The School of Everyday Christianity 3: How to Pray

Welcome to the School of Everyday Christianity where we apply the Bible and Christian teaching to the problems, situations, and questions that people face in the course of everyday life.

Today we want to talk about how to pray. You see, a lot of Christians, they know they ought to pray.

Maybe even they really want to pray, but oftentimes they don't know what to say. Or maybe the problem is, as Donald Whitney says, we get into these ruts in our prayer life about where we we say the same old things about the same old things.

Well today I want to give you six practical ways to jumpstart your prayer life.

You don't need to put all six of these into practice at once. Maybe you pick one of these for this week and one of these for next week, but these are six practical ways that you can get your prayer life going again when you know you ought to pray, but you don't know what to say.

And so the first thing that I would tell you is when you need to pray, pray the

Bible. So you ought to be in the course of your Christian life regularly taking in the

Bible, whether you're reading it or listening to it. And so what you can do then is take what you're, say, reading in the scriptures and then pray about that.

So maybe you read a chapter, maybe you read two or three chapters of the Bible one day. Well pick a few verses or pick a theme of that chapter and pray about that.

So one example of how to do that is, let's say you were reading in Colossians chapter 3 and you're reading and you see where it says, to put to death what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry.

You keep reading, it talks about putting away anger and wrath and malice and slander and obscene talk from your mouth.

Don't lie to one another. And then you keep on reading down in verse 12 and it says, put on then as God's holy ones, or as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another in love and forgiving each other as the

Lord has forgiven you. So you read about these things that you ought to put off. You read about these things that you ought to put on.

And so what you can then pray about is putting off sin. Think about the sins that are in your life and ask

God to forgive you of those and to put those sins off or put those bad habits away and then instead put on virtue, instead put on kindness, instead put on love.

Or maybe you see that line about forgiving and you think of somebody that you need to forgive and you ask

God for strength for that. Or maybe somebody that you need for them to forgive you and you pray about going to them and giving you the grace and the strength to go to them and ask for forgiveness like we've talked about on previous episodes.

You see there's there's a wealth of kind of grist for the prayer mill, you might say, in the scriptures.

So pray the Bible, pray the verses, pray the themes about those things that you're reading in the scriptures and that'll give you plenty to pray about.

And then a second tip that's related is you can pray kind of in concentric circles.

By that I mean that you want to start praying that verse or that theme that you're praying about from your reading.

So maybe you're talking about putting on kindness and putting away anger and wrath and malice and said you want to cultivate a kind heart.

Well you want to pray about it for yourself first, that you're developing kindness, that you're putting away your sinful anger.

But then you might kind of move out just a bit and you might pray the same thing for those in your family, maybe for your wife, for your husband, for your kids, for your parents.

You pray for yourself first and then kind of move to that next concentric circle and pray for your family. And then outward from there you're praying for those in your church.

You know anybody in your church needs to put on kindness and put away anger, somebody that's struggling with anger, maybe somebody in your

Sunday school class. You want to pray for your church next and you kind of keep on going out and you pray this same verse or this same theme from your

Bible reading. Now you're praying that now for your friends that may be in different churches or they're unbelievers and you're praying for them along these same lines.

Then you kind of keep going out for your community, for your state, for your nation, for the world. And so you start, you're praying about the same theme, but you're praying for all sorts of different people by kind of starting with yourself and then working your way outward.

So you pray in concentric circles. So the first practical tip is to pray the Bible. The second practical tip is whatever you're praying from the

Bible, pray that starting with yourself and working outwardly in concentric circles. A third practical tip for restarting or jump -starting your prayer life is to to pray prayers from the

Bible. So as you read, you'll notice that there are various prayers already in the

Bible. Pray those. So there's this great prayer in Ephesians chapter 3 where Paul is praying for spiritual strength for the

Ephesian church. And so you go there and you read verses 14 down through 21 and you pray the same thing that Paul prayed for the

Ephesians. Now you're praying that for others in your life. You're praying that for those that you're in community with, that you're in church with.

You're praying that for yourself and for your family that they might know the love of God, the breadth and the length and the height and the depth.

And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that they might be filled with all the fullness of God. So you pray prayers that are in the

Bible. You go to the Psalms. The Psalms are full of prayers to God and you let God's Word give the content to your prayers and then you offer that up to God.

So a third practical tip is to pray prayers from the Bible. Related is a fourth tip and that is to pray the

Lord's Prayer. Use it as the model prayer that it was intended to be. So the disciples went to Jesus and said, teach us to pray.

And Jesus said, pray like this. Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Keeps on going through that prayer. And it's to be a model for us. And so there's a couple of ways that you can use the Lord's Prayer in your prayer life.

One, you can just pray it word for word. Just open up your Bible to Matthew chapter 6 and read and pray the

Lord's Prayer. But you can also kind of take that phrase by phrase and let it be a guide for you. Kind of like a prayer rubric where you praise

God. Hallowed be your name. May your name God be revered and seen as absolutely holy in my life and my family's life and throughout the world among the nations.

And you might get to that clause of the prayer where it says, you know, give us this day our daily bread.

Okay, so you're praying for God's provision there. So you might be thinking about, okay, what are all the things that I'm going to face today that I need

God to help me with? I need God to provide. If God doesn't provide, then I'm in trouble. So you want to ask him for those things.

You just use that as a guide. Deliver me from the evil one. Deliver me from it.

Protect me, God, from those who would sin against me, for those who would pose danger to me. Protect me from sinning against, you know, from me sinning against others and therefore harming myself and others in that way.

Protect me from sin, God. Deliver me from the evil one. And so you can kind of go line by line, phrase by phrase throughout the

Lord's Prayer, and it will guide you in how to pray. And then another way that we can pray kind of with a rubric, a fifth practical tip, is to pray with the acrostic

Acts. This is just a very simple way to kind of structure your prayers. A -C -T -S is just an easy way to remember that.

The A stands for adoration. This is just where you're praising God. You're telling God all the things that you love about him.

So you're praying prayers of adoration. The C stands for confession. You're confessing your sin to God. Where have you fallen short of his standard?

Where have you disobeyed his word? You want to acknowledge that to God and ask him for forgiveness.

The T stands for thanksgiving. Give thanks to God. Every good and perfect gift comes down from the

Father above to us. And so you want to give thanks to God for those things. And then the S stands for supplication.

What are specific things that you're requesting of God? Specific things that you need help or others need help for.

Somebody needs healing. Somebody needs help. Somebody needs strength. Someone needs comfort. And you're praying for those things.

So A -C -T -S, ACTS, is just a simple acronym that can help structure your prayers, give you a rubric to guide your prayers.

And then lastly, I would say if you don't know what to pray, just give thanks to God.

Oftentimes you can just stop and think about every good thing that God has done for you and given to you.

Start just listing out all the things to be thankful for. Large things, small things.

Thank him for your family. Thank you for salvation in Christ. These big things. But also thank him for the air to breathe.

Thank him for the good weather that day. Thank him for the parking spot at the grocery store. Think very large and think very small and just start listing out everything that you could possibly thank

God for. And here's the thing, you will run out of time to pray before you run out of things to say.

Because the things that we have to give thanks to God for is inexhaustible.

We could just keep on going and going. And so doing these six practical steps, these six practical tips will help jumpstart your prayer life so that when you know you ought to pray but you don't know what to say, you have some content to guide your prayers.