How to Pray for An Hour

 

Currently, on my blog, I am answering a backlog of questions. Today’s question revolves around a statement I put on Twitter some time ago: “Grateful to my Dad this morning, who taught me how to pray for longer periods of time. What a balm it has been through these years. If you do not, it is one of the most worthwhile things you can learn. What, could ye not watch with me one hour? (Matthew 26.40)” To which statement I received the query, “Well, what did he teach you? I want to learn!”

A pic I snapped while praying with
my Dad before a church service
in Chicago. 

I surrendered to preach at fourteen. Immediately, I began to take my walk with God seriously. But although I knew I should read my Bible and pray, I had done very little praying up to that point. I prayed for meals and in Bible class, things like that, but I did not know what it was like to labour in prayer, let alone to do so for lengthy periods of time. As I began to fumble my way toward that, I stopped my Dad one day and at random asked him, “Dad, do you ever pray for an hour at a time?” He affirmed he did. When I asked him how, he told me to give him a few days. Some time later, we sat down, and he handed me a piece of paper with a few simple handwritten thoughts. I think I still have that piece of paper in my files somewhere. Regardless, I remember what he said. Further, I put it into practice almost immediately and have used it in one form or another hundreds of times since.

Basically, he told me to do three things. Confession. Praise. Prayer.

First, if we want to be in the Lord’s presence, we must make sure we have made right what had been wrong between us. The Holy Spirit is always at His quiet work in our hearts, convicting us both of what we need to stop and of what we should begin. As I write this sentence, I am conscious of some areas of my own life where this is the case. If I am telling God, “No,” in either of these areas, I cannot reasonably expect Him to welcome me into His presence or listen to me when I talk to Him. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. (Psalm 66.18) Nor can you. Thus it is, we need to take the time to ensure the accounts are clear as we enter into prayer.

In my case, I have found it helpful through these years to write these things down. When I began praying at length as a young man, it was in a room with a whiteboard. I would begin not with words, but in silence, by listing the things I knew I needed to confess to Him. Nor would I rush through this. While it is not good to linger in sin, it is good to take the time necessary to realize how badly we have wronged Him.

This part of confession should be painful. Do not race through it. Only then, after the silence had stretched long between the Lord and me, would I begin to speak. I would say those awful things out loud, one by one, to Him. I would not justify or excuse them. Context may make sin understandable, but it cannot make sin better. I would admit I was wrong, tell Him I was sorry, and ask Him to teach me to view sin as He did. At the end of this period, usually about ten minutes or so, I would slowly lift the eraser to the whiteboard, and with tears pouring down my cheeks, I would erase those ugly terms. The board would be white again, and so would my heart.

It was in this suitable frame of mind that I would turn my mind toward the second of my father’s instructions: praise. Dad told me praise involved two sides or aspects. The first involved thanking God for what He had done for me. The second was more direct. I was to praise the Lord for who He was, for His attributes. I found biblical support for this in Psalm 150.2. In a lengthy stretch of psalms calling on us to praise the Lord, we find this admonition: Praise him for his mighty acts: Praise him according to his excellent greatness.

Over time, I developed two primary praise lists as a teenager. The first was a list of things or people for which I was grateful. For example…

…salvation, Heaven, the Holy Spirit, my Bible, my call to the ministry, friends, godly influences like my Sunday School and Christian school teachers, the sorrows that drove me to prayer, parents, siblings, food, clothing, shelter, church, America, health, answers to specific prayers, books, provision, protection, education, a good mind, hope, opportunities to preach, the beauty of creation, etc.

The second was a list of God’s attributes that I saw displayed in the Word of God and demonstrated in my life. For example…

…power, wisdom, strength, holiness, knowledge, understanding, justice, grace, creativity, thoughtfulness, kindness, care, mercy, love, faithfulness, etc.

Taking each one of those mental lists one at a time, I would write them down on the whiteboard. I would then walk around the room, thanking the Lord for each particular thing/person/attribute in detail as I thought about how they had impacted my life. After I had thanked God for His mighty acts in my life, I praised Him according to His excellent greatness.

At this point, my heart was well and truly warmed toward Him. I had cleared my soul of any accumulated refuse and spent time detailing His goodness in my life. In such a spirit, last, I turned to my requests. In such a frame of mind, I would not pray selfishly. I would not whine or complain. I would not bargain with God. I would not come to Him seeking the advancement of my kingdom. God, His aims in me, and His work through me would be uppermost in my mind. And the words of supplication which flowed from my tongue reflected that.

As the years of my life have become decades, my prayer requests have shifted. But the petitions I took to the Lord back in those days were sincere. I asked for help in difficult relationships, wisdom in responding to people and events around me, power and blessing on my preaching and my bus route, protection from temptation, for God to turn the hearts of those I loved who were doing wrong, for unsaved people to come to Christ, for missionaries and preachers I knew, for my father’s ministry and my mother’s sorrows, for my fellow students, and such like.

Sometimes I would list things on the whiteboard and pray through them. Other times, I would simply walk, and the jumbled fears and hopes of my heart would tumble out before Him. To this day, I still prefer to walk when I pray.

How long did each of these sections take to do? It varied, of course, with where I was spiritually and what was pressing in upon me on specific days and seasons of my life. Essentially, though, it worked out to be something in the neighborhood of this: 1) Confession, 10 minutes; 2) praise, each half about 10 or 15 minutes, and 3) prayer, about 20 minutes. Beloved, it is amazing how quickly an hour passes in such a delightful occupation.

There are, of course, many other approaches to prayer. As the years have turned to decades, my prayer and praise lists have multiplied. But the bones of what my Dad furnished me forty years ago became the skeleton of my prayer life ever since – confession, praise, and prayer.

If you have not yet prayed for an hour, let alone done so consistently, may I gently ask you to stop right here for a moment? Get down on the knees of your heart and ask the Lord to grow you deeper in prayer. Then set aside a time this week to begin. Then do it again next week and the week after that. Start at the beginning. You will find Him the most welcoming of hosts as you come to His throne.

I promise you this, if you will draw nigh to Him, He will draw nigh to you. He is there all the time. His heart is open toward you.

What, could ye not watch with Me one hour?

You can.