Best ways to kickstart your prayer life

Prayer is simply a conversation with God. It can be uttered by children beautifully and by mature adults, wonderfully nuanced for all life brings. Tim Keller wrote, “Prayer, then is both awe and intimacy, struggle, and reality.” That rich description of all it could be is very attractive. It has a broad enough spectrum of day-to-day emotions.

Life has ebbs and flows, like a roller coaster. And so go our conversations with God. Some days are great. Some days are eeeh, they’re just ok. It is the human experience. Yet each emotion is perfect to take to God.

When I woke a couple weeks ago, I knew my prayer life was flat. The natural reaction when I feel flat or down is to drop what I am doing. That only continues the cycle downward. I also needed to be rejuvenated and I bet you do too.

At that moment I wanted to find some smart steps ahead. I had been in this position before, so I knew what would get me to a richer experience with God. Here’s three things to kick start your prayer life.

1. Ask Jesus to Teach You to Pray. It is what his disciples asked him after they observed his prayer life in Luke 11:1. Jesus gave them the Lord’s Prayer. That is a great practice. Psalm 24:4 and Psalm 43:3, 4 are fantastic petitions to move us worship.
2. Small Repeatable Steps. Practice using the acronym P-R-A-Y … Praise, Repent, Ask and Yield. Pray just one minute for each. Four minutes get us started enabling us to add to it and strengthen our time. Read more about P-R-A-Y here.
3. Try Different Modes. Take a prayer walk in your neighborhood. Use your body by standing, kneeling, lifting your hands. Write out your prayers in a journal. Try whispering your prayers.

All these have helped me at different seasons of my life. I have found starting small, staying consistent daily allows these tools to speak to our soul. Overtime they have gotten me back on track. I begin having even in small doses the awe, intimacy, and honesty I thirst for.

Want more resources to liven your prayer life? Here’s more that have helped many followers.

1. Use the acronym ACTS …Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication.
2. Learn to riff your prayers. Musicians riff when they take song further and add variety. We can do this by paraphrasing the Lord’s Prayer. Take the phrases in the Lord’s prayer personalizing them to your own situation. Hallowed by thy name, can be supplemented with other praises for God’s character and his movement in your life. Give us our daily bread, can be expanded to all sort of needs you and others in your life.
3. Psalm as your prayer book. Learning to pray the Psalm is a deeply beneficial practice. Read the Psalm then find ways to praise and thank the Lord. Find petitions in a Psalm that fit your present situation. I find a great closing the day with a Psalm.
4. Pray more than once a day. The prayer offices are sessions of prayer that monks did throughout the day and night. We can benefit from a noon prayer or at the close of a day. The prayer of examen is a review of our day thanking the Lord for the good and the hard. We thank Him for his steadfast love and faithfulness that day.
5. Pray first thing. Start the day in prayer as you open your eyes, thanking him. Before you eat or even read Scripture start your conversation with the Lord. I have found prefer my time in the Word and nudge out time to pray. Switching them around enhances my prayer.
6. Prayer Guides. There are several I find helpful. The first was given to me by my Young Life boss Gary, years ago. Face to Face by Ken Boa lays out daily prayer from the Scripture. His pattern is modeled after the Lord’s Prayer, with eight sections. He has different petitions in a seven-day rhythm: personal, family, government etc. All topics that we should be lifting up in prayer. The second guide is much different. It follows a more liturgical pattern and praying more times throughout the day. The verses, hymns and poetry have resonated with me. The series is called Divine Hours. I use the Divine Hours Pocket Edition.
7. Books. Four books that have been useful in my prayer life. First, Prayer by Tim Keller. He unpacks theological rationale and ways to practice it. One of his best chapters is on his explanation of the Lord’s Prayer. There he unpacks these very familiar phrases and gives way to expand the theme in each phrase. Second, Practicing His Presence by Brother Lawrence. He was a monk in the late 1600s that was to be in Jesus’ presence at every moment. It prompts us to know how to abide in conversation with our Lord. Third, Power Through Prayer by E.M. Bounds. He was a Civil War Chaplain. His challenging words motivate us to pray more persistently and passionately. Lastly, Richard Foster’s excellent book Prayer. I read this during seminary and was propelled in my life. He is practical and challenging.