How can we learn to pray?  Many of us in today’s world want to pray, but we don’t know how.

The best way for us to learn to pray is to see how Jesus taught his disciples to pray.

One day, Jesus was praying, and one of his disciples came to him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Then, Jesus taught the disciples the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13), saying that this is how they should pray. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches all his disciples, including us, to pray.

How do we do this, though?

How can we make the Lord’s Prayer our own?  

Here are a few simple suggestions to guide you:

1. Find a copy of the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) that you can follow along with, if you don’t already know it.
2. Start by praying for God’s Holy Spirit to help you pray this from your heart, making it your own, and showing you better who God is through this prayer.

Continue praying as you do the following:

1. Take a phrase (look for commas, line breaks, or changes in thought).
2. Ask questions about this phrase and pray through the answers.
3. Next, praise him for this part of what you know about him.  Confess where you have fallen short from living this way.  Thank him that he forgives you and allows you the freedom to mess up, but to still be loved and forgiven by him.  Ask him to make this aspect, of who he is, real in your life.
4. Then, continue through each phrase (repeat 1-3), spending as much time as you have doing this.
5. Lastly, come back another day and pray it again, seeing what more God has to reveal to you.

An example of how to do this:

1.  Start with the phrase: “Our Father in heaven.”
2.  Pray: What does it mean that God is my father? How is God unlike my own father? God promises not to hurt me, but to work for the good of those who love him.  How can I know God in my life even though he is my father in heaven?  Lord, help me see you more and more as present in my life, yet know that your power and love come from heaven.
3.  I praise you for showing yourself to me as Father and that you are in heaven.  I confess that I don’t always like to think of you this way, or that I resent you for seeming so far off.  But I thank you that you are teaching me, even through this prayer.  Lord, I ask you to help me love you better by knowing who you really are, rather than how I sometimes feel you are.
4.  Repeat 1-3 for “hallowed be your name.”

Praying the Lord’s Prayer is especially important for us, because in it, Jesus actually tells us what we should pray for and how.  He shows us, he teaches us, and he prays with us.

Make the Lord’s Prayer your own today.

What questions do you have about prayer?  What holds you back from praying?  What, if anything, have you been learning through the act of prayer?

If you liked this post, you might also like:

• Learning the ACTS Prayer Model
• Why Prayer Is Important
• Powerful New Clothes.