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I was taking the summer off from my college studies in chemistry and mathematics to earn money and learn to pray.

Earning money was the easy part. The praying part was tougher-especially at first. A new pastor-and old friend-arrived in town and he invited me to meet with him every Monday evening to pray together.

Initially, I found myself running out of things to say, and many of my prayers sounded like wish lists. After three weeks or so, my friend quietly suggested that the following Monday he would start to teach me how to pray.

At our next meeting, he asked, "What shall we pray for tonight?"

I had received a letter from a young woman whom I will call Jane. The pastor and I both knew her. Her life had been in a mess before God saved her. Now, three years later, she was dying of cancer and was not expected to live more than a few weeks. Her letter was full of bitterness, hurt, and fear.

What, then, should we pray for her? "Lord, heal Jane"? "Lord, rebuke Jane for her bitterness"? Or how about the usual prayer: "Lord, bless Jane"?

My friend helped me to think through all the options. Certainly we could ask that God would heal Jane, just as children ask their fathers for something. God could heal her, and we should ask. But God hasn't promised to bring instant physical restoration to all who ask.

Wasn't there something we should pray for Jane that was in line with God's own promises for his people, something we could claim with confidence on Jane's behalf?

As we went through verse after verse, I was struck by the number and the beauty of the passages promising that God will keep his own people and bring fruit from their lives. We may be "confident of this, that he who began a good work in [us] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:6). We were convinced God had genuinely begun a "good work" in Jane's life. Now we would petition God to keep his promise and carry it on.

Several other matters came up for prayer, and my friend encouraged me to try to think biblically about what we should be praying for in each case. We read passages from Scripture that we thought relevant to each issue. Then we prayed through our list, quoting God's promises back to God. I had begun to learn how to intercede before the throne of God.

That was Monday evening. On Thursday I received a letter from Jane, written on Tuesday morning. She had awakened that morning, she wrote, deeply ashamed of her doubt and her ingratitude. God had saved her, and now if he wanted to take her home, why, that must be the best and the wisest thing-and she would praise him in her home going. The entire letter was a hymn of praise. Jane died six weeks later.

Two simple principles
Thirty years later I became a pastor, and eventually a teacher of pastors. Over time I learned more facets of prayer, including the intense moments when we do not know what to pray "but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express" (Rom. 8:26). But I always go back to my first experiences of praying scripturally. I remind myself:

Re-read the prayers of Scripture. Study them; turn them over in your mind. Note the enormous diversity, and they all have something important to say. Copy the prayers of Moses; recite David's psalms; meditate on the prayers of Hannah, Nehemiah, and Daniel; commit the apostle Paul's prayers to memory.

What did these believers pray for? When did they pray? (Was it in a crisis? Was it part of their regular prayer life?) What forms of worship did they use? What was their passion like?

Grow in your knowledge of the mind of God. As we read and re-read the Bible, that will help us to know and to love what God thinks, what his priorities are, what his character is, what he wants for us.

Jesus tells us, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). Shouldn't we be praying that we might be perfect and holy? Shouldn't we grieve when we fall into sin? And shouldn't we immediately rush to ask for forgiveness, assured that "the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin"? (1 John 1:7)

We pray about our mortgages, our children's education, our illnesses, our disappointments-God, our heavenly Father, cares about each aspect of our lives. But if our praying is always focused on ourselves, we are like little children whose horizon is limited to themselves and to their wants. We should also pray actively that his "will be done" (Matt. 6:10).

Learning the prayers of the Bible affects how we praise God in prayer and the way we intercede for ourselves and others. It will transform our praying.

Condensed from Decision (Mar. 1996), © 1996 D.A. Carson. Used with permission.

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