How Do We Learn to Pray

In Luke 11, the disciples ask Jesus an interesting question. In fact, it is the only time in the Gospels when they ask Him how to do actually do something.

Know what they ask? How to feed 5,000 people with a Phoenician Filet-O-Fish? ? How to stop a stop a storm from storming? How to heal?

They didn’t ask any of those things. They asked Jesus to teach them to pray. Consider Luke 11:1:

Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” “Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.” (Luke 11:1-4)

In one sense, prayer should be as natural as breathing for a child of God. As Christians, we have received the Spirit of adoption and as Jesus teaches us, we now call God “Father.” However, at the same time, we do grow in our ability to pray.

So how do we learn to pray?  Here are three ways:

We Learn to Pray by Praying

Like any discipline, whether it’s a foreign language or musical instrument, you can take all the courses and study all the texts, but you won’t truly learn it until you do it.

We should pray until we pray as the Puritans counseled.

D.A. Carson is helpful when he writes, “To enter the spirit of prayer, we must stick to it for a while. If we ‘pray until we pray,’ eventually we come to delight in God’s presence, to rest in his love, to cherish his will.”

However a word of obvious caution is in order because the “terror of silence” (as David Foster Wallace called it) will tempt us away from prayer. How often do you find yourself beginning to pray and you find a particular longing to check email, do the dishes, scroll through Instagram, or escape to anything that can turn our attention away from the quiet focus that makes praying so difficult. That’s why we learn to pray like we are learning a musical instrument or foreign language — we learn by doing

We Learn to Pray by Praying with Others

Prayer is as much caught as it is taught. That’s why we can learn to pray from the godly examples of others. Rich Mullins had a great line in one of his songs: 

Well, I was twelve years old in the meeting house,

Listening to the old men pray,

Well, I was tryin' hard to figure out,

What it was that they was tryin' to say,

When someone prays out loud, we hear the structure, the tone, the words, the manner, the items that rise to importance, and the Word applied in prayer.

Here are some practical ways how we can learn from others:

1. Spend time with experienced pray-ers

When I was a pastor in Annapolis, there was a group of pastors who met every Wednesday to pray together. Sometimes I would pray aloud but most of the time I would just listen as these older men prayed. One of the ways that prayer is taught is that it is caught. Likewise, this is one of the reasons that we gather together in the church each week because whether it is in the worship service or small groups, listening to experienced pray-ers pray helps us learn to pray.

2. Choose good models of prayer

After the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, He gave them a model that we now know as “the Lord’s Prayer.” In addition to this, the Bible and Christian writings are filled with great examples of model prayers. So how do we identify good models of prayer? Consider these marks of good models of prayer:

Seriousness, passion, and urgency. The prayers have arguments and goals that are in line with Scripture. Some of these carry us into the presence of God while others faithfully intercede for others. However, all are characterized by a God-honoring mixture of contrition, humility, and boldness in prayer.

Here are some places to find good models of prayer:

• The Bible

• Sunday morning services

• Books like Valley of Vision, Piercing Heaven: A Collection of Puritan Prayers, A Call to Spiritual Reformation, The Book of Common Prayer

Prayer is Learned by Meditating on Scripture

Prayer is learned by meditating on Scripture. (Click here for 16 techniques on Scripture meditation.) This is the practice of responding to God’s Word by praying it back to Him — the “R” in the H.E.A.R. Bible Study method that we teach. In our Christian life, we believe, share, and put the Bible into practice in our life and relationships. By praying in this way, we are connecting the spiritual disciplines involving both Scripture and prayer.

The English Puritans understood the role of meditation in prayer well.

Consider Thomas Brooks on the importance of meditation:

“They usually thrive best who meditate most.” - Thomas Brooks

Or Thomas Manton on the link between Scripture and prayer:

“Meditation is a middle sort of duty between the word and prayer. The word feeds meditation, and meditation feeds prayer. These duties must always go hand in hand; meditation must follow hearing and precede prayer.  To hear and not to meditate is unfruitful. It is rashness to pray and not to meditate. What we take in by the Word we digest by meditation and let out by prayer. These three duties must be ordered that one may not jostle out the other.” -Thomas Manton

That being said, one helpful thing we can do to learn to pray and improve is to read Scripture before we pray. Then after reading, meditate on what you have read and then pray.

Look for what you can praise God for. Look for what you can thank God for. Let the weight of the Word convict you of sins and lead to confession and repentance. Soak in God’s promises in Scripture and allow them to shape your prayers.