Deepen Your Prayer Life

Prayer is our intimate connection with the Father.

TEACH US
But sometimes we can get overly concerned
about the “right” words and ways to pray. Allow
the Scriptures to illuminate how Jesus says we
should talk to God. As you read Teach Us to

TO PRAY
Pray, you’ll draw closer to God by deepening your
understanding of what Jesus taught about prayer
and putting it into practice in your own prayer life.

Sandra Glahn is a professor at Dallas Theological

Seminary and the editor-in-chief of Kindred Spirit
magazine. Sandra has her master of theology
and doctoral degrees. She has authored and/or
co-authored more than twenty books to engage
people in important biblical issues. Sandra and her
husband love to travel as she explores her passion
for photography.

To order more of Teach Us To Pray or any of over

100 other titles, visit odb.org/discoveryseries.

Sandra Glahn

Q0743_c_Teach Us to Pray.indd 1-2 6/19/19 4:34 PM

introduction

Teach Us to Pray

B ack in my daughter’s car-seat days,

our state had a couple of droughts.
We rationed water, prayed for
farmers going bankrupt, and noticed our
tap water tasted metallic. During the second
drought, more than sixty days passed
without a drop from the sky. One afternoon
as I was driving with my girl, we spotted a
grass fire in the median. So I pulled over
and called 9-1-1.
Days later when we passed the same
patch of what was then scorched earth, my
girl wanted to know all about it: Should we

1
be scared? Is it bad to call 9-1-1? What causes fires?
Would it happen again? Why does grass burn? Why?
Why? Why?
I explained that the grass needed a drink—that all
the grass in our state needed a drink, that the plants
were thirsty, that the trees craved rain.
“What can we do?” she asked.
“All we can do is pray.”
“Right now?”
“I suppose,” I said. “Now’s as good a time as any.”
She insisted that I pray then and there.
“Okay,” I said. So I kept my eyes on the road and
talked to our heavenly Father. I told Him about how
the grass needed a drink. I reminded Him that the
trees were thirsty. And I told Him we were scared
we’d run out of water. “Please, God,” I pleaded, “we
need rain.”
When I finished, she prayed, too, and her words
reminded me of the time Jesus exhorted His
followers to be like little children in faith and
humility (matthew 18:2–5).
About twenty seconds after we said “Amen,” an
inch-wide drop splashed onto my windshield. I
glanced over to see if a truck in the next lane was
leaking fluid. Then another drop hit. And another.
And it dawned on me. Ohmyword!
“HE SAID ‘YES’!” my daughter screamed from the
back seat. “HE SAID ‘YES’!”
Sure enough, that liquid was falling straight from
the sky. I dabbed my eyes and kept on driving. We

2 TEACH US TO PRAY
passed others who had pulled off the road, stood on
the shoulder, and thrown their arms in the air.
“HE SAID ‘YES’!” my daughter kept screaming.
“Yes, He did,” I whispered. I shook my head as we
marveled at the timing.
James told his readers that God hears the prayers of
ordinary, even powerless, people. He wrote, “Elijah was
a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly
that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land
for three and a half years” (james 5:17). Sometimes
we get the idea that God answers the prayers only of
those with spiritual super-powers while He glosses over
the requests of us everyday folks. Does God even hear
the prayers of some unknown mom and her little girl
driving by a burned median? James answered this very
question—Elijah was actually mortal, just like us, and
see what his prayers accomplished?

Sandra Glahn

Introduction 3
contents

one
The Object of Our Prayers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

two
How Not to Pray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

three
How to Pray. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

EDITORS: Tim Gustafson, J.R. Hudberg, Alyson Kieda, Peggy Willison

COVER IMAGE: © Shutterstock / Piyaset
COVER DESIGN: Stan Myers
INTERIOR DESIGN: Steve Gier

INTERIOR IMAGES: (p.1) © Shutterstock / Piyaset; (p.7) Bruno Glätsch

via Pixabay.com; (p.15) Carlos Lincoln via Pixabay.com; (p.19) Silvia & Frank via
Pixabay.com
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from
THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978,
1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

