How to Develop (and Maintain) a Habit of Daily Prayer
The Scriptures don’t spell out why morning and evening prayer is important, but we can venture a solid guess: it brackets the whole day with dependence on God.
Recently I posted tips for developing a habit of daily Bible reading. Now it’s time for the other half of the conversation. God speaks to us in his word; we listen and speak back to him in prayer. Eugene Peterson describes the relation of the word and prayer beautifully:
[...] After listening comes praying. Prayer is first of all a means of listening. Prayer is an act of attention.
We are not used to this. We suppose we are in charge of prayer. We aren’t. God has spoken. We are required to enter a world of listening to God.
Prayer is dialogue with the God on whose every word we hang. And being that his word is life (John 6:63), prayer, too, is life. We must pray to truly live.
It is very easy to begin praying for everything under the sun that we want, but such a prayer would accurately be summarized, “My kingdom come, my will be done.”
Here are some principles and practices for a healthy, habitual prayer life. I will start with a few basic patterns Scripture sets, then unpack the Lord’s Prayer, and then end with simple tips to help you get started. If you want less teaching on prayer and more practical tips, skip to the last heading, “Some Practical Tips.”
Patterns for Prayer
The Scriptures provide three basic patterns for personal prayer that we should follow: it should happen mornings and evenings, be constant, and be in private. (Public prayer is certainly affirmed in Scripture [e.g. 1 Tim 2:8], but we’re focusing on private prayer here.)
Mornings and Evenings
The pattern of our Lord was to get away in the mornings and evenings to pray:
And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. (Mark 1:35)
In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. (Luke 6:12)
The psalmists were also known to engage in morning and evening prayer, especially when in anguish:
O Lord, God of my salvation,
I cry out day and night before you.
Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry! (Psalm 88:1–2)
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest. (Psalm 22:2)*
*Note that Psalm 22 is a psalm foretelling the sufferings of Christ.
The Scriptures don’t spell out why morning and evening prayer is important, but we can venture a solid guess: it brackets the whole day with dependence on God. Scripture often uses what’s called a merism to speak of a whole. For example, “heaven and earth” speaks of all creation; “east and west” speaks of the furthest reaches. Similarly, “morning and evening” encapsulates the whole day. Prayer is a way of saying to God, “This whole day is for you, and I need you for all of it.”
This leads to the next pattern of prayer.
Constant
1 Thessalonians 5:17 tells us to pray without ceasing. Many are quick to point out (correctly) that this doesn’t literally mean to never stop praying. We see this supported by the logic of the Bible: God commands many other things in his word beyond prayer; if we were to only pray, we would violate God’s other commands. In fact, prayer leads to godly action. If all we did was pray and pray and pray but never acted, our obedience would be severely lacking.
What, then, does it mean to pray without ceasing? You might think of prayer like breathing. All day today, while you were doing what you do—working, shuttling kids to sports practice, folding laundry, biking, what have you—you were also breathing. In fact, breathing sustained all those activities. Unconsciously, without meaning to, you breathed without ceasing.
Similarly we are to pray without ceasing; that is, prayer is to be a regular activity sustaining what we do. Are you in a heated argument with your spouse? Pause to pray, even if silently to yourself for a few seconds. Are you headed into a difficult conversation at work? Pray. Are you about to share the gospel with a neighbor? Pray before, during, and after. Whatever you do … pray before, during, and after, if you can. I’m pausing right now to pray as I finish this article.
Constant prayer is not only a way of calling on God to empower you to do his will in all things; it is also a reminder that you have the constant companionship of the Most High God. Constant prayer is tapping into the omnipresent grace of God.
In Private
Finally, one other pattern Scripture commands is that we pray in private, especially so as not to be seen by others—that is, to parade our piety:
And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Personal prayer is a sacred place for you and God, a time to let go of pretense and stand honestly before the Lord. Perhaps this is why we like to avoid it. In Henri Nouwen’s words,
The discipline of the heart [prayer] is probably the discipline we give up most easily. Entering into the solitude of our closet and standing there in the presence of our God with nothing but our own nakedness, vulnerability, and sinfulness, requires an intense commitment to the spiritual life. Personal prayer is not rewarded by acclaim, does not translate into helpful projects, and only rarely leads to the inner experience of peace and joy. Yet, personal prayer is the true test of our vocation.
