How to Create a Habit of Prayer: 10 Ways to Pray → A More Beautiful Life Collective

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Prayer is a crucial spiritual discipline for deepening our relationship with God. But, sometimes we struggle knowing how and what to pray. In this post, we talk about why prayer is so important and I give you 10 ways to pray to help strengthen your prayer life and grow your relationship with God.

S2E29 – How to Celebrate Lent as a Protestant – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast

The season of Lent is a time in the Church Calendar to observe a period of preparation before the joyous season of Easter. Lent reminds us of the beauty of self-denial and obedience as we await our future resurrection. Today, we'll talk about how to celebrate Lent as a Protestant. This is a beautiful tradition that deserves a place in your year!Read more at the blog post: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/how-to-celebrate-lent-as-a-protestant/ Get our 1 page guide to Lent here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.kit.com/e3a84b5a60 Get the Celebrating the Church Calendar Guide here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/church-calendar-guide-a-pdf-guide-to-all-the-seasons-of-the-liturgical-year/ …Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode: I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you canlearn a little bit more about me here. While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast,A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen onSpotify orApple Podcasts, or watch onYouTube. Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies. Want to support A More Beautiful Life Collective in the creation of podcasts, posts, and other resources? You can make a one-time, monthly, or yearly donation here. I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources atA More Beautiful Life Collective Shop.Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.

Hey everyone and welcome to Season 2 Episode 36 of A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast. One common theme in the books I’ve been reading since the beginning of the year has been Spiritual Discipline. As I’ve read through these disciplines, I’ve been motivated to incorporate more of this study into my life.

On the podcast, we’ve thought about our morning routines and emphasized the importance of a quiet time with God. Your Bible Study at Home should include regular Bible reading, but it also should include other elements of Spiritual Disciplines, including prayer, meditation, and worship.

When people talk about Spiritual Disciplines, they often key in on the trifecta of reading your Bible, going to Church, and praying. And truly, these are the top three ‘tools in our toolbelt’ for deepening our relationship with God. As Donald Whitney says in his book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, Spiritual Disciplines are the practices we do to train ourselves in godliness.

Today, we are going to talk about the importance of the Spiritual Discipline of Prayer. We are going to talk about why we should pray, and then we will look at 10 ways to pray. These ways to pray will enliven your spiritual life and deepen your relationship with God.

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Why should we pray?

What is prayer? Put most simply, it is the conversation between us and God. When we pray, we praise God and present our requests to him. Psalm 141:2 says, “Let my prayer be set before You like incense, the lifting up of my hands, like the evening sacrifice.” God desires our prayers.

I would imagine that if I asked you about the importance of prayer you would emphatically shake your head and say, “Yes! Of course, I need to pray.” Prayer is central to the Christian life, but why? Why should we pray?

We should pray because:

Prayer is a spiritual discipline modeled by the ‘greats of faith’ in the Bible, including Jesus.
Prayer is explicitly commanded in the Bible.
Prayer is the best means of effecting change in the world.

Prayer is modeled throughout the Bible.

Prayer is found throughout Scripture from the Old Testament to the New. Abraham prayed. Jesus prayed. The apostles prayed.

In fact, Jesus is frequently shown to go off into quiet places and pray. His last night before the cross was spent in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt. 26). Not only was he praying, but he also begged his disciples to do the same (which they didn’t do – instead they fell asleep. How many of us can relate to that?)

Prayer is explicitly commanded in the Bible.

There are explicit commands to pray:

1 Timothy 2:1 – “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for all people”.
James 5:16 – “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed”.
Philippians 4:6-7 – “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”.
Ephesians 6:18 – “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people”.

There is not much gray area in these verses. Simply, we are commanded to pray.

Prayer brings about change in us and the world.

Through our prayer, we change our hearts and our world. God uses our prayers to change us – our attitudes, desires, and inclinations. Our prayers are truly sanctifying us and making us clean. Not only this, our prayers can effect real change in the world. Through our prayers, God is working.

