“The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things.” 
John 14:26 

Prayer is like the weather: Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. At least not often, when it comes to prayer. If there’s any area where most of us are weak in our spiritual lives, it’s prayer. It’s not that we don’t put a high value on it. It’s not that we don’t think we should pray. The problem is that we simply don’t pray. If you struggle with prayer, welcome to the family. One reason we struggle is that we don’t know how to pray. Prayer isn’t natural to us, because our natural state is to run from God’s presence, not come before Him. Our natural state is to pursue our own path but prayer helps to align us with God’s path. 

Prayer is like the weather: Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.

Some of us have never learned how to pray. Others haven’t prayed enough to be comfortable with it. Still others don’t understand enough of God’s Word to pray biblically and accurately. 

Whatever the case, you and I don’t have any excuse not to pray. We may have good reasons for not praying well, but we don’t have any excuse for not praying at all. 

Paul recognizes our prayer dilemma, and he has some good news. When you don’t know how to pray, when you don’t know what to say or how to say it, you have a divine Interpreter called the Holy Spirit who can clarify, correct and focus your prayer so that by the time it leaves you and gets to heaven, it’s aligned with God’s kingdom and His agenda in the most appropriate way. 

Learning to pray is like learning a foreign language. 

You don’t have to worry that you didn’t get that prayer just right. By the time the Holy Spirit took your prayer and carried it into the heavenly throne room, the prayer is powerful, because the Spirit’s job is to intercede for us. His job is to interpret our prayers and carry them to the Father. Learning to pray is like learning a foreign language. 

The best way to learn it is to hang out in an environment where the language is spoken. So if you want to learn to pray, you need to spend time in an environment where prayer is spoken. You need to pray and abide in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit will help you as you do these things. He knows the powerful prayer language of the heavenly kingdom realm.

Check out more from Dr. Tony Evans @tonyevans.org