3 Tips to Form a Daily Habit of Prayer

We clearly see in the Bible that prayer is important. Jesus spent time in prayer, and so did the apostles. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 tells us to pray without ceasing, and Philippians 4:6 tells us not to worry about anything, but to pray about everything.

Prayer is a way we can directly talk to God. We are so lucky God has given us a way to converse with Him. Of course, God already knows everything we need and our thoughts, but because we are His children, He loves it when we come to Him and seek a relationship with Him.

When we spend time with our friends on Earth, we talk to them. In the same way, we can spend time with our Heavenly Father by talking to Him. Prayer is an important habit, and I believe a good way to consistently pray is to set aside time for it, just like we would set aside time for Bible study or serving others.

Of the 2 parts of a relationship with God that are usually considered the most important—prayer and Bible study—prayer is what I struggle with the most. It’s hard for me to pause long enough to talk to God for more than a couple of minutes. Sometimes I don’t know what to say, and other times I get bored. This post is as much to help me as it is to help you guys. Let’s learn tips that can help us develop a consistent prayer habit together!

Start small.

I need to spend more time in prayer. But I know that if I resolved right now to spend 30 minutes in prayer every day, I would be almost guaranteed to fail. Since spending a lot of time in prayer isn’t a habit for me yet, it would be hard to suddenly start praying for that long.

So I’ll start small and build up. I’ve decided to spend 5 minutes praying every morning. My hope is that I’ll build up to 10 or 15 minutes in prayer every morning, and eventually more. I want prayer to become a habit—but not something dry and boring—and an essential discipline.

I challenge you to make a goal with me. Maybe every morning you’ll spend 5 minutes in prayer, like I plan to. Maybe you’ll spend 1, 2, 7, or 15 minutes in prayer. We should choose an amount that we’ll be able to stick to and build on later.

However, if we’ve already spent scheduled time in prayer one day, that doesn’t mean we can’t spend even more time in it. We were commanded to pray without ceasing, which means to pray in every situation. It means praying through our struggles, when something goes well, when we need encouragement, and any other time.

Supplement your prayer.

Sometimes, it’s hard to know what to pray about. Prayers can feel repetitive or boring. A great way we can combat this obstacle is to supplement our prayers.

There are lots of great prayer books that we can pray along with. One I’ve used is Praying Through the Names of God by Tony Evans. Of course, while reading prayer books, we should exercise discernment because the prayers were written by humans, and humans make mistakes and can be deceived.

Some of Jesus’ and his disciple’s prayers are written in the Bible. An example is in Matthew 6:5-20, and this article has a list of the apostle Paul’s prayers in the Bible. We can pray along with these prayers, which were inspired by God! We can be assured that they’re perfect because they’re a part of the perfect Word of God.

Something that I find helpful is praying over the Word. If we pray over the Word, we’ll never run out of topics to pray over. It can also help us understand the Word of God better. I don’t pray through the Word as often as I’d like to, but I know that when I do, it works well and I never run out of things to pray. When I’ve finished praying through one passage of Scripture, I can turn to the next chapter!

And if our prayers start to get boring, we should remember that repetition in prayer isn’t always bad. Jesus talks about repetitive prayers in Matthew 6:7 and says that there’s a problem with meaningless repetition and apathetic prayers.

Discipline.

Just like there are going to be days when we don’t want to read our Bible, there are going to be days when we lack motivation to pray. However, we need to persevere and pray anyway! Tiredness and apathy can be used by the enemy to stop us from praying, because Satan knows that prayer is impactful, and he will try to prevent it.

If we’re tired and burnt-out, we can make prayer easier by supplementing it or spending a bit less scheduled time in prayer, but we shouldn’t stop praying. We can pray about everything, little or big. God wants to hear from us!

When is the last time you set aside time to pray? When I wrote the first draft of this article, it had been a while since I'd set aside more than 2 or 3 minutes. I want to change that. Make time to pray right now—we’ll do it together. Prayer has an eternal impact. We can make a habit of prayer by starting small, supplementing our prayer, and disciplining ourselves.

And why do we pray? Because prayer is powerful.

My prayer for readers:

Dear Lord,

Sometimes, I struggle with finding the “right” words to say in my prayers. I struggle to set aside time for prayer, especially when it’s the end of the day and I’m tired. Some of my readers may struggle with this, too. Please give us the strength to intentionally spend time praying to You, Lord. Lead us to pray and turn to You in every situation. Help us consistently spend time in prayer and not be overwhelmed by the challenge of praying without ceasing. Lord, help us to establish this spiritual discipline.

Amen.