How would you answer the question in the title of this post? How do you pray? How does your church pray? I have become especially concerned about this over the past two years. I believe in the church we have failed to teach our people to pray effectively. And we do it through our own example. How many times have you been in a mid-week prayer service, and listened for twenty to thirty minutes as people gave updates and shared of family, friends, and colleagues in need of prayer. Then following this elongated time of sharing and verbalizing the requests (mainly for the sick and infirmed) one person will stand before the group and pray for maybe sixty seconds, either grouping the requests or naming a few asking for healing. His or her sixty second prayer is completed with an Amen, which in the church has become equivalent to “The End” at the end of a movie. It signifies the finishing point, our prayer service is over. We spent thirty minutes talking (sometimes gossiping) and sixty seconds praying – and we call this a prayer meeting.

This is happening all across North America on a regular basis. I believe the average “committed” Christian spends less than thirty minutes per week in prayer. This includes prayer time in church, before meals, bedtime, and throughout the week. Less than thirty minutes, and this is the average for committed Christians. I realize there are those prayer warriors who do spend much more than this in prayer each week and I praise God for these saints. What would the average prayer time per week look like if they were not spending hours each week confessing, interceding, praising, and giving thanks to God in prayer?

Our prayer lives have become routine and even rote, to the point that I would venture most of our prayers come from the head and not from the heart. I recently heard a third year college student called on to pray in a public venue. This young man had been raised in church all his life. When called upon to pray, this was his prayer: “God is great, God is good. Thank you for our food Amen.” Now I am grateful that he did not abstain. He did pray in a public restaurant. While I was grateful, at the same time my heart sank. Here is a twenty or twenty-one year old who’s prayer at mealtime is to recite what I call a child’s prayer. Surely he had heard prayers in church and his home all his life. But had he not been taught how to pray himself?

We have said for years that prayer at its simplest is a two way conversation between you and God. Have we not taught our people how to have that conversation with God? I mentioned above that much of our prayer life has become rote and routine. We pray phrases and sentences as: “Bless the gift and the giver,” “put a hedge of protection around…,” “heal…,” “Keep us safe until we meet again.” We use these and other catch phrases not because they are expressions coming from the heart, but because we have heard others use these same phrases and we like them or think they are appropriate for the prayer time and occasion.

When I read of the prayers of the early church in the book of Acts and when I read of Jesus’ prayers and His teaching on prayer I see something totally different. Jesus’ prayer life was so powerful that the disciples ask Him, “Teach us how to pray.” They did not ask him to teach them how to preach or how to outwit the religious leaders. They asked Him to teach them how to pray. As Jesus responded to his request He did not say pray these words. He did say “When you pray, pray like this…”

In Luke chapter two, in verses 31-32 Jesus speaking to the Apostle Peter stated, ““Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. ³² But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And you, when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”  Jesus didn’t pray for a hedge of protection. He did not ask God to keep evil away from Peter. Jesus said “I have prayed that your faith may not fail…” How much more effective could our prayer life be if we would only learn and practice this one principle? Our friends are already walking through this battle with cancer. God knows the outcome. Yet most of our prayers are for God to change the direction or the outcome. We’re asking God to use His omnipotent power to change everything to fit our desire.

Jesus did not pray for God the Father to change the direction. He prayed for Peter’s faith to remain strong. Why? So that on the other side of the trial Peter would be able to strengthen others. How many of us could pray for one hour without falling asleep as did Peter and the others in the garden of Gethsemane? Jesus on the other hand prayed for three hours that night. How much of His prayer time do you believe consisted of catchy phrases, clichés, and repetitive popular sayings as He prayed in the garden that night?

I still struggle with this myself. I’m trying daily, praying regularly for God to teach me to pray from the heart and not from the head with rote and familiar phrases. When I find myself using one of those, I pray for forgiveness. I want all my prayers to be from the heart and not something that I’ve heard before. Why not begin today in your prayer life. Prayer is a two way conversation between you and God. If God were your neighbor, sitting at your kitchen table over a cup of coffee, what would your conversation consist of? Then teach someone else what God is teaching you about true, heartfelt prayer.