The Thing That Changed My Prayer Life

Prayer. What a gift, right? Like how freaking cool that we get to freely communicate with God - the creator of the universe? Just take a second and let that sink in. I grew up in church and prayer always seemed like this robotic-like task that we did a few times throughout service.

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Now that I’m in my 30s and learning and growing in my faith as an adult, I’m seeing that prayer is a discipline, a practice, and so incredibly transformative.

Can you imagine having an earthly relationship with someone and never talking to them? It would be a pretty dull relationship, wouldn’t you say? Y’all...a few months ago, I had that same realization about prayer - prayer is our way of communicating with God...duh, Jess!

Once I realized that, I wanted to pray every day. My heart desired it because I knew that it would draw me closer to the heart of Jesus.

But real talk - every time I sat down to pray, one of 2 things would happen:

My mind would wander.
I start off strong but after a few moments of chatting with Jesus, I’d think about what I was having for dinner, who I forgot to text back, what I still needed to get done that day. YIKES. Pretty much seems equivalent to sitting on the couch with my husband, having a conversation with him about how our days went while I’m simultaneously texting or scrolling Instagram. THAT’S RUDE and definitely not a way to show up well for a relationship, you know?
I’d feel overwhelmed.
I had so much I wanted to say to God but my thoughts and words felt jumbled and chaotic. I’d be worrying about what I was forgetting to pray about instead of focusing on what I was actually praying about.

So what did I do to solve this? Well, I went to the Bible for some guidance, of course! Here’s what I found:

“Therefore, you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. - Matthew 6:9–13 (CSB)”

JESUS LITERALLY TOLD HIS DISCIPLES HOW TO PRAY. Like The Lord’s Prayer is a straight up template we can use to pray 🤯 I’ve been reciting The Lord’s Prayer since I was a little girl in Sunday school but for whatever reason, this didn’t click for me until a few months ago. Since then, I’ve been using The Lord’s Prayer as a template to structure my prayers and DANG GUYS! My prayer life has never been better! I’m so excited to pray every day and I’m able to focus on talking to God instead of figuring out what I’m trying to say. Plus I’m not thinking about my grocery list or something random, lol.

Here’s an explanation of how I use The Lord’s Prayer as a guide to help me pray intentionally and faithfully:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name:
Give gratitude, worship, and praise! Recognize who Jesus is in your life and thank Him for it.

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven:
Pray for God to use your specific words and actions to carry out His will here on earth. How can you further His kingdom?

Give us today our daily bread:
Pray for needs to be met in your life. Be specific! Life up prayer requests from friends and family, too!

And forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors:
Ask God to make you aware of your sins so you can surrender, work through them with Him, and repent. Also ask Him to reveal any grudges you are holding so you can extend forgiveness.

And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one:
Pray for spiritual protection and that your focus would remain on Christ. Think about the Armor of God in Ephesians 6:10-18.

And I have some resources to point your toward:

~ The highlight on my Instagram titled “ON PRAYER” - this might be helpful if you are an audio learner. It’s basically me sharing when I had this realization via video and walking you through it.

~ I created a digital prayer journal for my fellow babes who like to journal out their prayers:

There is a section for each part of The Lord’s Prayer for every day. And each month has a habit tracker so you can keep track of the days that you pray, meditate on the Word, read the Word, etc.