How to Pray- A Beginner’s Guide

Are you looking to start praying, but unsure of how to pray or what to say? I get it, prayer can seem like an intimidating thing in the beginning, but once you begin, you’ll realize it’s quite simple to do. As you start praying more and more, your confidence level starts to increase as well. 

This is the beginner’s guide on how to pray but can be used for anyone. Whether you have been a Christian for a long time, or are a new believer, this guide is for anyone who is looking to start praying more. 

So let’s dive right in!

What is prayer?

Prayer is talking with God as you would a best friend. It really is as simple as that. You can talk to Him about your dreams, goals, regrets, hurts, confusion, victories, and so on. You can ask Him for help. You can cry out to Him. You can praise Him for what He has done. You can talk to God about anything and everything! 

What is the purpose of prayer?

The ultimate goal of prayer is not to change your circumstances, but to change your perspective. The best way to do that is to have communication with God and talk to Him like He’s your best friend. Imagine he’s sitting in the passenger seat next to you as you’re driving in your car, and you’re just talking to him about your life and the things going on just like you would with a best friend. You tell them your hurts, hangups, joys, successes, things your excited about, disappointed in, people who have maybe hurt you. You can talk about anything with Him and ask Him for a new perspective and better ways to handle things or to help you with certain situations and to help you to flee from certain temptations or struggles so that you can have victory in your life. 

Prayer Tips:

1. There is no right or wrong way to pray. Everyone prays a little differently, and that is ok! God knows your heart and wants to hear from you. He doesn’t care about the way it’ll sound coming out of your mouth. All that matters is that while you are taking the time to talk with God, you are open and honest with Him. 
2. There are tons of different ways to go about prayer, and there are tons of different prayers for different situations.
3. Prayer is more about changing your perspective than it is about changing your circumstances.

How to pray

Prayer sandwich method

The prayer sandwich method is a simple and effective way to pray, focusing more on giving thanks and praising God. It can be an easy trap to ask more than to give thanks and to complain more than to praise and worship. This prayer sandwich method will help keep those thoughts in a proper perspective as you start and end with thanksgiving and praise.

Thank him

You thank him like you’d thank your best friend for being there for you always and for being such a great friend. This is also the time to thank God for all the blessings he has given you both little and big things. 

Ask Him

Ask God for what you need. He wants to help you. God is a giver and wants to provide all that you need and more. Try to remember that it’s not about praying away all your problems. God wants to give you a new perspective on how to view your relationships and how to view life. 

Seek Him

Seek after God and ask for God’s will to be done in your life. Ask that He would transform you from the inside out. 

Praise him

You can praise Him just like you’d encourage a best friend when they do good things. When you see good things happening in your life, you can praise God and give Him the glory because He’s the one doing all the good things and bringing the good into your life. This is a great time to praise God for not only what He does but who He is! 

(Highly Recommended) Secret Sauce:

Pray for others in your life, whether they’ve done you good or bad, whether they make you happy or sad. When you begin to pray for them, it will increase your love for them and allow you to see God moving. 

Things to remember

Keep it simple, You don’t have to say “Heavenly Father” or “Almighty God” or some crazy thing, but you can make it personal and say, “Dad”, “God,” “Father”, “Bestie”, “Papa” whatever you want to say and just start a communication. Believe that God is listening, because He always is. 

It’s not going to be perfect. It will develop. It’s kind of like when a baby starts speaking. At first, it’s cooing then babbling, and then they say some phrases or sentences, then it turns into a whole story about the random thing that they decided to tell you about. No matter where it starts for you, God loves it. 

The most important thing I can recommend about prayer is that you start somewhere. It doesn’t have to look a certain way. There’s no formula. There’s no way to earn brownie points. There’s no special chemistry that’s going to get you better results, different results, or a quicker answer to prayer. It’s just developing that relationship with God so that He can talk back to you, and when you begin to hear Him communicate back to you, that’s when you’ll have quicker and better success doing it God’s way. 

Always remember that God loves you and cares about you and that He’s your friend. He wants to hear from you. 

There you have it! The beginner’s guide on how to pray! If this guide has helped you at all, I would love to hear about it in the comments! Please leave in the comments any questions about prayer or anything you would like to add to this guide! It is my prayer that this guide encourages you as you begin to develop a deeper prayer life with Jesus.