There is no one verse that I could point you to that says explicitly that God will change the world through our prayers. But, there are a plethora of stories in the Bible that show that God hears our prayers and brings about a certain outcome as an answer to them.

One story in particular shows this. When King Hezekiah was facing down a massive army bent on destroying the kingdom of Judah, he prayed to God. God responded in this way, “Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, this is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him. Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came.’” (Isaiah 37). God’s word does not return void. Hezekiah and the armies of Judah struck down 187,000 Assyrians because God heard his prayer and answered it.

And, God promises to listen and heed our prayers. These are just a few of the verses that state that God does in fact answer our prayers.

1 John 5:14-15 – “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”
John 15:7 – “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”
John 15:16 – “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”
Mark 11:24 – “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
Hebrews 11:6 – “And without faith, it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

God doesn’t just say that our prayers will change the world in a general sense. Instead, he says he will answer our prayers specifically. If we pray to him, it will be done for us if we ask it in Jesus’ name.

Related: Should we pray to Jesus?

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The Simplest of Ways to Pray: Just Talking to God

Truly, our prayers are just a conversation with God, but it can be difficult to cultivate a habit of prayer. The simplest of the ways to pray is to just start talking with God about our day, our concerns, and the ways we are thankful for him.

We may never need to go beyond this simplest of ways to pray, but sometimes, we grow fatigued in our prayers. We may feel like we are just saying the ‘same old things about the same old things.’ We may also feel like we lack direction in our prayers. We simply don’t know what we should do.

The following 10 ways to pray will help you to add some structure to your prayer life to breathe new life into your prayer life. All are based on biblical principles. You won’t do all these methods every day, but incorporating each of them regularly into your life will help deepen your relationship with God.

10 Other Ways to Pray

Ways to Pray #1: Examen and Other Methods of Prayer

The Examen and other methods of prayer are ways to structure your prayers. If you’ve been praying often enough, you’ve probably experienced a season where your prayers devolved into a self-focused complaining session (or at least I know I have). When you pray, you want to balance out your requests for yourself with also praying for others and praising God, These methods help to structure your prayer to do just that.

The Examen is a prayer method developed by the Jesuits. This method could be used for a prayer prayed out loud, silently, or written in a journal.

The Examen uses the following format:

Place yourself in God’s presence. Give thanks for God’s great love for you.
Pray for the grace to understand how God is acting in your life.
Review your day — recall specific moments and your feelings at the time.
Reflect on what you did, said, or thought in those instances. Were you drawing closer to God, or further away?
Look toward tomorrow — think of how you might collaborate more effectively with God’s plan. Be specific, and conclude with “Our Father” (Our Father is just another name for the Lord’s Prayer.)

This would be a great prayer to pray at the end of each day to connect with God and reframe your day with God in mind.

Other methods of prayer include:

5-Finger Prayer: Each finger represents a group of people to lift in prayer.
- Thumb – People closest to you
- Index finger – Church leaders, teachers, mentors, and other ministry members
- Middle finger – National and local leaders
- Ring finger – Those weak, in need, sick, or in trouble or suffering.
- Pinkie finger – Pray for yourself
P-R-A-Y:
- Praise
- Repent
- Ask
- Yield
A-C-T-S:
- Adoration
- Confession
- Thanksgiving
- Supplication
Pray the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:2–4 and Matthew 6:9–13)

Ways to Pray #2: Prayer Journal

Whereas the methods of prayer offer structure to your prayers (regardless of how you pray), a prayer journal offers a way to record all those prayers. Praying journals are places where you write down your requests to God and your praises to God. Over time, they can be a key place to go to strengthen your faith in God as you see the way that he has answered your prayers.

