Pray BadShembull

Prayer: How do I do it? 

I still remember the first time I ever prayed out loud in front of people. I was not even a Christian yet. I’d been going to church for a few months and started volunteering in the kids' programming during Sunday services. I went to this training session, and at the end of it, our leader asked that we go around in a circle and pray. I was the last person in the circle, and I remember almost hyperventilating. Everyone had already prayed everything I could think of by the time it came to be my turn. So I prayed what, in hindsight, was clearly a rough prayer. It felt so bad, and I felt humiliated.

But when we read how Jesus teaches us to pray, we see that it might not have been as bad of a prayer as I thought. He teaches us to pray simply, to pray earnestly, and to pray from the heart. It doesn’t need to be fancy. It just needs to declare that we acknowledge God for who He is, ask Him to help us forgive, and give us a place to ask God to bless us too.

Check out Jesus teaching us how to pray in today's scripture reading!