How to Use This Book 

When I asked a teacher to help me to learn how to pray, he gave me advice: “Just start praying.” Maybe that advice helps you. If it does, you can stop reading this little book and just start praying. But that advice doesn’t help me with my questions. I needed to know the “how do I pray,” part of the advice. 

You will learn how to pray if you follow the instructions in this devotional. You will grow in the habit of prayer and in you will grow in your prayer endurance. 

First, this daily devotional will teach you some “conversation starters” with God. I recommend you do the devotions in the morning to start your day. To begin, set your alarm to wake up about five minutes earlier, do your morning routine and then with the extra five minutes, read one of the devotions and follow the instructions for prayer before you get on with your day.

Every day, following the prompts you will pray a little more than you did the day before. As you follow the daily routine, your endurance in prayer will increase and your time talking and listening to God will increase, too. This is your homework, or if you like, your “prayerwork.” Use the models presented to learn how to pray. Adopt the prayers given word-for-word, or adapt the prayers presented to make them more personally suited to you. Either way, it is prayer.

Our Children’s Minister at our church, Cheryl, taught her 4th and 5th grade students a prayer tool called TACOSS (you’ll learn this prayer model later in the book). As Cheryl taught them this tool, she started them off praying just at a minute and a half of prayer, but she gradually increased their prayer time all the way to thirty minutes of prayer in one sitting. She built their endurance in prayer. If nine and ten year olds can grow to pray little by little, so can you! 

God gave us the tool of prayer to grow in our relationship with Him. Prayer also includes the Holy Spirit, your mind, imagination, and feelings. At first, when you just start saying the words, it will only feel like you are just saying words. The more you practice with the suggested words and the more you practice making up your own conversation starters with God, you’ll stop worrying about the form and start concentrating more on the actual conversation. You’ll learn to speak and listen, respond and praise, give and receive, in a relational conversation with the Person of God. But it takes some time and effort to get there. As you engage your mind and feelings with the words, and trust that the Holy Spirit is even speaking for you when you don’t know what to say you will be praying.

We will use a lot of Scripture to prompt our prayer conversations because God’s Word teaches us what to pray, how to pray, and even how to think. As the Scripture shapes our prayers, God will shape our character through our conversations, transforming our hearts to look more and more like Jesus Christ. 

As I have learned to pray (and actually praying!), more and more, I can say with the Psalmists, “Taste and see that the LORD is good….” While in prayer, my heart has burned within me, my affections for God have been stirred, and like the orange-red coals of a dying campfire, I often continue to feel the warmth of God’s presence when I finish times of prayer. 

Spurgeon said, “Words are not the essence but the garments of prayer.”  I want your own heart and affections for God to be stirred, I want your “heart to grow hot” within your chest. I’m praying that while you meditate and pray, a the fire would burn, and then your own mouth would speak your own prayer (Psalm 39:3). 

One more note before we get started: As I mentioned above, you’ll have to practice praying long enough to get beyond the point of just using the tool of prayer to actually praying. Kind of like doing repetitions in the gym. At first, the movement or new exercise is awkward, and you really have to concentrate on going through the motions, but as you develop muscle memory, you no longer have to concentrate on the movements so much as you’re actually doing the exercise and receiving its benefits. 

That’s one reason why you’ll need to commit to this 40 Day Challenge. The repetitions of prayer over time, allow you to benefit from hearing from God. I hope that you will move beyond thinking about the how of praying and into the action of praying rather quickly. If you do this prayer practice for 40 Days, you’ll have the opportunity for a renewed relationship with God and be well on your way to a habit of prayer: becoming a praying person, not just a person who prays.