How Does the Bible Tell Us to Pray?
Christians know that prayer is the best form of communication with God. What most of them aren't aware of is that the Bible prescribes the correct manner of praying and how we should conduct ourselves in God's presence. The instruction is found in Matthew 6:5–13, which we will examine verse by verse.
The passage is divided into two parts. The apostle Matthew tells what we should avoid doing when praying while the second part talks about how we should pray. We'll start with the first part.
Verse 5 warns us against following the example of hypocrites who love to pray in public for everyone to see.
Verse 6 talks about personal prayer which is done alone in one's room.
Verse 7 talks against praying in chant or uttering memorized lines as this is how pagans pray which is said in vain.
Verse 8 continues the admonition from the previous verse on repetitive prayer or chant which God considers meaningless as He already knows our needs even before asking for it.
Now we get to the part which instructs us how to pray:
Verse 9 tells us to open our prayers by proclaiming God's greatness and holiness.
Verse 10 is our declaration allowing God to take control of our life.
Verse 11 is the part where we thank God for all the blessings our family enjoys. We should pray that He bless our work so it can continue providing for our family. We should also to pray for the needy and the sick.
Verse 12 admonishes us to ask God's forgiveness for whatever wrongdoing we did during the day, with the promise that it won't be repeated. In the same vein, we should be ready to forgive those that offended us.
Verse 13 tells us to ask God to give us the strength to resist wrongdoing as well as His protection from harm and evil.