Private prayer is the exact opposite of showy prayer. In private prayer, you are exposed and purified. In showy prayer, you are exalted and praised.
Yet, the burden and the gift of prayer is the same: purification. Intimacy with God. Honesty. Once we repent of our desire to be praised, the secrecy of prayer becomes a gift. Our constant, personal, private prayer is one of the few places in our lives that we do not have to present to others. We don’t have to point to our accomplishments. We don’t have to justify ourselves. We don’t have to find “something to show” for investments. We simply trust God to redeem and reward this humble act of dependence.
There is more to say than this about prayer, but we’ll have to limit ourselves. Just note that the Scriptures also teach that, among other things, our prayers should be persistent (Luke 18:1-8), believing (Matthew 21:22; James 1:6-8), and done according to God’s will (1 John 5:14-15).
A Method for Prayer
When we actually get away to pray, what do we do? Well, our Lord tells us how to pray:
Pray then like this:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. (Matt 6:9–13)
There are several forms of prayer in this prayer alone:
Praise
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Jesus guides us in always situating our prayers to be about God and his glory. (Note, too, that he calls us to pray mindful of our participation with one another: “Our Father …” Personal, godly prayer always has in mind the community of faith. More on that later.)
Whatever we pray, our concern should be that God’s name is hallowed, or glorified and lifted up—esteemed as it should be.
Petition
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Here we orient our whole prayer towards God’s will. It is very easy to begin praying for everything under the sun that we want, but such a prayer would accurately be summarized, “My kingdom come, my will be done.” Rather, we are to begin our prayers by asking for what God wants. This changes the entire course of the prayer.
Gratitude
Give us this day our daily bread.
While this is also a petition, one cannot help but move quickly to gratitude with this reminder that God put food on the table yesterday, and he will do it again today. “Daily bread” here doesn’t only mean food; it is a stand-in for our material needs. By praying in this way, we remember our dependence on God for everything, including the needs of the body.
Confession
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Again, while this prayer doesn’t include an actual confession, it deals with the reality of sin. One cannot truly ask for forgiveness without an accompanying confession. So, in praying for forgiveness, we are led onto the necessary, often difficult, and always freeing path of confession and forgiveness. Having forgiveness from God, we are then led to take inventory of wrongs committed against us that we must forgive.
Supplication
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Finally, we end with supplication, a prayer for others (and ourselves) and their spiritual well-being. The Christian life is war (Eph 6:12), so we must pray for God to fight our battles and guide us in holiness.
Another way people have grouped the main kinds of prayer—and this is what I use—is through the acronym ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication.
I will use this acronym in the next section as I offer some tips for getting started.
Some Practical Tips
You have a pattern and you have the Lord’s method. Now, how do you work these into a habit? Here are some suggestions.
Have a plan
This is the number one most important piece for a successful prayer life. “I want to pray more” is not going to cut it. Get specific.
First, ask God to direct and establish your prayer life. To pursue prayer is an act of obedience, and all our obedience is sustained by God’s grace, so ask him for the grace and guidance to obey. Even ask him to give you insights for how to set up your plan.
Next, get very specific. For example, “I am going to pray for 15 minutes.” That’s good. Even better: “I am going to pray for 15 minutes every morning at 6:30.” And even better than that: “I am going to pray for 15 minutes every morning at 6:30, and here is what I’m going to do when I sit down to pray.”
Have a specific plan for how your prayer time will go.
