I’m super excited to continue in this series on prayer (if you want to get caught up, start here) and this week’s focus begins to break it down, as we look at 7 simple kinds of prayer.  You could probably find some other kinds of prayer to add to this list, it’s certainly not exhaustive, but for the most part, you will probably find this list to be more than adequate.

 

Prayer can be intimidating and awkward, regardless of how long you’ve been a follower of Christ.  Newbies and Seasoned believers alike struggle with some aspect of prayer—myself included.  Today, we’re going to see if we can knock down the intimidation factor by developing a culture of simplicity and exploration.

 

So often we reduce prayer to duty and obligation, but it’s much more than that.  God invites us to come and know him and prayer gives us a vehicle to do just that.  Prayer is all about our interaction with God. Raw, intimate honesty stripes everything away and leaves what is real.  Prayer gives us a way to get there.

 

 

What to pray, what to pray, what to pray!

 

I don’t actually think God is overly concerned about what we pray about; He is much more interested in the heart.   We need to be careful not to elevate a form of prayer or the kind of prayer over the attitude of prayer.

 

The best place to start in developing the disciplines of prayer is to see what scripture has to say.  We have amazing access to the story of God and his people, how they prayed, and how they lived.  These testimonies give us everything we need to press in and the example Jesus gives is probably the best place to start.

 

“Pray like this:

Our Father in heaven, May your name be kept holy.  May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need, And forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And don’t let us yield to temptation but rescue us from the evil one.”  Matthew 6:9-13

 

This is a simple prayer—not too wordy you’ll notice—leads into perfect alignment.  This prayer instruction given by Jesus reminds us to begin with an acknowledgment that God, is Most High, and He is Sovereign.  The next part is surrender, followed by supplication, confession, repentance (through the offering of forgiveness) and then intercession.

 

And there is so much more than scripture has to say, so we will just continue to search it out as journey along the way.

 

 

 

 

7 simple kinds of prayer

 

In the context of this post, when I talk about what to pray, I’m specifically speaking of the content, not the form.  We will definitely get into the different forms of prayers, but for today, it’s all about the content.

 

It’s important to have a balanced understanding of what to pray about, so that prayer life becomes a place of growth not a stagnant pool of decay.  I really believe this is why Jesus’ teaching begins with aligning the heart with the heart of the Father—before anything else!

 

What we pray about is affected by the state of our heart, because like it or not the heart will inform the soul.  The problem is that too often the human condition of the soul wants to call the shots.  When we allow our self-idolatry to hold the throne, prayer will always feel like a futile effort rot with drudgery.  A devoted prayer life is one that lives in communion with the Father.

 

When you struggle to know what to pray, here are 7 simple kinds of prayer to mix it up.

 

 

 

 Prayers of Adoration

 

A prayer of adoration is, for me the best starting place, because the whole point of adoration is that it helps us put God back on the throne.  Knowing that God is God and living like he is God are two very different things.  Head knowledge and heart knowledge need to come into agreement with the truth.

We have no hope of experiencing the promises of God, without God himself.  Adoration focuses on who He is.  When we have God back on the throne—His rightful place—we will experience alignment.

 

Resist the temptation to proclaim adoration to Him because of what we have.  Adoration should fixate on the nature and character of God.  When you don’t know what to pray, look at his names and start there.

 

You will find many examples of prayers of adoration (though not limited to) in the book of Psalms. Here are just a few to get you started.

 

“O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth! Your glory is higher than the heavens.”  Psalm 8:1

 

“I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all the marvelous things you have done.”  Psalm 9:1

 

 

 

Prayers of Confession

 

You cannot really behold the greatness of God without seeing who you really are too.  There is no condemnation in this place, just an honest assessment of the condition of the heart.  This kind of thing is never once and done (as much as we’d like it to be).

 

This the place of accountability and rightness.  We cannot maintain our baggage (and by baggage, I mean the sin nature) in the presence of God.  Jesus became sin and took it to the cross so that you and I could know God so that we would not have to maintain it anymore. Confession leads to repentance, which leads to wholeness.

 

When we make confession a regular part of our prayer life, we are learning to keep short accounts.  This is critical because when we don’t practice confession, we are really pushing God off the throne.  God cannot help us when we try to assume his place.  Confession gives God permission to work in us for the purpose of wholeness.

 

King David demonstrated this principle often.  His Psalms read of the inner battle he fought in order to know the presence of God.  I believe that his relentlessness to be ridiculously honest before the LORD is what opened the way into the heart of the Father.

 

“Wash me clean from my guilt.  Purify me from my sin.  For I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night.  Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done evil in your sight.  You will be proved right in the what you say, and your judgment against me is just.”  Psalm 51:2-4

 

 

 

 

 

Prayers of Supplication

 

Supplication is a petition prayer.  We all know what this is, because, if we’re willing to be completely honest, it’s probably the one we pray the most.  It’s also right up there in the Lord’s prayer, “…give us today the food we need.” Here’s the thing, God is all-knowing, which means He already knows the need.  So, why do we bring him prayers of supplication?  This is often the question that arises when we’re talking about what to pray.

 

Again, supplication gives us a way to acknowledge our need.  God knows that we need him, but our supplications demonstrate humility.  The Father is not attracted to our neediness, but rather to our humility.

 

Prayers of supplication are offerings wrapped in trust.  And when the need seemingly goes unfilled, the temptation to call it a betrayal is great.  There is no formula for this.  We must just be brave.

 

God answers prayer in the ways He deems right.  And who are you and I to question his Sovereignty and His Wisdom?  Yet, we do just that, right?  See, this is why the heart condition matters.

