Ways to pray

There must be as many ways of praying as there are people to pray.

• Sometimes we may pray ‘off the top’ as the things we want to talk to God about come naturally to our lips.
• Sometimes we may want to distil our prayers in carefully chosen words and write them down.
• Sometimes we may use the prayers that others have written; or we may turn our Bible study into prayer allowing the Psalms or the teachings of Jesus or the apostle Paul to nourish and inform our communication with God.
• We may use a form of prayer set out in a prayer book or settle into silence or float into tongues (we can ‘babble’ our love and longing to God, not worried about inadequate vocabulary or inaccurate grammar). We may even burst into song.
• As to posture, we may sit or kneel, walk or run – or dance.

Whatever we do, we have this one aim: to express the love and longing of our hearts towards God, and to be open to his purpose in our lives.