© 2019 Our Daily Bread Ministries, Grand Rapids, MI

All rights reserved.
Printed in USA
one
The Object of
Our Prayers

P art of knowing how to talk to God is knowing

the kind of God we address when we pray.
In the book of Revelation, the elderly
John recorded a vision he had of end times: “Then I
heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the
roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder,
shouting: ‘Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty
reigns’” (revelation 19:6). The very name of God he
uses, “Lord God Almighty,” suggests His omnipotence.
And because He is all-powerful, we can ask anything
7
and know He has all power and ability. For example,
consider His power with only the stars . . .
Centuries before Jesus came, one of the prophets
who predicted Christ’s coming wrote this of God:
“Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who
created all these? He who brings out the starry host
one by one and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing” (isaiah 40:26). Scientists
estimate that our galaxy contains roughly 100 billion
stars, and that there are about 10 trillion galaxies
in the universe. Totaling those numbers, we end up
with 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s a
“1” followed by twenty-four zeroes: And God created
them all, named them all, and never confuses one
with another.
Looking into the sky with its seemingly numberless
stars, we might feel insignificant. That’s how one of the
biblical poets felt when gazing up. He asked God, “What
is mankind that you are mindful of them, human
beings that you care for them?” (see psalm 8:3–4). Aren’t
we mere ants on a small blue dot?
Jesus told His followers, “Look at the birds
of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away
in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds
them. Are you not much more valuable than
they?” Then Jesus added, “Why do you worry about
clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow.
They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not
even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like

8 TEACH US TO PRAY
one of these” (matthew 6:26–29). The God who
holds all the universe’s power cares for us more
than for the birds He made, all 200–400 billion of
them. And the ultimate demonstration of His care
was that He loved the world so much that He sent
His Son, that whoever believes in Him will have
eternal life (john 3:16).
God does want us to recognize our smallness, but
not so we’ll conclude we’re insignificant. Recognizing
our tininess in contrast with the enormity of the
Creator’s universe should not lead us to think “I’m
too insignificant to bother God” but rather, “God
is so great and so big, He can do anything.” When
the Virgin Mary learned she would conceive a child
by the Holy Spirit, the Angel said of God, “No word
from God will ever fail” (luke 1:37).
Because the one we draw near to in prayer is so
great, it’s only logical that we His creatures should
approach Him in humility. Decades after Jesus rose
from the dead, His disciple Peter wrote to encourage
suffering Christians. And he told them to humble
themselves “under God’s mighty hand . . . . Cast
all your anxiety on him because he cares for you”
(1 peter 5:6–7). Elsewhere, the apostle Paul said that
prayer is the antidote to anxiety (philippians 4:6). So
we call on our great God and tell Him our anxiety-
causing “cares”—about the cancer treatment and
the broken dishwasher and the wrecked car, the
missing keys, and the children’s cavities—because
He cares for us.

The Object of Our Prayers 9

 The believers Peter was writing to likely faced persecution
at the hands of Nero, who had scapegoated Christians for the
fire that engulfed much of Rome in 64 AD .
When I was in middle school, I thought helping
me would distract God from doing His really
important work. One evening, stomach cramps
made me double over in pain. So I cried out to Him,
saying, “I know You’re super busy helping the poor,
but would You please stop helping them for just a
minute to help me?” Then I felt guilty. Who was I to
keep God from doing such important work? I needed
a bigger view of Him! For God it’s an easy thing
simultaneously to help the poor, heal a teen, keep
the earth spinning, and keep track of a hundred
billions stars.
So we pray because God cares for us, and He is
great enough to handle it all. One of the biblical
poets wrote, “The Lord is near to all who call on
him, to all who call on him in truth” (psalm 145:18).
So He invites us to draw near, and He promises that
if we do, He will draw near to us (james 4:8).

