Prayer can be Learnt

 

Luke 11:1, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Many people do not know how to pray. The disciples confessed they did not know how to pray. The Scriptures tells us that “We do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us… (Rom. 8:26). The good news is that we have Christ, and we have the Spirit. We have His Word. From the Word we can learn how to pray. We know that through Christ we have access in one Spirit to the Father (Eph. 2:18). The Spirit helps to pray by interceding for us, and the Son too intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Heb. 4:16).

For prayer is learned and yes, you should learn to pray. This should give you a new hope and resolve to pray. Anyone can learn how to pray. Anyone can begin the Christian life without any knowledge or experience of prayer and yet along the way learn how to pray. No matter how weak or strong your prayer life is right now, you can learn to pray and grow even stronger in your prayer life to become a prayer warrior!

How or even where do we learn how to pray?

1.     By Praying

Just like you learn a foreign language by speaking it, so you learn prayer by praying! “Reading a book about prayer, listening to lectures, and talking about it is very good, but it won’t teach you to pray. You get nothing without exercise, without practice. I might listen for a year to a professor of music playing the most beautiful music, but that won’t teach me to play an instrument.” Andrew Murray. In the same way, learn how to pray by praying, “Lord, teach me how to pray!”

2.     By Meditating on Scripture

This is one of the most compelling concepts on prayer. Meditation is the missing link between Bible intake and prayer. The two are often disjointed when they should be united. We read the Bible, close it, and then try to shift gears into prayer. But many times it seems as if the gears between the two won’t mesh. In fact, after some forward progress in our time in the Word, shifting to prayer sometimes is like suddenly moving back into a neutral or even reverse gear. Instead, there should be a smooth, almost unnoticeable transition between Scripture input and prayer output so that we move even closer to God in those moments. This happens when there is the link of meditation in between.

So what is meditation?

Psalm 19:14: “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.” Notice that both verses are prayers and both refer to other “words” spoken in prayer. Yet in each case meditation was a catalyst that catapulted David from the truth of God into talking with God. In 5:1 he has been meditating and now he asks the Lord to give ear to it and to consider it.

Meditation allows us to take what God has said to us and think deeply on it, digest it, and then speak to God about it in meaningful prayer. As a result, we pray about what we’ve encountered in the Bible, now personalized through meditation. And not only do we have something substantial to say in prayer, and the confidence that we are praying God’s thoughts to Him, but we transition smoothly into prayer with a passion for what we’re praying about. Then as we move on with our prayer, we don’t jerk and lurch along because we already have some spiritual momentum.

Anyone who has heard the story of George Muller ponders the secret of his effectiveness in prayer. Although some argue for one thing as Muller’s “secret” and others argue for another, I believe we must ultimately attribute his unusually successful prayer life to the sovereignty of God. But if we look for something transferable from his life to ours, my vote goes for something I’ve never heard credited as his “secret.”

How do we learn to pray? How do we learn to pray like David, the Puritans, and George Muller? We learn to pray by meditating on Scripture, for meditation is the missing link between Bible intake and prayer.

3.     By Praying with Others

The disciples learned to pray not only by hearing Jesus teach about prayer, but also by being with Him when He prayed. Let’s not forget that the words “Lord, teach us to pray” didn’t just come as a random idea. This request followed a time when the disciples accompanied Jesus in prayer (Luke 11:1). In a similar way, we can learn to pray by praying with other people who can model true prayer for us.

There are always other believers who can teach us much by praying with them. But we pray with them to learn principles of prayer, not phrases for prayer. One fellow Christian may give biblical reasons to the Lord why a prayer should be answered. Another might show us how to pray through passages of Scripture. By praying with a faithful intercessor we might learn how to pray for missions. Praying regularly with others can be one of the most enriching adventures of your Christian life. Most of the great movements of God can be traced to a small group of people He called together to begin praying.

4.     By Reading About Prayer

Reading about prayer instead of praying simply will not do. But reading about prayer in addition to praying can be a valuable way to learn. “As iron sharpens iron,” says Proverbs 27:17, “so one man sharpens another.”

Read the lessons learned by veterans of the trenches of prayer and let them sharpen your weapons of the warfare of prayer. “He who walks with the wise grows wise” is the teaching of Proverbs 13:20. Reading the books of wise men and women of prayer gives us the privilege of “walking” with them and learning the insights God gave them on how to pray.

We’ve learned from experience how others can see things in a passage of Scripture we cannot, or how they are able to explain a familiar doctrine in a fresh way that deepens our understanding of it. In the same way reading what others have learned about prayer from their study of Scripture and their pilgrimage in grace can be God’s instrument of teaching us what we’d never learn otherwise. Who hasn’t learned about praying in faith after reading of George Muller’s prayer life, or who hasn’t been motivated to pray after reading David Brainerd’s biography? When we read about prayer, we are sparked into praying.

There are many good books to encourage us to pray. Here is my top ten list of books on prayer:

1)    The Valley of Vision – A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions by Arthur Bennet

2)    Praying the Bible – Donald Whitney

3)    A Call to Prayer – J.C. Ryle

4)    The Complete Works of E.M. Bounds on Prayer – E.M. Bounds

5)    Praying with Paul: A Call to Spiritual Reformation – D.A. Carson

6)    The Power of Prayer & Fasting – Ronnie Floyd & Bill Bright

7)    Praying: Finding our Way through Duty to Delight – J.I. Packer & C. Nystrom

8)    Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy – Tim Keller

9)    The Hidden Life of Prayer – David McIntyre

10) A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World – Paul Miller

Hopefully this convinces you that you can learn to pray by reading about prayer! No matter how difficult prayer is for you now. If you will persevere in learning how to pray you will always have the hope of an even stronger and more fruitful prayer life ahead of you.

In conclusion this is how you should pray:

Fervently: I draw your attention to an Old Testament prayer, a prayer of David. Yet we know that David did not know as much Scriptures or revelation as we have now. He did not know of the immense privileges we have in Christ at this time. He greeted most of our blessings from afar (Hebrews 11:13,39-40, 1 Peter 1:12). Yet the way he led the national prayer meeting cannot be compared with our church prayers today!

Unceasingly: The Bible tells us to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). We must never be tired of bringing our needs to the Lord. We should always remember what a Friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer! Have you no words to pray? Ah! Think again! But words flow apace when you complain and fill your fellow creature’s ears with sad tales of all your cares! It should be more than half of your breath is spent sending prayers, supplications and thanksgivings and praise to the throne of grace in heaven.

According to God’s will: We must pray according to God’s will is the best for us. We must be those who pray like the Lord, “…Not my will but yours be done, O LORD.”  James warns us against the sin of presumptuousness in James 4:13-17. One of the instructions he gives is this, “Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (v.15).

In Faith. James says that Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit (James 5:17-18) He says that the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick (v.15). We need to fully trust in God’s power to do what we are requesting and depend on his grace to do us good. We must also trust him to give what is best, better than what we can think or imagine.