Teach Us to Pray
America was built on prayer.
Morning and evening, our first President knelt before an open Bible to pray for God’s leading. Perhaps one reason this nation is faltering morally is because God’s people don’t spend much time praying for her.
All the Christian virtues are locked up in the word prayer.
One of the main tasks of the Christian is prayer, to have direct communion with God.
William Kerry was a missionary to Burma, India, and the West Indies, but he was also a shoe
cobbler. People sometimes criticized him for “neglecting” his trade because he spent so much time in prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving. Kerry answered, “Cobbling shoes is a sideline; it helps me pay expenses. Prayer is my real business.” And God used him mightily to convert many. On this topic, Martin Luther commented, “As it is the business of tailors to make clothes, so it is the business of Christians to pray.”
But how do we pray? I am asked this question a lot, but the truth is, even I have to ask, “Lord, teach me to pray.” The disciples asked Christ this question when they saw Him coming from a session of prayer. His face was beaming with the light of heaven and energized by the Holy Spirit. No wonder they pleaded, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Still, these men had been going to church—the temple—all of their lives. They had recited hundreds of prayers and had heard the priests pray out loud. Yet when they saw Christ, they knew they were missing something. Somehow they, like most of us, failed in their principal business.