Here’s what I do. I use the ACTS method, and for each day of the week, I have particular areas I focus on. For Adoration, I’ve divided a list of God’s attributes into seven days, grouped roughly into logical clusters. For Confession, I have particular areas of sin that I know I need to be vigilantly repenting of, and I focus on one each day. For Thanksgiving, I have one area per day to give particular attention to, thanking God in detail for the blessings in that category. And for Supplication, I assign certain people/groups to certain days. Typically, I pray for a group of people I will see that day (for example, since Mondays are staff meetings at church, I pray for the CCB staff that morning). I pray for my wife daily and my parents and siblings every other day, because they are particularly close to my heart.
Here is what the first three days of my plan look like. You can download a blank template of this plan, including suggested groupings for attributes of God, here.
Monday
A: Eternal, Faithful, Holy, True
C: Workaholism, other (which means sins outside that category that come to mind)
T: Work and provision
S: Alex, staff, family
Tuesday
A: Transcendent, Sovereign, Wise, Self-Existent, Self-Sufficient
C: Love of money, other
T: Relationships
S: Alex, DG guys, session, unbelievers
Wednesday
A: Immutable, Incomprehensible, Knowable, Infinite
C: Sexual immorality, other
T: Home
S: Alex, youth, family, college friend group
Pastor Nate uses a similar method in his Supplication category, but his is even more advanced. He uses the Praying Life Prayer Cards app, which allows him to add and track prayer requests for each person, organize his prayer list, and more. I plan to create a physical card version of this same approach, because using a phone would be too distracting for me. (Nate is further along in his self-control!)
I share this not because this is the way to pray, but because it offers an organized, comprehensive way to pray. It loosely follows the flow of the Lord’s prayer and helps you visualize bringing your whole life under prayer. Within this structure, there is actually quite a bit of flexibility and spontaneity. For example, I find that my prayers of adoration quickly turn into prayers of confession and supplication, because the thought of God’s love naturally leads me to vocalize my lack of love (confession), my gratitude for his love (thanksgiving), and my desire for myself and others to grow in love (supplication). I also find that the structure keeps me moving. It’s easy to get distracted or be unsure of what to pray for—or to always pray the exact same things. But a structure like this keeps me on track while ensuring there is variety to my prayer.
I do recommend a plan like this, but most highly I recommend that you at least have a plan.
Give your habit a fighting chance
Let’s face it: forming a habit is hard work. Very few of us have the sheer will power to decide to do something daily and stick to it. Most of us need some hacks to give our habits a fighting chance of sticking.
As I mentioned toward the end of my article about Bible reading (and I won’t repeat it fully here), James Clear’s book Atomic Habits offers some very helpful tips for habit formation. Here are two of them:
Habit stack. Habit stacking is when you attach a new habit you want to form to a pre-existing habit that’s fully locked in. For example, my wife and I chose to stack our Bible-reading habit with taking our first sip of morning coffee (we even made it a rule that we wouldn’t drink our coffee if we weren’t sitting down with our Bibles). Ideally, your prayer habit is stacked to your Bible-reading habit so that the two go hand in hand.
Set up your environment. Decide where you are going to pray, and then set up the environment for success. For example, I find that I either need to journal or pray out loud—in silent prayer, my mind wanders too much. So, I pray in our front room out of earshot of my wife, and if she comes in, I head to the bedroom and continue praying there. Or I journal at the table. Either way, I have my phone and computer in a separate room so I’m not tempted by distractions. Ideally I clear the table of other items, too, so that there is nothing else vying for my attention.
Be flexible
Of course, there are times when a firm structure simply won’t do. For example, if you have a distressing matter that’s occupying your attention, you probably won’t be able to pray about anything else. It’s an elephant in the room and it needs to be addressed, so pray about that right away, thoroughly, and enter into the rest of your prayer through that. There may be whole seasons like this, and that’s okay. The Psalms are a collection of occasional prayers, or prayers written in response to certain events, trials, and seasons. It is good and right for us to hold spontaneity alongside structure.
May God bless you in your efforts to pray. I leave you with this encouragement from God’s word, reminding you that prayer is not in vain:
Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matt 7:9–11)
Our good Father is ready to dispense good gifts when we ask in faith and according to his will. Take him up on the offer.
