We all know we should pray regularly, but we often don’t. There are numerous reasons for why we don’t pray on a regular basis.
Why We Don’t Pray
- Life gets busy — We haven’t set aside the time, and a prayerless morning turns into a prayerless week.
- We think God doesn’t have the time — Our needs seem minor next to the atrocities we read about in the paper — famine, ebola, and genocide.
- We believe we must pull our own bootstraps up — Our problem is ours, not God’s.
Maybe you find yourself in the list above. If you do, I can assure you, God does have time for you, so you should make time for Him. Your needs, however small, are important to God. As well as trying to handle everything on your own is not wise, nor what God wants.
Maybe you don’t find yourself in the above list. Maybe the reason you don’t pray is because you don’t know what to pray. If that’s you, let me point you to the Psalms. There you will find a wealth of content to guide you in prayer.
The Psalms
Lately, I have been meditating on the Psalms, even praying them at times. Doing so has added a lot of depth to my prayer life. As I was meditating on Psalm 25, I wrote down 11 things to pray for a deeper prayer life that I want to share with you.
11 Things to Pray
- Pray God would help you trust Him more (1-3)
- Pray for greater knowledge of God (4-5)
- Pray a prayer of repentance (6-7)
- Pray God would instruct and lead you (8-10)
- Praise God for saving you (11)
- Pray God’s name would be magnified (11)
- Pray you would fear the Lord (12-15)
- Pray your emotions and ask God to help you in your time of need (16-18)
- Pray you would respond to your enemies in a gospel-centered way (19-20)
- Pray for integrity and uprightness in your dealings with others (21)
- Pray for God’s final and complete redemption (22)
Question for Reflection
- Do you use a guide to help you when you pray? If so, would you share it?