If we really grasped the truth that God is both

this accessible and this powerful, people would
have to pry us up off our knees. In Teaching a
Stone to Talk, Pulitzer-winning author Annie
Dillard put it this way: “On the whole, I do not

10 TEACH US TO PRAY
find Christians, outside of the
catacombs, sufficiently sensible
of conditions. Does anyone have
the foggiest idea what sort of
power we so blithely invoke? Or,
as I suspect, does no one believe
a word of it? The churches Does anyone
are children playing on the
floor with their chemistry sets, have the
making up a batch of TNT foggiest idea
to kill a Sunday morning. It what sort of
is madness to wear straw hats
and velvet hats to church; we power we so
should all be wearing crash blithely invoke?
helmets. Ushers should issue
life preservers and signal flares;
they should lash us to our pews.”1
Dillard is right. We far underestimate the
power we invoke. If the God to whom we pray
has this much power, praying is like lighting
dynamite. Imagine! We have a standing invitation
to commune with God the Father Almighty.
That’s what prayer is—talking with the invisible,
speak-worlds-into-being, keeps-tracks-of-all-stars,
sent-His-Son-for-us God.
Yet because our heavenly Father is also invisible
and tends not to use sound waves to speak, our
experience of Him often falls far short of what we
know to be true of Him. Although He has all power,
on a day-to-day basis we may feel like we can’t even

The Object of Our Prayers 11

get the match lit. We pray, and the rain doesn’t
come. We ask God to heal, and chooses not to. It
can feel like we ask, and He does nothing. That’s
why Jesus taught that humans “should always pray
and not give up” (luke 18:1). And decades after Jesus’s
resurrection, the apostle Paul exhorted some of his
friends to “pray continually” (1 thessalonians 5:17).
We’re tempted to give up, to stop, to quit. Because
it can feel like our prayers stop at the ceiling rather
than storming heaven.
Jesus told His disciples, “Ask and it will be given
to you” (matthew 7:7). Later He told them, “Watch
and pray so that you will not fall into temptation”
(matthew 26:41; mark 14:38; luke 22:40, 46). He also
wrote to his protégé, Timothy, saying, “I urge, then,
first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and
thanksgiving be made for all people” (1 timothy 2:1).
Our experience of God’s seeming silence is one
reason the Bible talks so much about faith. We may
know something to be true, but our experience
may leave us feeling like what we believe falls short
of reality. The author of the book of Hebrews
wrote, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope
for and assurance about what we do not see”
(hebrews 11:1). When we pray, we interact with a
Father who is “not seen.” So, often we can’t trace
His hand at work.
But we continue to pray, even when our efforts
seem to lack results, because we believe that the God
who named the stars has counted every hair on our

12 TEACH US TO PRAY
heads (matthew 10:30). And He invites us to ask, seek,
and knock (matthew 7:7–8). Fundamentally, we pray
because we have a relationship with Him. As parents
want their children to communicate, so God desires
for us to talk to Him. And conversely, as children
want to communicate with good parents, we too
desire to know and be known, to express our deepest
selves. (Or perhaps if we don’t want that, we may at
least want to want it.)
Yet we might wonder why a God who knows
everything would even invite us to pray. Doesn’t
the Bible say He knows our needs even before
we ask? (matthew 6:8). Certainly the act of prayer
benefits us by helping us to stop and think about
what’s important from God’s perspective. But
ultimately much of the answer to “Why pray?” is a
mystery, hidden in the God whose ways are so far
above our ways that we can’t comprehend them
(isaiah 55:9).
When I take my cat to the vet, he hates being
in the car—showing how he feels with hissing
and clawing and mewing. And because I’m so far
above him in intelligence (hopefully), I can’t simply
explain to him that I love him and have plans to
benefit him. Similarly, God’s ways are so far above
ours that His loving plans lie beyond our ability to
understand. His love can even come cloaked in what
looks like cruelty.
Because God is invisible and His ways are so far
above ours, we need help. So we begin with the same

The Object of Our Prayers 13

request one of the disciples made of Jesus: “Teach us
to pray” (luke 11:1). And we find in Scripture some
practices to avoid and some to embrace.

1  Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk (New York: Harper 1982), 58.

14 TEACH US TO PRAY
two
How Not to Pray

D on’t pray while ignoring broken relationships.

