The Beginner’s Guide to Prayer: Answers to Your Questions about Prayer

Prayer is an essential part of life as a Christian. If you’re new when it comes to praying to God, it can feel awkward, and you may not know how to start. If you’re looking for ways to improve your prayer life, this beginner’s guide to prayer will be a quick primer to help you jumpstart your time in prayer.

What is Prayer?

The simple answer is that prayer is a conversation with God. Like all relationships, we need to invest in our relationship with God. Prayer is an important part of how we can spend time with Him. During prayer, we can praise Him for being God, thank God for what He has done, ask Him for wisdom, request His help with a problem, or simply sit in His presence and listen.

When you first start to pray, it may seem strange to talk to someone who is not visibly present; however, God is with you. You’ll need to trust in faith that He hears you. As you spend more and more time in prayer, you’re going to feel more comfortable doing it. You’ll even begin to feel God’s presence. Even so, as a mature Christian, there are times when I struggle with prayer. When I’m stressed or dealing with a hardship in my life, prayer can sometimes feel like a chore. There have even been times when I’ve fallen asleep while praying! In these times, it’s important to understand that prayer is a discipline and you need to be committed to it.  

Am I Praying to God or Jesus?

The answer to this questions is yes! Jesus is God (John 10:30) and you can certainly pray to Him. However, in the Bible, Jesus teaches us to direct our prayers to the Father (Luke 11:1-4). The main recipient of our prayers should be the Father, but we can also pray to Jesus. Lastly, we can also pray to the Holy Spirit. The Bible tells us that He is our counselor and helper who was sent by Jesus to help us in our faith walk on this side of heaven (John 14:26).

Personally, I’ve prayed to all three. I think it would be awkward to be receiving help from someone—the Holy Spirit—and never thank Him or address Him. I also find myself thanking Jesus for His sacrifice on the cross often in my prayer life. The Bible also says that Jesus performs the role of being our high priest, advocating for us beside the Father’s throne (Hebrews 4:14). It makes sense to me to address Jesus in my prayers as He is in an important position in heaven as my advocate. 

This is all a little complicated but the gist of it is that you can pray confidently to the Father, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit. We serve a triune God who presents Himself as three distinct persons and it is okay to address one or all of them. If you’re not sure where to start, address the Father as He is the main focus of our prayers.  We serve a gracious God, and He hears us when we speak to Him, no matter which person we choose to address.

Does God Answer Prayer?

God always answers prayer. Not only does He always answer, but He desires us to speak to Him. In Jeremiah 33:3, God says “call to me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things which you do not know.” Often when we ask this question it’s because we want God’s answer to our prayer to be yes, but God’s answer to prayer can also be not yet or no. We may not always understand why God chooses to answer the way He does, especially if the answer is no. 

Prayer isn’t always easy because it requires us to trust God even when we don’t understand His decisions. This means that we have to prepare to trust God unreservedly with our deepest hurts, passions, and fears, even if the answer to our prayer may be no or not yet.

Beginner’s Guide to How to I Pray

Praying is easy. Prayer is simply talking to God. In prayer, you trust that God is present and hears you. You also trust that He can and may speak to you. The best way to pray is to find a quiet place and begin your time with God by praising Him and thanking Him for being God and for what He has done for you. Next, you can repent of any sins you’ve committed recently. Afterwards, you can ask God for the things you or someone else may need. These can be tangible things, like money, or intangible things, like courage. Lastly, you can thank God for His future blessings and spend some time being quiet in God’s presence or meditating on a Bible verse. This quiet time is to allow you to hear from God or rest in His presence.

In the Bible, Jesus models prayer for us in Matthew 6:5-15. He starts with honoring God and praying for God’s purposes to succeed. Jesus then prays for our daily needs to be met and for us to be forgiven for sin. He prays for our protection from evil and ends His prayer praising God again. His prayer is short and direct. These verses show us that prayer doesn’t have to be complicated and long. We simply talk to God and believe He hears us. 

There are many mnemonic techniques for prayer that you can find online, however, all of them basically follow Jesus’s model of prayer. You don’t need special tools or to follow an exact pattern to pray. You just need to commit to pray and spend time in God’s presence.

Got Questions?

Have more questions about prayer? Years ago, when I was beginning my relationship with God, I had lots of questions, too! Please feel free to leave your questions about prayer in the comment section below. Also, what kind of tips would you include if you were to write a beginner’s guide to prayer? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Need more resources? You can check out some of my other blogs about prayer for examples of how to pray or get help creating a quiet time with God.