Tips for Keeping a Prayer Journal:

Figure out when you’ll add writing in your prayer journal to your daily routine
Keep running lists of prayers and praises. Note: These are separate from your journal-type prayers. They are truly a list with space to record answers to the prayers. I recommend making one running list per month and using that to guide your prayers for others.
Journal through your thoughts with God (You can use the method of prayers to help you.) Write and date your prayers.
Store helpful sayings, ideas, and teachings that help you in your Christian life from sermons, podcasts, devotions, and other resources to look back on.
Use your prayer journal to reflect on and evaluate your prayer life by reviewing it seasonally or annually.

Ways to Pray #3: Prayer Beads

The Rosary is a long-standing Catholic tradition that bears a lot of symbolism and also gets a lot of flak from Protestants – I believe rightly so. (You can read one person’s argument of praying the rosary as a Protestant here.) I don’t believe we should pray to Mary, so why am I talking about the Rosary?

Because I’ve found prayer beads to truly help focus me during my time of prayer.

I use the rosary prayer beads when I pray, but I don’t pray through the ‘Hail Marys” or other Catholic Prayers. Instead, the prayer beads offer a kinesthetic reminder to focus my heart on the task at hand.

When I pray using the rosary prayer beads, I follow the following steps:

The Cross (Crucifix): I spend time in worship, thanking God for Jesus and praising him.
Pendant Bead #1: I pray for my spouse
Pendant Bead #2: I pray for my kids
Pendant Bead #3: I pray for home and finances.
Pendant Bead #4: I pray for my church and community.
Pendant Bead #5: I pray for my work and ministry
The Center Bead: I pray for my heart and for any struggles I have personally.
The Loop: I pray for the prayers on my prayer lists (that I’ve gotten from my church or written in my prayer journal) You could stop and say a doxology in between each decade like the Catholics do when they say the rosary. Here is a list of doxologies in the New Testament to choose from.
To end: You could end the prayer time by praying the Lord’s Prayer and/or reciting the Apostle’s Creed. (Get your copy of the creeds here.)

Ways to Pray #4: Praying the Bible

If you find yourself struggling with the actual words to say, choosing one of the prayer methods we’ve mentioned will help you. You could also follow the method described by Donald Whitney in his book Praying the Bible.

To pray the Bible, you use a passage in the Bible as a trellis for your prayers. As you read the passage, you pray what comes to mind. The verses guide what you think about, but you have the freedom to pray about anything that pops into your mind.

Though any passage could be used for this method, Whitney recommends praying through the Psalms. He uses the Psalm a Day Method (you can find a PDF of which Psalm to read here).

To use this method, you scan 5 Psalms each day and choose which one speaks to you at that moment. To figure out the psalm you should read for that day, start with the psalm that corresponds with the day of the month and then add 30 five times. (So, on the 9th of the month, you would read Psalm 9, 39, 69, 99, and 129.) On the 31st, you rescan Ps. 119.

This helps to build familiarity with the Psalms because you’ll be reviewing the whole book each month. It also adds flexibility to your reading because not every Psalm will speak to your current situation.

Ways to Pray #5: Lectio Divina

The Lectio Divina – or the Divine Reading – is a monastic prayer method that also prays through scripture in a contemplative way.

The standard format of the Lectio Divina is as follows:

Lectio (reading): An attentive, slow, repetitious recitation of a short passage of scripture.
Meditatio (meditation): An effort to understand the passage and apply it to my own life.
Oratio (prayer): Engaging or talking with God about the passage.
Contemplatio (contemplation): Allowing oneself to be absorbed in the words of God as the Holy Spirit draws us into His presence through scripture.

To choose your reading for the Lectio Divina, you could use your current Bible reading or a passage from a daily prayer book.

Ways to Pray #6: Prayer Walks and other ways to move your body

We often imagine prayer as being seated with our eyes closed and our hands clasped. Most of us in low-church, contemporary settings have probably never even prayed on our knees. Changing our posture to include our bodies is a great way to center our focus on the task at hand.