Jesus told His disciples that if someone has
unresolved conflict while they are on the
way to engage in spiritual practices, that person should
first stop and resolve the conflict before proceeding
(matthew 5:24). So if I spout unkind words at my
co-worker, or if a family member hurts my feelings,
I need to go make things right before showing up
for worship. Certainly, not everyone will respond to
attempts at reconciliation (romans 12:18). Nevertheless,
we should initiate restoration—whether we are the

15
offended or offender—before approaching God in
worship (matthew 18:15).

Don’t pray to get human praise. Jesus had little

tolerance for people who prayed, fasted, and gave
money making a big show so everyone would see
their good works and applaud their spirituality.
Prayers should focus on the greatness of God, not
on how great we are. Jesus told one of His audiences,
“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for
they love to pray standing in the synagogues and
on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly
I tell you, they have received their reward in full”
(matthew 6:5). Showing off is a horrible reason to
pray. And who wants to be around a self-righteous
person? People who pray to improve their standing
in the court of public opinion receive nothing more
from God, having already been paid in full in the
form of human applause.

Don’t be long-winded or repeat words meaninglessly.

Jesus also criticized those who pray long prayers
in public and engage in meaningless repetition
(matthew 6:7). So a good rule of thumb is “short
prayers in public, long prayers in private.” It’s
tempting to read Jesus’s words about repetition as
a warning against praying any written-out prayers
or repeating what we’ve prayed in the past. Yet the
problem is not in the repetition, but in the word
“meaninglessly.” The danger in repetition is in

16 TEACH US TO PRAY
allowing our brains to settle into
“neutral” so we fail to actually
think about what we’re praying.
For many years I struggled
much more than I do now in
prayer. But during a retreat one
year, a friend gave me a blank A good rule
notebook and encouraged me to
write out my prayers. By doing of thumb is
so, I now find it much easier to “short prayers
stay focused in my communing in public, long
with God.
I’m not alone in this. The prayers in
psalmists—those who wrote private.”
much of the poetry we find
in the Bible—wrote out some
of their prayers, and God’s people collected them
through time. We know this collection today as the
book of Psalms. Often we lack the right words, but the
Hebrews’ prayer and hymnbook can help us again and
again. So rather than eschewing such pre-formed and
repeated prayers, we should guard against developing
a callousness that can come from familiarity.
The Psalms contain timeless prayers that express
every human emotion. Overwhelmed by God’s
greatness? Psalm 150 lists ways to praise. Needing
comfort? Psalm 23 assures that “the Lord is my
shepherd” (v. 1). Angry about injustice? Psalm 2
expresses the fruitlessness of the nations conspiring
against God. Grieving over injury caused by the

How Not to Pray 17

human tongue? Psalm 12 expresses such a lament.
Feeling guilty? Psalm 51 is a confession of sin, probably
penned by David after he violated Bathsheba.
When we don’t know how to express ourselves to
the Lord, the Psalms provide the words we’re having
difficulty forming.

Don’t pray only for your own needs. In the first-century

Greco-Roman world in which Paul lived, Christianity
was wildly unpopular. Arrested on many occasions
for preaching the good news about Christ, he served
a lot of jail time. And while sitting in an unlit cell
one day, probably in Rome, he received a financial
gift with a letter from a church he’d started with a
group of praying women in the city of Philippi (acts
16:13–14). So Paul wrote them an epistle, known to us
as the New Testament book of Philippians, in which
he expressed his gratitude. And in it he described
how he had been praying for them: “And this is my
prayer: that your love may abound more and more
in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may
be able to discern what is best and may be pure and
blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit
of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—
to the glory and praise of God” (philippians 1:9–11).
Notice how he focused on their spiritual needs and
ultimately that God would be glorified. That’s a great
model for our priority in prayer.