 

God invites us to bring our supplications to him so that in our humility he can bring resolution to the brokenness (whatever it is).  He sees so much more than what we can see, so his divine order really is best.

 

 

 

 

 

Prayers of Intercession

 

Prayers of intercession take supplication to a deeper level.  Usually, intercession is something we do on behalf of another, but not exclusively (a great example of this is found in Matthew 26:36-46 when Jesus prayed in the garden the night of his arrest).

 

Intersession stands in agreement with who God is and prays into the faithfulness and might of His Holy character, for his will to be done (because God acts according to who he is).  Abraham interceded on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah for salvation—the cities fell, but the righteous escaped (Genesis 18-19).  Moses interceded on behalf of Israel after their idolatrous incident with the golden calf—God wanted to just kill them all because of their sin (Exodus 32).

 

Intercession looks at the greatness of God, fixes the heart on righteousness and prays for that.  Don’t confuse intercession with what to pray when you really, really want something, because answered prayer doesn’t typically play out the way you expect.

 

This kind of prayer takes practice, drawing from faith—a faith that has been proved—because it requires a relentless foothold on the promises of God.  This is important in our discussion on what to pray because we will all have to engage in intercessory prayer, so really, we need to get over any fear and intimidation that may lurk in the shadows.  When we pursue God through prayer, He trains us and he leads us.  We have nothing to fear.

 

 

 

 

Prayers of Thanksgiving

 

Prayers of thanksgiving are about communion with the LORD.  Again, it’s in thanksgiving that we get to practice humility.  Gratitude chooses to stand in the contentment of who God is—his character and nature.

 

We can certainly thank God for the great things, he has given us and done for us (in fact we should), but we must also learn to take the gratitude deeper, otherwise, our prayers of thanksgiving are rooted in ourselves.

 

So, it might take a little work to get the heart positioned before the Lord in a place of trust and faithfulness, but it’s worth it.   A relationship is not one-sided and God is not a cosmic genie who gives us our every desire.  Blessings and favor are a part of it all, but our happiness cannot hang on those things alone.   We were designed to live in community with the Lord.

 

The prayer of thanksgiving is sacrificial.  It offers thanks to God for who he is.  God is more than just Jehovah-Jireh—the God who provides.  Extending gratitude to God, who is above all else, is how we get out from under difficult things, not because the difficultly ceases to exist, but because we see God as greater than the difficulty.

 

As you press into the prayers of thanksgiving, lift your eyes off the stuff and behold the greatness of God.  Practice it enough and you will find yourself thanking God for the goodness you are now able to see in the midst of the yuck.

 

 

 

 Prayers of Declaration

 

Sometimes the decision-making process surrounding what to pray gets distracted by a confused theology.  How you see God—what you really believe about Him—will inform both what you pray and the way you pray, because if you don’t believe that He is almighty, then it will be pretty difficult to honestly pray for his power to come upon your life.

 

At the risk of repeating myself, prayers of declaration focus on who God is.  Are you starting to notice a pattern here?  When we pray, we pray from the place of who God is—period.  The temptation is to try and utilize prayer as a way of leveraging what we want, which seldom ends the way we hope. A prayer is a place of benefit, but only when we see if for what it is—a place of communion, honesty, and humility.

 

When we pray prayers of declaration they come from a place of deep faith that believes because it has experienced God’s truth both through revelation and process.  Declaration speaks from a place of authority. Declarative prayers proclaim the truth about God.  I believe He delights in our prayers of declaration because they are living testimonies of who He has shown up to be.

 

Declarative prayers are birthed from the encounters we have with God.  When we see how God provides, over and over and over, we can speak with authority as we declare that God is the God who provides.

 

 

 

 

 Prayers of Surrender

 

I think prayers of surrender are really important because God is a jealous God.  Right at the very top of the Ten Commandments, he says,

 

“You must not have any other god but me.” (Exodus 20:3)

 

God is God and we are not.  Do you know who else isn’t God?  Your spouse, your child, your job, your home, your desires, your friends, your dog, your cat, your phone, your favorite food.  We need to be careful how closely we hold the things that are dear because when we put them before God we have moved into idolatry.

 

Prayers of surrender are about aligning the heart but trusting God from His place on the throne.  It’s hard—there’s no way to candy coat it—but I’m learning that when I make it a practice to surrender my heart instead of the things it gets a little bit easier.

 

It’s really easy to say, “I surrender all,” until you face a certain surrender. Somethings feel impossible to sacrifice, but you need to know the way of surrender leads to unbelievable healing.

 

When it comes to surrendering, the details of what to pray usually present themselves clearly.  God makes it super easy to figure out with his command of “No other god but me.”  When we pray prayers of surrender we must ask: what or who have I put before God?

 

What to pray becomes clear in the context of relationship with the Father.

When we let go of the need to strive in prayer it becomes simple.  It’s a conversation between God and his beloved.  So, as you meet with him in prayer, let go of your agenda and lean into his grace.  Try to intentionally listen to him as you come with your heart fully fixed on his.

Release the need for answers and practice trust.

Resist the urge to fill the space with words and just behold his glory.

Respond to the power of his presence with surrender and obedience, allowing him to do what only he can do anyway.

I hope you have found this helpful and encouraging.  Join me again next week as we start to dive into the disiciplines of Prayer, getting practical about the kinds of prayer forms we can use to develop a rich prayer life with the Father.

I’d love to hear about your thoughts on prayer too, so leave your comments below.