6 min read
The School of Prayer
“Lord, teach us to pray” — lessons from the school of prayer, beginning with the admission that we need a Teacher.
“Lord, teach us to pray.”
When the disciples wished to learn prayer, they did not ask Jesus for a treatise on it. They said: Lord, teach us to pray. Consider what that request admits. Prayer is not a talent some are born with. It is a school, and it has a Teacher, and the only entrance requirement is the confession that you need to be taught.
This should relieve you. You have imagined that everyone else prays easily — long, fluent prayers rising like incense — while your own attempts feel like static. I have spent decades as a pastor and written many books on prayer, and I tell you plainly: I am still a student. If the lessons take a lifetime, you may stop apologizing for being a beginner.
The first lesson concerns time. Prayer does not grow in the cracks of a day. It asks for a set-apart hour — or at least a set-apart moment — guarded as you would guard an appointment with one you love. What fills your hours shows what you truly believe about God. A prayer life squeezed into leftover minutes remains a leftover prayer life.
A prayer life squeezed into leftover minutes remains a leftover prayer life.
The second lesson concerns honesty. The Teacher is not listening for correct words. He is listening for the true state of your heart — the worry, the dullness, even the wandering. Bring your actual condition, not the condition you wish you had. A distracted prayer honestly offered is nearer the real thing than a polished one performed for an audience of one.
The third lesson is the deepest: prayer changes the one who prays before it changes anything else. Come with your list — it is right to ask. But time in God's presence quietly re-forms what you want. The list does not disappear. It is reordered.
Begin thus. Choose your time; faithfulness matters more than the hour. Open the scripture and read a verse or two slowly, until one phrase stays with you. Pray from that phrase — thanksgiving, need, the names of those you love. Then be silent a moment, and wait. Ten minutes, kept daily, is the whole of the first term. Lord, teach us to pray — prayed sincerely each morning, that request is itself the beginning of the answer.