What could be more fundamental to the life of a Christian than prayer? Yet I've often found myself challenged by the question: "Just how do we pray?" Since childhood I've been familiar with the Lord's Prayer given in Christ Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, and the spiritual sense and effectiveness of this prayer have blessed my life over and over again. Yet the Gospels also report that Jesus often spent much time in prayer, even all night, and the Gospel of John illustrates that his prayers were certainly not limited to repetition of the words of the Lord's Prayer.See John, chap. 17.
Many of my efforts to turn to God in prayer have ended up as daydreams or sleep. Restful but hardly inspiring or helpful! How can we commune more constantly and intimately with God, in true prayer?
As we strive to learn how to pray, we find that one of the benefits of the Lord's Prayer, the "Daily Prayer" (given in the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy), and other prayers, is that they help us turn thought away from troubles and daily concerns and give discipline and focus to thought. They open up consciousness to the influx of spiritual ideas. As we study Jesus' teaching about prayer and examples of his prayers, we can discern that effective prayer requires unselfed love, a lively sense of God's ever-presence, self-immolation, freedom from human will and fear, and genuine trust in God. As expressing these takes hold in our lives, our ability to pray effectively grows.