18 TEACH US TO PRAY
three
How to Pray

W e know that Jesus prayed (e.g., john 17),

and He taught His disciples to pray
(luke 11:1–4). And biblical writers
throughout both Old and New Testaments exhorted
believers to pray. We may not understand exactly how
prayer works, but we have enough information about
God’s power, God’s goodness, and His desire for us to
call on Him to know we should draw near.
Luke the gospel writer records that one day when
Jesus had finished praying in a certain place, one of

19
His followers asked, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as
John [the Baptizer] taught his disciples” (luke 11:1).
With these words, one of the disciples acknowledged
a tradition of prayer—the prophet John’s.
The apostles, including the one who asked, were
all Jewish. They had doubtless memorized the
Psalms. And they had probably uttered the same
Sabbath prayers since they could remember. Praying
every day of their lives since they were old enough
to speak was part of how Jewish people lived—
especially in a pre-literate society. Yet still these
Jewish disciples felt the need for instruction about
how to pray. I hope that encourages you as it does
me, because it suggests that growing in prayer is a
lifetime pursuit. Even those who’ve spent decades
praying have not mastered having meaningful
interactions with God.
Jesus’s answer to the disciple who asked “how?”
still benefits us two thousand years later. Our Lord’s
most famous prayer gives us insight and direction
for how to pray. So let’s look deeply into Jesus’s most
famous prayer for insight and direction:

Pray to our Father. Of course not all people have

good earthly fathers that help them to imagine a
good heavenly Father. But most of us have seen a good
earthly father in action. After I became an adult, one
of the kids from the neighborhood where I grew up
said he learned what a good father looked like by
watching mine.

20 TEACH US TO PRAY
 THEY MEMORIZED THE PSALMS
British theologian N . T . Wright, in The Case for Psalms, wrote,
“The Psalms were the hymnbook that Jesus and his first
followers would have known by heart . Even in today’s world,
where electronic gadgets have radically reduced the need for
memorization, most of us can remember the songs, whether
sacred or secular, that were popular in our childhood and
teenage years . Jesus and his contemporaries would have
known the Psalms inside and out . Paul would have prayed and
sung them from his earliest years . What Jesus believed and
understood about his own identity and vocation, and what
Paul came to believe and understand about Jesus’s unique
achievement, they believed and understood within a psalm-
shaped world . That shaping, remarkably, is open to us today .”
Before the invention of the printing press, believers with
means had copies made of the book of Psalms and prayed
them daily . But with the invention of movable type, devotional
books became affordable, largely replacing daily psalms-
reading . The book of Psalms has 150 “chapters,” each of which
is often the length of a sonnet . Consider following the ancient
practice of reading five psalms per day .

Sitting at the door to our bedroom, Dad used to

play the autoharp at night, singing my sister and me to
sleep. When our Girl Scout troop got stuck in the mud
at a campout, he drove his truck to our retreat site
and pulled us out as everyone cheered. He took my
siblings and our friends camping and canoeing. He
taught us to sing at the top of our lungs “Christ the
Lord is risen today!” at sunrise on Easter. He adored

How to Pray 21
our mother, loving her till his death in their sixty-fifth
year together. And in his ninetieth year, he was still
picking up day-old bread from the grocery store and
delivering it to the local food bank. Our father gave us
the great gift of seeing a righteous life well lived. And
Jesus asked the crowds, “If you, then, though you are
evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how
much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts
to those who ask him!” (matthew 7:11).
Our heavenly Father is the best father of all—way
better than my own dad. And Jesus began His prayer
by addressing God with “Our Father” (matthew 6:9).
Notice that first word, “our.” It assumes that those
who follow God are brothers and sisters, sharing a
family identity as we have the same Father. And we
pray in community with each other.
As for “Father,” the first person of the Godhead
is not a male or a human. The word “Father” is a
metaphor, albeit a favorite and intimate one. My
friend Barb Peil notes that before Christ, “God’s
people recognized Him as Creator-Father of their
nation, but never as their personal Father.”2 So no
one had ever prayed quite like Jesus. And Jesus
escorted His disciples into the intimate relationship
He had with His Father, inviting them to address
God in the same way. We have the intimacy with Him
that comes from belonging to His family.

