Hallowed Be Thy Name: Innovative Ideas for Practicing the Discipline of Prayer

By Chelsea Kingston

My first lesson in the power of prayer came just after my sixth birthday. My parents sat me down on the family room sofa and told me that the baby sister I had been praying for every night for the past three-plus years was on her way. They were baffled—they had given up hope that they could conceive again. Somehow, childlike faith persevered in my stubborn little six-year-old heart, and although I was ecstatic, I don’t recall being too surprised. I proudly wore my “I’m a Big Sister” button to school for weeks after baby Taylor was born. She trumped the puppy I had also been pleading for but never received, and I was convinced: this was a God Who heard and answered prayer.

But in my grownup life, prayer can seem a bit, well, stilted. Lying in bed, rattling off a laundry list of requests to God just doesn’t seem to cut it anymore. How would my relationship with my best girlfriend survive, after all, if our communication consisted only of my asking her to do things for me? Surely there’s more to prayer than just voicing the things I want and need, right?

So in the pursuit of knowing and honoring God (and not just asking Him for things), here are some ideas for practicing the discipline of prayer:

Pray through Scripture

Someone once told me that prayer and the Bible encompass our two-way communication with God. You can pray and pray, but if you’re not reading the Word, you’re not very likely to hear Him answer. (And even if we do hear Him, how can we know His voice apart from His Word?)

The Bible is not only our primary mode of hearing from God; it’s also our greatest source of inspiration for what to say to Him. Don’t know how to pray for a friend? Look no further than Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians (Eph. 3:14–21).

Struggling with how to express your heart to God? Learn from David’s example in the Psalms. (Psalm 30, 31, 51, 57, and 145 are good starting places.)

Want to practice taking God at His Word and standing firm on His promises? Pray His Word right back to Him (See Isaiah 54, 55, 2 Corinthians 5, Ephesians 1, etc.). In every chapter you read, practice finding something that prompts you to pray. And when you sense that maybe God is speaking to you, go back to Scripture and see how it lines up. God’s Word is always our primary authority in recognizing truth.

Use ACTS

Okay, okay, I know this sounds cliché. Most of us have probably been told a million times—in Sunday School or Bible studies—to use the acronym ACTS as a guide for prayer. But I promise, it’s not as tired a method as you might think.

The best prayer group I was ever a part of met once a week during my senior year of college to pray for the Greek system on my campus. There were four of us, and every week we would each take a different letter: A for adoration, C for confession, T for thanksgiving, and S for supplication. There’s something powerful about including all of these elements.

Here’s how it breaks down:

First, adore God for Who He is. Tell Him He’s mighty and strong, the sovereign God, the treasure of your heart. Healer. Redeemer. Covenant Keeper. Friend. Lover. God of justice and compassion. (This is where studying the Bible is so important—it’s where we learn about God’s nature!)

Next, confess your sin before this perfect God. Start by admitting that you are none of those things you just listed about Him. You are broken, fallen, wounded. Although you’re no longer enslaved to sin thanks to His grace, you still stumble. You need Him. Confess anything weighing on your heart, and then know that you are forgiven, dear sister!

Then, thank God for the things He’s done. Start by thanking Him for His redemptive plan, for the cross, and for forgiving you. Thank Him for giving you a new identity in Christ and for putting the Holy Spirit in you. Thank Him for prayers He has answered and blessings He’s given.

Finally, ask God to accomplish the things that are weighing on your heart. Ask Him to draw people to Himself. Ask Him to use you in your work, your studying, and your leisure time. Ask Him to heal sick people in your life, to help you manage your finances, to give you diligence in your job or at school, and to meet all your needs. Ask Him to continue to reveal Himself to you and to make you more like His Son.

Give Generously

There is nothing in my life that motivates me to pray like giving does. First of all, being generous in giving forces you to rely on God to meet your most basic needs. Second, giving will turn your heart toward whatever—or whomever—your giving benefits. Have you ever heard someone say that you can see what someone values by looking at her checkbook? Or maybe for our generation, it’s her online bank statement. Either way, the principle is so true. Our spending reflects what we most treasure.

As we give generously to the local church, to global missions, to the poor and the hurting, we will be motivated to pray. So connect with a missionary from your church and begin supporting her. Sponsor a child through Compassion International or Food for the Hungry. Organize a WorldCrafts^SM fair through WMU^® for some friends. As you see firsthand how God is using these ministries, prayer will be a natural response.

Lean on Liturgy

I grew up in a Southern Baptist church, so liturgy wasn’t something I knew very much about. But as I have studied different traditions, I’ve come to see it as a very valuable thing. Let’s face it, girls, there are some days when we don’t know where to start in our prayers, don’t know what to say to this God Who has paid such a heavy price for relationship with us. I could talk to a brick wall, but sometimes this prayer thing is just . . . hard. That’s where liturgy comes in.

I’ll stand by my Baptist roots in saying that liturgy divorced from sincere love from God, is rote and empty—a “resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1). But grab the Book of Common Prayer and you’ll see that some of these words are so rich! Because many of the liturgical prayers are taken straight from Scripture, they can guide us as we learn to relate to God in deeper and deeper ways.

My favorite author and a lover of liturgy, Lauren Winner has said of prayer in her book Girl Meets God (Shaw Books, 2004), “It is a great gift when God gives me a stirring, a feeling, a something-at-all in prayer. But work is being done whether I feel it or not. Sediment is being laid. Words of praise are becoming the most basic words in my head. They are becoming the fallback words, drowning out advertising jingles and professors’ lectures and sometimes even my own interior monologue.”

May we let words of praise to our King become the most natural words of all as we seek His face in prayer.

Chelsea Kingston recently moved to Bethel, Connecticut, where she works for Walnut Hill Community Church. She misses Southern accents, sweet tea, and Chick-fil-A, but she loves seeing God at work in the spiritual darkness of New England! She blogs at www.wherethecloudsettles.blogspot.com.