Help! I’m Bad at Prayer

If you’re like me, maybe you can resonate with what Paul Miller describes in A Praying Life as “Prayer ADHD.” Sit down and try to pray, eyes closed, praying “in your heart,” your mind easily drifts to thinking about what you’re making for dinner tomorrow night. The following example is not too far from an internal monologue of mine as I sit down to pray in silence:

“Father, thank you for this day, and the good gifts you’ve given me. You’ve been so good to me, through my family and friends… [PAUSE] I just pray for tomorrow for my meeting with [insert name here], and that you would be over it. … [PAUSE] Speaking of which… Don't I need to throw that in my calendar? I forgot to throw it in my calendar. If I don’t throw it in my calendar right now, I’m going to forget about the meeting and miss it. [Insert me picking up my phone to put it in my calendar]. [Insert me throwing my phone down because I realize I was praying] Oh yeah – um, God, I pray that you would go before me in that meeting…”

And the cycle continues. You get the point. Odds are, you’ve been there. Recently, however, the Lord has been showing me some simple prayer tools that have helped me to both grow in my depth of prayer and the seriousness with which I approach it. To be honest, I have long suffered from a prayerlessness that prioritizes activity over intimacy, service over reliance. The question then, for many of us, is this: How can we develop a more robust prayer life? 

Praying Like a Puritan

After listening to a podcast on prayer and picking up my copy of The Valley of Vision (a collection of Puritan prayers), I’ve recently been reconsidering the depth of my own prayer life in light of those in church history. One of the clearest places I’ve seen this kind of depth is in the prayers of the puritans. When you consider the ACTS prayer model (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication), few show us a portrait of “adoration” like the Puritans. For example, see this prayer from The Valley of Vision that I’ve translated into modern English, titled “The All-Good”:

My God, you have helped me to see, that whatever good be in honor and rejoicing, how good is he who gives them, and can take them away; that blessedness does not lie so much in receiving good … but in holding out your glory and virtue; that it is an amazing thing to see Deity in a creature, speaking, acting, filling, shining through it; that nothing is good but you, that I am near good when I am near you, that to be like you is a glorious thing: This is my magnet, my attraction.

They certainly prayed with depth. Here are three practices that have helped me grow as I’ve reflected on Puritan prayer:

1. Lofty Prayer

Upon reading such a prayer, you may be quick to bring up Jesus’s words in Matthew 6 as an accusation that the Puritans prayed “empty” prayers:

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” - Matthew 6:5–7

Is this type of prayer “empty”? At one point in my Christian walk, I must confess I was concerned that anytime someone used words like “adore”, “glory”, or other language that’s not used in daily conversation that someone must be using “empty phrases” and falling into a kind of hypocritical self-righteousness.

However, in the greater context of what Jesus is saying here in this passage, what you’ll see is that his particular rebuke is not on the words that people use, but the heart behind their words. Notice that the point of them praying publicly is so that “they may be seen by others.” This is not the Puritan model of prayer. The reason we have these prayers recorded for us, is that they have been discovered in their own personal journals. Few Puritans would ever have dreamed that these prayers would be any more than words between them and their God alone. 

In that case, what does that mean for the words we use? Even upon a short study of New Testament prayers, it would be easy to see that Christians use deep and rich language to describe the God they’re speaking to (Philippians 2, Acts 2–4, Colossians 1). In turn, I would argue that there is a difference between the loftiness of Puritan prayers and the emptiness of hypocritical prayers. If, in praying in front of others, you choose words to sound intellectual or like the ‘best prayer’ in the room, then the warning about empty phrases may apply. But if you are genuinely struck by God’s majesty, it becomes difficult not to use lofty language. In response, here’s my challenge to you: In public, pray simply but intelligibly. In private, pray boldly and with depth.

2. Written Prayer

Second, and briefly, you’ll note in books like this one that Puritans wrote their prayers down. Upon a brief skim through church history, you’ll notice Christians have always done this (see Augustine’s Confessions for a great primer). Buying a Moleskin journal and penning your prayers down are one of the best ways to slow down and clearly articulate your prayers to God. Walking through the ACTS prayer model in a journal, for example, is a wonderful way to consider different pieces of your prayers that you may never have. You can analyze your prayers as you write them. Not to mention, a mentor of mine used to say that having a pen in your hand as you pray is an act of faith, because what you’re saying in that moment is “God, I’m ready to hear from you.” It becomes a conversation! 

We tend to see this form of prayer as less-personal, less intimate. However, imagine that you were called before the high king of a foreign land who has promised to answer any requests you have. Would you not want to write down clearly what you were to read to him? The same must be true to the High King of the universe. He cares far more about your heart behind your prayers than simply the medium of your prayers. So, a second response remains for you: Pick up a pen, and begin writing your prayers.

3. Spoken Prayer

After writing down your prayers, my encouragement would be for you to “go into your room and shut the door,” (Matt. 6:6) and to pray out loud. You can either recite what you’ve written, or additional prayers that you have not. Of course, God can hear the prayers said in your heart. Surely, this is why Paul says “pray without ceasing,” (1 Thess. 5:16–18). But verbal prayers seem to me as those special moments in which you can “make your requests known to God,” (Phil. 4:6–7).

If you’re like me, distracted, inconsistent in your prayer life, suffering from that “Prayer ADHD,” there is hope. Prayer is not about perfection, but dependance. Start small: set your phone in a different room, write, speak, and adore. Develop a focused prayer life. The Lord wants to hear from you.