“I don’t know what to pray.”

Every once in a while I’ll hear this from new Christians: “I know I’m supposed to pray, but I don’t know what to pray. I don’t know what to tell God.”

Ridiculously simple answer to this one! Pray the Lord’s Prayer. Memorize a good translation of it, and tell it to God.

Matthew 6.9-13 MEV

9“Therefore pray in this manner:

Our Father who is in heaven,

hallowed be Your name.

10Your kingdom come;

Your will be done

on earth, as it is in heaven.

11Give us this day our daily bread.

12And forgive us our debts,

as we forgive our debtors.

13And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

And if reciting this prayer leads you to riff on it—to think, “Oh, here are some specific examples of ‘daily bread’ I’m gonna need”—share that. Or “I wanna apologize for specific ‘debts’ I owe God”—talk about that. Or “I need help forgiving my debtors”—ask for that. The Lord’s Prayer is just a starting point, and if it inspires you to pray other stuff, good!—you’re doing it right.

Okay yeah, sometimes it’s not gonna inspire you to pray other stuff. You’ll whip through these words, and you won’t know what more to tell God. Relax; it happens. Prayer’s a new and tricky thing for you. It’s why the Didache recommended newbies pray the Lord’s Prayer thrice a day. [8.3] ’Cause the more often you recite it—the more comfortable you get with these words—the easier it gets to start thinking about what more you might wanna tell God.

Don’t know what to pray during public prayers.

Other times, we get called upon to lead others in prayer—and now we’re stuck because we suck at public prayer. The pastors make it look so easy, but it’s not; we’re gonna get all tongue-tied.

I guarantee you nearly every pastor who seems to find it super easy to pray in public, wasn’t that way in the beginning! They learned how to pray in public. They practiced a ton, and got better at it. And if you practice a ton, you’ll get better at it too. So it wouldn’t hurt to start practicing now.

My favorite life-hack for when we gotta pray public prayers, is to write ’em out in advance. I swiped this from liturgical churches, ’cause whenever it’s prayer time during their services, they’re nearly always reading them, straight out of their prayer books. You realize you can do that too, right? It’s totally okay to stick a copy of the Book of Common Prayer on your phone, keyed up to a prayer you wanna pray, and when it’s your turn, you read that. It’s also totally okay to write out your own prayers, keep ’em ready on your phone too, and pray those—I do this all the time.

“But everybody else who does public prayer—they’re not reciting a prayer; they’re praying extemporaneously.” So what? Who says winging it when we pray aloud, is better praying, or more authentic of a prayer? I’ll tell you who: People who are too lazy to sit down, seriously think about what they wanna tell God, and write it out. People who pridefully prefer their own words, no matter how immature, to that of wiser fellow Christians. People who think it honors God to use all the filler words and vain repetitions they jam into their extemporaneous prayers (“Lord God, Lord Jesus, I just wanna praise you Lord, hallelujah”) just to make ’em longer, and drag out the point instead of getting to it. Stop mimicking people who can’t pray aloud either. Mimic the people who can.

And of course if you, or the Holy Spirit, wants you to add a few statements to the prayers you’re reading off your phone: Nobody’s gonna complain if you do. (Unless of course you’re in one of those liturgical churches, and everybody else is reading the prayer along with you. Then you gotta stick to the script. Riffing’s a no-no.)

True, sometimes you’re not gonna be able to get out your phone… and that leads us to the old-timey practice of memorization. You might wanna memorize some good short prayers. Stuff you can call upon, when it’s the right occasion.

That oughta get you started. Put together a public-prayer repertoire, and the next time it’s your turn to pray aloud, you’ll be so ready.