How good are your prayers? Do you ever wish you could pray better? Maybe, like some of us, you aren’t really sure how to evaluate that particular part of your spiritual life. It can feel overwhelming, especially if you have gone through your spiritual life mostly hearing other people’s public prayers in church.

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

1 John 5:14

A basic definition of prayer is a request. The Bible tells us that prayer is our communication with God. So what do we want to do when we pray? Do we simply submit a list of requests to God and hope he answers the ones he likes?

No, instead we confidently ask for those things which we can understand which we can say in full faith “God wants this too!” We know that he listens to prayers like that. Whether his answer to that request matches our expectations is different. Our limitations on perspective prevent us from seeing what he knows and truly understanding the way the Lord is working for us. But we can know this for certain; he is working toward a goal that benefits us. Do our prayers align with that?

Ethan Kirl