How do you pray?

The Disciples' Question

Of all the things the disciples could have asked Jesus to teach them, they asked him to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1). They had watched him pray — slipping away before dawn, spending whole nights on a hillside, praying in the Garden of Gethsemane with sweat like drops of blood. Whatever they saw in his prayer life, they wanted it.

That request — "Lord, teach us to pray" — is the most honest thing anyone can say on this subject. Prayer is not intuitive. Most people who try to pray feel like they're doing it inadequately. They don't know what to say, they get distracted, they wonder whether anyone is listening. The disciples felt the same way, and they were standing next to Jesus.

What Prayer Is — And Isn't

Prayer is not a magic formula. It is not about finding the right words, the right posture, the right time, or the right emotional state. GotQuestions.org puts it directly: God is more interested in "the content of our hearts than the eloquence of our words." Prayer is simply honest communication with God — a conversation between a child and a Father who is always listening.

Philippians 4:6–7 gives the most concise description of what prayer looks like in practice:

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." — Philippians 4:6–7 (NIV)

Three elements appear here: prayer (general communication with God), petition (specific requests), and thanksgiving. Notice that the instruction is to bring everything — not just the spiritual concerns, not just the important things, but anything that would otherwise produce anxiety. God is not too busy or too elevated for the small things that keep you awake at night.

The Lord's Prayer — A Pattern, Not a Script

When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, he gave them what we call the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13). But he introduced it with the words "pray like this" (or "in this way") — not "say exactly this." It is a pattern for prayer, not a magic formula to be recited without thought.

The pattern has six movements:

• "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name" — Begin with worship. Acknowledge who God is before you bring what you need. Prayer starts with God, not with you.
• "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven" — Align your desires with God's purposes. Before your agenda, ask for his. This is the most transformative prayer anyone can pray.
• "Give us today our daily bread" — Bring your practical needs. God cares about the material as well as the spiritual. He is the God who feeds sparrows (Matthew 6:26) — your practical needs are not beneath him.
• "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" — Confess sin and receive forgiveness. Unforgiven sin in our own lives and unforgiveness toward others both block the flow of the relationship prayer is meant to sustain.
• "Lead us not into temptation" — Ask for protection. We are not self-sufficient. We need God's guidance to navigate the real spiritual dangers we face.
• "Deliver us from the evil one" — Pray for spiritual protection. The Christian life involves a spiritual dimension that prayer engages directly.

How — and Where — to Pray

The Bible is remarkably flexible on the mechanics of prayer. The things people often worry about — posture, location, time of day, eyes open or closed, kneeling or standing — are side issues that Scripture leaves to personal preference. People in the Bible prayed standing (1 Kings 8:22), kneeling (Daniel 6:10), lying face down (Matthew 26:39), sitting (2 Samuel 7:18), and walking (Genesis 24:12). They prayed alone and in crowds, in temples and in prisons, in whispers and in shouts.

What Jesus does warn against is performative prayer — praying to be seen rather than to communicate with God: "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" (Matthew 6:5). The audience for prayer is God, not other people. Jesus's instruction is to go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father "who is unseen" (Matthew 6:6).

Does God Always Answer Prayer?

Yes — but not always in the way we expect. 1 John 5:14–15 promises: "if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us — whatever we ask — we know that we have what we asked of him." The key phrase is "according to his will." God answers every prayer — sometimes with yes, sometimes with no, and sometimes with "not yet." All three are answers, and all three are given by a Father who knows what we need better than we do.

Jesus himself prayed in Gethsemane: "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39). The greatest prayer ever prayed ended with submission to the Father's will rather than insistence on the Son's preference. That is the model: bring your honest request, and hold it open to whatever God sees that you do not.

What to Do When Prayer Feels Empty

Every Christian who has prayed seriously has experienced seasons when prayer feels like speaking into a void. The saints describe this as "spiritual dryness" — not the absence of God, but the absence of felt awareness of him. Psalm 22 begins with exactly this experience: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?" (Psalm 22:1). These are the words Jesus quoted from the cross — which tells us that even the Son of God knew the experience of God feeling absent.

The response of the Psalms to spiritual dryness is not to stop praying but to pray differently — to bring the dryness itself to God. "I cried to you, O Lord" appears throughout the Psalms as a response to distress, not a description of victory. Prayer in the dark is still prayer.

Start Simply

If you are new to prayer, or if prayer has felt like a duty rather than a conversation, the simplest starting point is this: talk to God as you would talk to someone you trust who loves you and is always available. Use your own words. Tell him what you are worried about. Tell him what you are grateful for. Tell him where you feel lost. Tell him what you want. And then listen — not necessarily for an audible voice, but with openness to whatever response comes through Scripture, circumstance, or the quiet movement of conscience.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." — Matthew 7:7 (NIV)

For further reading, GotQuestions.org's article "How should we pray?" covers the practical and theological dimensions of prayer, and Timothy Keller's Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (2014) is the best modern book on the subject.