s...

In seeking to discern God’s voice, journaling can be an invaluable tool for personal remembering and prayerful reflection. By recording our prayers and impressions in this way, we follow the example of Mary, who “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”[16] The relative slowness and solitary nature of journaling ushers us into a more creative, less reactive state in which the hand of God is more easily discerned and the whispers of his Spirit can often be more clearly heard.

Let us listen to simple words; our Lord speaks simply: “Trust Me, My child,” He says. “Trust Me with a humbler heart and a fuller abandon to My will than ever thou didst before. Trust Me to pour My love through thee, as minute succeeds minute.” AMY CARMICHAEL, IF

To confess your sins to God is not to tell God anything God doesn’t already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the Golden Gate Bridge. FREDERICK BUECHNER, WISHFUL THINKING

Our greatest need and God’s greatest gift are the same thing: forgiveness of sins.

You cannot be too bad, too broken, or too boring for God’s unconditional love, only too proud to acknowledge how desperately you need it. Ask and you will receive.

David G. Benner puts it like this: “Unwelcome circumstances . . . are not gifts. But they may contain a gift.”

Millions of people have found freedom from addictions through the twelve-step program, the fifth step of which is simple confession: “We admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

At such a time, we simply cannot separate our prayers for the coming of God’s Kingdom from Christ’s radical call to be reconciled with those who sin against us. Reconciliation is what the coming of his Kingdom looks like!

Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. C. S. LEWIS, MERE CHRISTIANITY

“There is no neutral ground in the universe,” says C. S. Lewis. “Every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.”[3]

We must all practice violence and remember that he who prays is fighting against the devil and the flesh. . . . Satan is opposed to the church . . . the best thing we can do, therefore, is to put our fists together and pray. MARTIN LUTHER

Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. EPHESIANS 6:12

First, the Bible does indeed teach that there are spiritual powers at work in our world, affecting organizations and cultures as well as individuals. Second, as citizens of heaven, we must exercise great discernment so that we can stand against these powers.

When Jesus cried out from the cross, “It is finished,”[26] he was declaring the death of death, the cure for suffering, the remission of sin. In that single moment, we were found. Light entered the caverns of our captivity. Hope dispelled despair.

Whenever we say “Amen” at the end of a prayer, we are speaking an ancient Hebrew word from the Old Testament that was used in the synagogues and later adopted by the church,[12] literally meaning “Yes! I agree! So be it!”

Throughout history, whenever God was about to do a new thing, he first mobilized his people to pray, and he is currently doing so on an unprecedented scale.