How to pray?
Short answer
Praying is talking to God in your own words. The Bible teaches it simply: in a private place, with no memorised formula and no piling up of words meant to impress whoever is listening. Jesus gave a short model, the Lord’s Prayer, and the apostles urged praying constantly and with thanks. There is no correct wording and no required posture.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 3 min read
The question almost always arrives with a suspicion attached: that there is a right way and that anyone who does not know it is doing it wrong. The biblical text dismantles that straight away. The most explicit instructions about prayer are, in large part, about what is not necessary.
Jesus deals with the subject in a short stretch of the Sermon on the Mount and spends the first lines on two corrections. The first is against praying to be seen; the second, against piling up words in the belief that quantity persuades. What is left afterwards is far less than most people imagine: a private room, and a Father who already knows what is lacking before the request.
The rest of the New Testament adds rhythm, not technique. The letters urge praying without ceasing and taking worry to God together with thanks. And there is an acknowledgement that usually goes unnoticed: Paul writes, in the letter to the Romans, that there are days when a person does not know what to ask for — and he treats that as a normal part of prayer, not as a failure in it. It is the most useful passage for anyone who freezes in front of the silence.
If even so there is no obvious place to start, the text offers two opposite models, both equally accepted. One is the Lord’s Prayer, structured, with petitions in order. The other is the one-line prayer of the tax collector, in the parable of Luke 18 — no introduction, no justification, and it is the one Jesus points to as having gone home approved. Between those two fits practically anything a person needs to say.
What the passages say
5And when you pray, you should not be like the hypocrites, who love standing in the synagogues and at the corners of the streets to pray, so that they may be seen by men. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward.
6But you, when you pray, enter into your room, and having shut the door, pray to your Father in secret, and your Father, who sees in secret, will repay you.
7And when praying, do not choose many words, as the pagans do. For they think that by their excess of words they might be heeded.
8Therefore, do not choose to imitate them. For your Father knows what your needs may be, even before you ask him.
The most direct passage about method, and it is almost entirely negative: do not pray to be watched, do not repeat for the sake of repeating. The positive instruction left over is about place and discretion, not about wording — and the reason given is that the request informs God of nothing.
1And it happened that, while he was in a certain place praying, when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.”
The origin of the question is the same today: someone sees another person praying and asks to learn. Worth noting that the one asking is a disciple, after time spent in his company. Not knowing how to pray was no sign of distance there either.
26And similarly, the Spirit also helps our weakness. For we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself asks on our behalf with ineffable sighing.
It deals explicitly with the case where a person cannot formulate the request. The text does not correct anyone in that situation; it describes the Spirit taking over the asking. It is the biblical argument against the idea that a poor prayer does not count.
16Rejoice always.
17Pray without ceasing.
18Give thanks in everything. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for all of you.
Three short, linked instructions that set frequency rather than form. The direction to pray without ceasing is about continuity across the day, not about the length of each prayer — a reading the context itself, made of brief sentences, supports.
13And the tax collector, standing at a distance, was not willing to even lift up his eyes to heaven. But he struck his chest, saying: ‘O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’
The shortest prayer in the parable, spoken by someone who considered himself to have no right to be there, and it is the one Jesus validates in the following verse. It works as a practical counterweight to any demand for religious vocabulary.
7Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you.
8For everyone who asks, receives; and whoever seeks, finds; and to anyone who knocks, it will be opened.
The invitation to ask, seek and knock comes in three verbs of continued effort, not of a single attempt. It is the text that supports persistence in prayer without turning it into bargaining, because nothing there speaks of merit on the part of the one asking.