What’s in Your Prayer?

During prayer request time in our Sunday School class, the girls get so excited and eager to share that we occasionally have to revert to the “raise your hand” rule. One day, we had to go so far as to institute the “talking frisbee” (only the girl holding the frisbee could talk).

But as soon as we ask someone to pray, they clam up.

Do they not want to talk to our Heavenly Father?

Do they not want to bear each other’s burdens?

No. Our girls want to pray. But they don’t know what to say or how to start or even how to end. They are intimidated by the fancy, well-worded prayers that preachers and parents rattle off, even at mealtimes. I believe the problem is stage fright.

Who hasn’t had this same fear? There are times in my own personal quiet time that I don’t know what to pray or even that my prayers sound stale. I started asking myself, “What am I praying?”

One beauty of Scripture is that we can read the prayers of saints who have gone before us. And, for all intensive purposes, we can “steal” their prayers.

I am memorizing passages like Colossians 1:9-14 and adapting them into my own prayer:

I am asking that she may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding,  so that she may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to You, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God.   Please strengthen her with all power, according to Your glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy  giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled her to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light.  You have rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son You love. We have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, in Him.

The Scripture is full of prayers to our Father. Let me know if you find one that you are going to start using.