How do we persuade people to pray?
The best prayer warriors typically enjoy a warm, personal relationship with God. Yet when we try to teach others to pray, we often resort to the “how to” of prayer—techniques, tips, and tricks. These can indeed be helpful, but they’re secondary, not primary.
As prayer leaders, we must draw our people into warm, personal relationships with God. They can know every innovative prayer technique, but if they feel like God is distant and cold, that emotion will inevitably dampen any desire for prayer.
The key principle of effective persuasion is this: persuasion is about emotion, not information.
Raw Emotion of Prayer
You can possess all the information in the world about a given topic. But if you don’t feel the emotional draw of it, you won’t act on it.
Jesus understood this principle well. Read this familiar passage, but don’t look for the theology. Look instead for the emotion, the way Jesus hopes these words make you feel:
“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7:9–11).
At this moment, Jesus bypasses the “how to” of prayer entirely. He focuses on the heart—the raw emotion of prayer. If you care for your own children in this way, how much more does your Father in heaven long to give good things to you!
If we really believed this—if our people really felt this—we would run to the Throne of God. Nothing could keep us away from His presence.
Why then do so many Christians avoid the Throne? Why is it such a chore to get people to pray?
We feel like God doesn’t want us. We feel like God is stingy. We feel like prayer won’t accomplish much. We feel like God is cold toward us, or judging us, or disappointed in us. We may believe He exists, yet still feel indifferent instead of intimate.
Lead to the Heart of God
Prayer is nothing without relationship. Prayer is personal communication with a Father who loves you: the comfortable chit-chat of life in a loving home, the cry for help to someone who knows immediately what you need, the continual questions probing the depths of a loved one’s soul. Cold repetition and stoic chants create lifeless prayer just as cold conversation and stoic answers create lifeless homes.
To lead people in prayer, we must lead them to the heart of God. If we get that right, the “how to” will take care of itself. We can strive to get the words right yet end up with the driest prayers. How often have congregants recited scriptural prayers word-for-word yet lacked the faintest trickle of affection for the God they’re addressing? Jesus taught us how to get the words right with examples like the Lord’s Prayer. Yet He began with the heart necessary for good prayer: raw emotion. Everything that follows flows from that love.
The great irony in the Lord’s Prayer is how Jesus commands us: “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father. . .’” (Matt. 6:9). Jesus invites us to pray like a child addressing a loving Daddy full of affection. Yet we recite His words lacking any sense of it.
But if we draw near to God—not merely knowing about God’s love but truly feeling it—the content Jesus teaches us to pray flows effortlessly, whether or not we remember the words. If we truly love our Father, we’ll naturally praise His name. Who doesn’t love to talk about the people they admire?
A Daddy to Adore
Few people want to obey a cruel tyrant, but a loving Daddy is another matter entirely. Watch a father in an ice cream parlor who delights to buy each child exactly what they want. They are eager for his will to be done in their lives.
If we believe—not merely know, but feel—the truth that God is eager to give us good things, we will joyfully bring our daily requests to Him. If we have disappointed this Father, but He has forgiven us fully, we’ll want to extend that same relationship-healing power to others. Love breeds love.
When we believe that this Father adores us—that He truly cherishes us more than life—we will trust Him for our protection from every kind of evil. When we feel how awesome and loving our God really is, everything else falls into place. Prayer flows from love.
Teach the heart of God and people will gallop to prayer. Nothing can keep a child away from the Daddy they adore.
KYLE DAVISON BAIR is prayer ministries pastor at New Hope Church in New Hope, MN.