Here are a few ways to change our posture and focus on minds:

Kneel in prayer
Prostrate yourself (Laying face down on the ground–the ultimate sign of humility. This is the posture many took when meeting Jesus, for example, in Luke 5:12-13)
Stand with arms outstretched, fingers spread, and palms up (like in the picture). This is an ancient posture of prayer symbolizing an act of surrender to God and a petition to receive God’s blessings.
Practice Genuflection by bending one knee in reverence as one would do to a king.
Walking/Running–Prayer walks/runs can be a good way to connect with God.
Drawing/Doodling/Coloring–For those who may be able to focus more on God if they are doing something with their hands

Ways to Pray #7: Praying the Hours

1 Thessalonians 5:17 commands us to pray without ceasing. This seems like a daunting, impossible task. We may pray in conjunction with our quiet time, but we move on and may not turn our thoughts back to prayer until we gather at the dinner table to ‘say grace.’

The monastic system took this call to pray without ceasing very seriously. They built a system to remind the monks to stop their work in the breweries, libraries, and gardens and pray. This system was called praying the hours.

The Format for Praying the Hours was as follows:

Lauds/Matins: The Morning Prayer and/or The Office of Reading
Terce: Midmorning Prayer
Sext: Midday Prayer
None: Midafternoon Prayer
Vespers: Evening Prayer
Compline: Night Prayer

A bell would ring out across the abbey and call the monks to set down their tools and kneel in prayer. We might not be living in a monastery, but we can incorporate some of this practice into our lives today. You can decide on the times of day you would like to pray and then set a timer on your phone. When it goes off, stop what you are doing (even if it’s inconvenient) and pray.

Justin Whitmel Earley follows this practice as part of his Common Rule. He prays first thing in the morning, at midday, and right before bed. When he prays, he also gets down on knees as a way to further quiet his mind and focus on prayer.

Ways to Pray #8: Prayer Books and other prayers

The use of liturgies or a book of common prayer can be beneficial in giving words to say when you don’t know what to say. You can read more about liturgies here.

I’ve been using the Celtic Daily Prayers this year as part of my night-time devotions and have been particularly encouraged by it.

Ways to Pray #9: The Jesus Prayer and Other Breath Prayers

Jesus said the words he has spoken are full of Spirit and Life (John 6:63). When we pray, we can connect to the spirit and life we have through our breath. A breath prayer does just this.

To pray a breath prayer, pick a passage of scripture you would like to meditate on (probably a Psalm) and focus on your breath while you are praying.

Bill Gaultiere of Soul Shepherding explains, “An example of the kind of Breath Prayers that I use is “The Lord is my Shepherd… I shall not want.” Here is one way I do this: Breathe in slowly and deeply as you whisper or think: “The Lord is my Shepherd…” Hold your breath and your consciousness of God’s presence… And then exhale as you whisper or think: “…I shall not want.”

An ancient version of breath prayers can be found in the Psalms when they stated ‘Selah.’ This was a time to pause and reflect.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers developed their own breath prayers when they prayed the Jesus prayer, which is “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me a sinner.” A new modern version of this prayer could be: “Lord, have mercy, Thee I adore. Into thy hands.”

Ways to Pray #10: Community Prayer

If you regularly attend church, you won’t be surprised to see that we should pray together not just alone. But, when we talk about spiritual disciplines, we often overlook the interpersonal disciplines. Corporate and communal prayers are just as important.

We regularly pray over our services, worship, and tithes and offerings in our church. But, how else can you incorporate communal prayers?

Start a prayer chain (by either text or phone call)
Meet together with a prayer group
Plan an event that includes prayer and fasting for a specific purpose
Have a time of prayer and praises in your bible study or church service.

Incorporating These Ways to Pray in Your Life

Prayer is crucial for a mature Christian Life. We need to be mindful of our prayer life and seek out ways to strengthen it through different ways of prayer.

By incorporating one of these ten ways to pray, you will grow in your relationship with God and see the power of prayer in your life.

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Comment below to let us know some of the different ways that you pray. Make sure you’re subscribed so that you never miss an episode. You can also leave a rating and review wherever you listen to help others find the show.

Until next time, keep creating a life you love and cultivating your heart for God.

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