How To Pray The Right Way

 

Understanding How To Pray 

When I was a child, my favorite teacher would always get a little frustrated with me for not how to pray. One day he said to me; "You know what? You're not as good as your brother or your sister. And your prayer style is not in keeping with God's ways."

That brought to mind an old Biblical story about the importance of showing love and attention to the needy. The story goes like this: "The chief priest heard that there had been many dead prophets lately, and he was afraid that some of the children of Israel had been abandoned. So he sent Stephen to be their leader. Stephen went and laid on his hands on the man who was dead, which was Jesus.

"Now when it was evening, Stephen went out again into the synagogue. He preached and taught them diligently, saying that Jesus is the rock of the world and the hope of the earth. He said also that Jesus is the saviour of all men, for in him there is salvation. He had by this time become the son of God to the Jews. And when the people heard this, they worshiped him and gave him many followers."

Now this brings up an interesting point, one we should think about. How to pray is a fundamental part of how to live. If you don't feel like going to church every week, then why do it? It seems like a pretty basic question and the answer is really quite obvious. We live in a fallen world and we need to find a way to survive.

The book of Acts goes on to tell how the church was dissolved. However, one thing it doesn't say is that Stephen was crucified along with his two most faithful apostles. I think this may be a very important point and something we can explore further in our quest to understand how to pray. If we look at what Jesus said, as recorded in the gospels, we can see that he never commanded his disciples to stone infants, to stone adulterous women, or to deny the innocent, to let the guilty go free.

So the important thing to note here is that we are not under obligation to follow what Jesus says. It is always our own choice, but we must still pray. It is not a matter of fulfilling some obligation or of becoming a law unto ourselves. In fact, we are encouraged to share whatever Jesus teaches us, even if it is not in detail.

It is my contention that the key point for an experienced Christian to understand is that we should never pray on our own, but rather that we should learn to imitate the great praying leaders of the past such as Moses and David. In fact, we should pray like they did. That is why we find so much peace, love and joy in the book of Acts. It is because they knew how to pray and when to pray. It is my conviction that you can gain all of this knowledge by studying and pondering a book written by a layperson called "Praying Through the Bible" by Randy Alcorn.

This book will teach you exactly how to pray, from the perspective of a believer. It will show you how to pray in a manner that brings you closer to God, not away from him. It will show you how to live a life of prayer and also live a life filled with prayer. I encourage you to look into this book and figure out for yourself just what a wonderful experience it can be to study and learn how to pray from a spiritual perspective.