Pray in Jesus’s name. Often we end our prayers with

“In Jesus’s name, Amen.” The apostle John recorded

22 TEACH US TO PRAY
that Jesus promised His disciples, “And I will do
whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may
be glorified in the Son” (john 14:13). But what does it
mean to pray in Jesus’s name?
Years ago when I worked for a financial services
corporation, I noticed that when the CEO’s
administrative assistant called and told my boss,
William, that the CEO said he had to go to China,
William booked tickets, even if he didn’t want to
go. Yet that assistant’s official rank in the company
was far below that of William. And in fact, when she
resigned, she could not even have summoned him
to a conference room with any authority at all. Only
when speaking in the name of the CEO did she have
the power to act.
The same is true of us when we pray in Jesus’s
name. By making our requests “in the name of Jesus,”
we speak not in our own power but in the name of
the One who has all authority in heaven and earth.
Of course, when Jesus spoke of praying in His name,
He did not mean that we mindlessly tack on “in Jesus’s
name” as if doing so requires the Father rubber-stamp
our every request. Rather, the Father’s glory is the
ultimate end of praying in Jesus’s name. So our lives
and prayers must align with that which honors Him.

Pray in the Spirit. But what if we have no idea what

will bring God the most honor? When my father was
dying of Alzheimer’s, I wondered if God would be
more glorified by taking Dad home or by leaving him

How to Pray 23
on earth for us to serve. The answer to that question
required the omniscience I lacked. How could I pray
God’s will when I didn’t know exactly what that was?
The answer came, as all such answers do, in the
third person of the Trinity—the Spirit. The apostle Paul
told the church at Rome that we all groan awaiting our
redemption, but he went on to say “in the same way, the
Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what
we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for
us through wordless groans. And he who searches our
hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit
intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will
of God” (romans 8:26–27). What a comfort to know that
we have a helper—an intercessor. Our prayers don’t
have to be perfect. Because the omniscient Spirit prays
along with us, uttering groanings too deep for words.
He knows our hearts, and He also knows the mind of
the Father. And He stands in the gap. So we never have
to worry that we lack the perfect words to express our
needs, desires, and sufferings to God. The Spirit helps
with our weakness.

Approach God confidently. Because Jesus came in the

flesh and knows how it feels to be hungry, betrayed,
homeless, injured, and even murdered, He has
empathy for humans. The writer of Hebrews put it this
way: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable
to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one
who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—
yet he did not sin” (4:15). And the writer ends with an

24 TEACH US TO PRAY
exhortation full of comfort for those of us learning to
talk to the Father: “Let us then approach God’s throne
of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy
and find grace to help us in our time of need” (v. 16).

Pray continually. Thessalonica, a Greek port city, was

home to a church started by Paul. Later, he wrote
these friends a letter in which he instructed them to
“pray continually” (1 thessalonians 5:17). Theologian
Steven Cole writes that the phrase we translate as
“without ceasing” was used in Paul’s day when
describing unrelenting military assaults or hacking
coughs.3 Clearly one cannot pray every second of every
day. But we can pray relentlessly—and as often as
someone hacks with chronic bronchitis.

Many translations of Scripture render “pray continually”

as “pray without ceasing,” including the Authorized Version
and the New King James Version . Dr . Cole references the
New American Standard version in his commentary, which
also says “without ceasing .”
So rather than “checking off” that we have finished
with our prayers for the day, we are to live in constant
conversation with the One who loves us. We address
Him when we wake up; we worship Him when we
see the sunrise; we give thanks for our daily bread at
breakfast; we praise Him for work and ask for skill in
engaging in it; we pray that our love will abound and
the God will use us to share the gospel; we lament
over broken relationships; and we talk to Him about

How to Pray 25
traffic as we drive. In the evening we seek His counsel
about how to spend our time. We ask Him to help us
remain patient with family members. We ask Him to
use us when we call to comfort a friend. We watch the
news and pray for our government. As long as we’re
awake, we invite Him into our lives. And when we lie
down, we recount His goodness to us; when we can’t
sleep, we cast our cares on Him.

In devotion, alertness, and with thanks. Paul lived

two years in Ephesus, a bustling major metropolis
in Asia Minor which today lies in ruins in Turkey.
About 120 miles away was Colossae, a wealthy trade
center. And his friend Epaphras probably planted
the church there (colossians 1:7; 4:12–13) and traveled
to work with Paul and inform him of the church’s
progress. Paul sent a letter to the church in Colossae,
and in it he packed a lot of instruction about talking
to God into one line: “Devote yourselves to prayer,
being watchful and thankful” (4:2).

