A Simple Way To Pray
March 29th, 2010
Do you have trouble praying? You’re not alone!
Long ago, a Barber also had trouble praying. He asked his pastor, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther how to pray.
You can find this pastor’s answer here at the link:
A Simple Way To Pray by Martin Luther
For we whose hearts can become so quickly darkened and overcast by our sin and unbelief, Pastor Martin recommends we come to Scripture and learn to pray by seeing each verse as a “school book”, a “song book”, a “penitential book”, and a “prayer book”. In other words, we learn to pray by acknowledging how God’s Truth teaches us, moves us to praise God, searches us and calls us to repent, and how we then are instructed to pray for ourselves and others.
Don’t know where to start?
He suggested the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostle’s Creed. Or a verse from your daily scripture readings may suffice.
But the point is to submit ourselves to God’s Word so that the Holy Spirit may teach us and teach us how to pray!
One word of caution. Because the Holy Spirit meets us in prayer, no form of prayer should be so fixed that it cannot be broken in our private prayers. As Pastor Martin says:
It may happen occasionally that I may get lost among so many ideas in one petition that I forego the other six. If such an abundance of good thoughts comes to us we ought to disregard the other petitions, make room for such thoughts, listen in silence, and under no circumstances obstruct them. The Holy Spirit himself preaches here, and one word of his sermon is far better than a thousand of our prayers. Many times I have learned more from one prayer than I might have learned from much reading and speculation.
May the Lord Himself teach us how to pray His Word!
Related information:
