I’m tempted to answer this question, “How do I pray?” with the Nike answer, “Just do it.” You can get all complicated about it and have all kinds of forms, structures, rules, and regulations and miss the whole point of prayer. What is prayer? Prayer is just being in the presence of God and conversing.
Prayer is just being in the presence of God and conversing.I don’t need to be told how — occasionally I do, but shouldn’t– to have a conversation with my wife. Sometimes, I don’t even need to have a conversation; I can just sit and be in her presence. Sometimes, we say to each other, “Can we just not talk?” There’s an element of prayer that is like that: meditative prayer. But we are meant to talk to God, and he talks back to us.
There’s a book by Don Whitney called “Praying the Bible,” – reading through the Bible and turning what you read into prayer. It’s a very simple thing to do: read one verse and turn it back into a prayer to God. It’s like a two-way conversation. There were times in my life when prayer has been difficult. There have been times when I felt my prayers were hitting a ceiling and bouncing back again. There are times of stress, times of trial, and times of difficulty.
Sometimes God withdraws the light of his countenance for a season to make us want him more and to be glad when he returns. In those periods, what do you do? In those darker periods, walk through the Bible and turn each verse back into a prayer.