Even though Ephesus was home to one of the earliest

churches in all Christendom, God warned the believers in a
letter through John the disciple, “If you do not repent, I will
come to you and remove your lampstand from its place”
(REVELATION 2:5) . This was a reference to the church no longer
being a witness—a light—to God’s truth . And indeed, that
church has long since ceased to exist .

To be devoted to prayer is to be set apart and ready.

26 TEACH US TO PRAY
My friend’s pit bull adores her, lying on the rug with
eyes glued to her and poised to jump up the minute
she touches the leash. That’s devotion! Paul’s word for
“devoted” was used elsewhere of a boat docked and
ready for use.
He concluded his exhortation to the Colossians with
a reminder to be thankful. Without gratitude, prayer
can degenerate to a shopping list. We want food. We
need the broken dishwasher to work. We need to
find our keys. We need to get stuff done. We need
our bodies and those of our loved ones to function.
We request good fellowship. And we ask for open
hearts to the gospel and help with temptation. Our
communication with God runs the gamut of emotions
and expressions. From praise to lament to confession
to requests for ourselves to supplication for others,
prayer consists of every feeling and need we have.
Yet when our prayers are about only what we want
minus thanks for what we’ve already received, we are
confusing God with a vending machine. We put in
our dollar of obedience and expect the car to work,
the chicken pox to strike someone else’s child, and
the checkbook to balance. And we might even throw
a tantrum when we “pay” and “the machine just eats
our dollar.” Thankfulness reminds us to exchange
our sense of entitlement for gratitude that we’ve
already received infinitely more than we deserve.

Sometimes pray without using words. In addition to

talking to God, prayer also includes silence before

How to Pray 27
 Him, sitting or standing in an
attitude of quiet and waiting
in the divine presence. King
David wrote many poems and
songs included in the book
of Psalms, including this: “My
When our soul, wait in silence for God
only, for my hope is from Him”
prayers are (psalm 62:5 nasb). Elsewhere
about only what in the psalms we read of the
we want minus power that our God holds.
He is the Lord Almighty who
thanks for what “makes wars cease to the ends
we’ve already of the earth. He breaks the
received, we are bow and shatters the spear
. . . . He says, ‘Be still, and
confusing God know that I am God; I will be
with a vending exalted among the nations, I
machine. will be exalted in the earth’”
(psalm 46:9–10)
“All we can do is pray,” I
had told my daughter, as if
praying were barely a cut above nothing. But I was
wrong. Prayer is talking to the greatest power in
the universe. E. M. Bounds, a nineteenth-century
clergyman who wrote nine books on prayer, rightly
described the “prayer closet” as the “battlefield of the
church; its citadel; the scene of heroic and unearthly
conflicts. The closet is the base of supplies for the
Christian and the church. Cut off from it there is

28 TEACH US TO PRAY
nothing left but retreat and disaster. The energy for
work, the mastery over self, the deliverance from fear,
all spiritual results and graces, are much advanced by
prayer.”4
God the Father, Son, and Spirit—our three-personed
God—is involved in our intercessions. The object of
our prayers is our omnipotent heavenly Father, who
loves us. And we pray to Him in the name of and
through the intercession of the Son with the help
of the Holy Spirit. So let us, therefore, approach the
king’s grace-throne boldly, asking with the disciples,
“Lord, teach us to pray.”

2 Barb Peil, “Model the Prayer of Jesus,” Kindred Spirit magazine,

<http://www.dts.edu/read/model-the-prayer-of-jesus-dallas-theological
-seminary/> April 1, 2002, accessed March 19, 2017.
3 Steven J. Cole, “Lesson 81: Persevering in Prayer (LUKE 18:1–8),” bible.org,
June 18, 2013, < https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-81-persevering-
prayer-luke-181-8>, accessed March 19, 2017.
4 E. M. Bounds, The Complete Works of E. M. Bounds, (Floyd, Virginia:
Wilder Publications) 164.

How to Pray 29
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