Nine-year-old Stephanie prayed, “Dear Lord, please help my mother lose weight. She’s on a diet, and she is trying very hard; but sometimes she eats chocolate cake and ice cream. That is why she needs your help. My mother would ask for your help herself, but she is too embarrassed.”
Sometimes people don’t ask for help or pray to God because they are too embarrassed—or feel unworthy or incapable, or feel that it is useless. Prayer is “asking for help,” but it is much more. It is talking to someone you love and who is able to give you even more than you ask or even imagine.
Talk to Father-God
When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he said, “Pray like this: ‘Our Father … ’ ” That’s how you learn to pray. Talk to your Father-God just as you talk to your human father. If you don’t have a father you like to talk to, think of a father you know, have read about, or have seen on a TV program or in the movies. Think of talking to someone who is the best father there is, who loves you, cares for you, and who will give you whatever you need. “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24).
How can you know God as a Father? Only when you have been born into his family. Of course that means being born a second time, born again, as Jesus told Nicodemus (John 3:3-5). The Spirit of God creates a new life in you, a life that makes you a child of God.
What should you say when you pray? When you start talking with your Father-God, you can say whatever you want to and say it in your own way. He knows what is in your heart, and he understands your needs. Debbie, age seven, prayed, “Please, Lord, send Mommy a new baby boy. The one you sent last week cries too much.” God understood Debbie. When we don’t know what to pray for, the Spirit intercedes for us “in accordance with God’s will” (Romans 8:26-27).
One Way to Start
When we want to talk to a friend or a father, sometimes the hardest thing is to get started. The friend encourages us, “What is it? Spit it out. Don’t be afraid.” Here are some questions that can encourage you to start talking to your Father-God.
- For what are you thankful?
Some of the first words your parents taught you to say were “Thank you.” The Bible sometimes calls thanking God “praise,” or “adoration.” You can thank God for
* being God, Creator, Lord, Father;
* dying for you on the cross to pay for all your sins;
* making you his by faith in Jesus Christ;
* family, friends, work, and fun;
* for daily life, health, blessings of…
- For what do you need forgiveness?
True, we are all sinners and need forgiveness. God wants us to confess our sins, and he promises to forgive: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9).
- For what do you want to ask?
God invites us to “call upon me in the day of trouble” (Psalm 50:15) and then promises, “I will deliver you.” He invites us to “ask … seek … knock” (Luke 11:9-10), and he promises “it will be given … you will find … the door will be open.”
What do you worry about? What do you fear? What do you need? What do your friends and family need? God listens and sometimes does miracles. However he answers, we learn to accept his wisdom.
An amputee veteran visited a town in France that was known as a place where miracles of healing happened. As he hobbled to the shrine, a bystander remarked,
“Poor man, does he think God will give him back his leg?” The veteran heard those words and responded, “No, I don’t expect God to give me back my leg. I am going to pray that he help me live without it.”
Yield to the Will of God
That veteran had learned to pray like Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane: If my will can’t be done, then “may your will be done” (Matthew 26:42). The above questions and this final point of yielding to God’s will form an acrostic on the word pray, which is a helpful way to pray:
P = Praise
R = Remember
A = Ask
Y = Yield
Sometimes we utter short prayers that do not follow this pattern for prayer—-just a short cry for help or a word of thanks. That’s okay. At other times, when we want to make a more complete prayer, we can follow the pattern.
The first three items in the acrostic usually cause no problem. To praise and thank God is easy. Also, it feels good to tell him all our troubles and ask for his help. But it’s difficult to say, “Not my will; your will be done.” Even so, others have yielded to God’s will. When the disciples were struggling on the sea of Galilee with the waves that threatened to swamp their boat, they woke Jesus and said, “Don’t you care if we drown?” (Mark 4:35-39). They did not tell him what to do about the danger. They just
called it to his attention so that he could do his will.
When Peter and John were threatened and warned not to talk about Jesus anymore, the Christians prayed, “Consider their threats” (Acts 4:24-30). They did not tell God what to do. They let God decide—that was his responsibility. They asked God to help them do their assignment: to speak God’s Word with great boldness.
A pastor who struggled for a year with colon cancer would repeatedly say after each test or treatment, “It’s in the Lord’s hands. It will be all right.”
Pray Like This
(P = Praise) I praise you for being God. I thank you for …
(R = Remember) I know I am a sinner. Please forgive …
(A = Ask) I need your help and guidance … Be with …
(Y = Yield) I believe all your promises … It is in your hands. It will be all right.