There are so many things to say about prayer. Here I will try to narrow the focus to how prayer changes as we progress in spiritual maturity.
I’ll divide things up, perhaps over-simplistically, into phases.
Phase 1: You pray for what you want.
This is the most basic kind of prayer, but that doesn’t mean it is bad. Not at all. We are encouraged to ask for things. Jesus even included the phrase, “Give us this day our daily bread,” in the Lord’s prayer.
Naturally, if we are sick, we will pray to be well. If we lack money for necessities, or even just for things we want, we should pray about that. We’ll pray for family harmony, good weather, safety for traveling–all of that is good and normal.
That’s all good and right, but it is incomplete. If we are using prayer to get God to fill our empty shopping cart, it is shallow. Admittedly, at first we might not know any better. But we must move beyond that. Babies, who once knew nothing but getting mother’s milk, grow into a fuller understanding of life. Like them, we grow into maturity. Our view of prayer expands beyond asking God for things.
Phase 2: You learn that prayer is more than just getting what you want.
In the Lord’s prayer Jesus taught us some other things to pray, more than just “Give us this day our daily bread.” Before it he said, “Our Father, in heaven, hallowed be they name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So there’s praise and honor first, as well as acknowledging that God’s will is the highest and best.
And after the “Give us this day our daily bread,” he moved on to “Forgive us our debts, and we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.” The Lord’s prayer, which is our guide, had more about the spiritual than the material. It also had praise, confession and appreciation for who God is and what He has done.
The helpful acronym ACTS (adore, confess, thank, supplicate) helps us keep prayers out of the rut of just asking God for things we want (supplication). Supplication is still a part of it, but in the context of our broader relationship with God.
So we move on from ‘prayer as getting things’ to a fuller picture.
Phase 3: You align your prayers to God’s will.
It is possible to pray wrongly. James 4:3 says plainly that God does not answer some prayers because they are from selfish motives. He says, “you ask with wrong motives,” or as the King James Bible says, “you ask amiss.” God does not obligate himself to answer selfish prayers.
The book of 1 John says the same thing in a positive way: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him,” (1 John 5:14-15).
Praying according to God’s will is the goal. How do we get to that point if God’s will is not clear? The way to prayer according to God’s will is to keep praying, keep listening to God, keep aligning our motives as we allow God’s sunlight to shine upon them. We make adjustments as we persevere. As we do this, our original motives might be shown to be not as pure as we assumed.
For example. Many years ago I asked God for something. I really wanted it. It wasn’t sinful and there seemed nothing wrong with it. In fact, it seemed to be good–good for me, good for the Kingdom of God. But over time that ‘good’ was shown to be kind of shallow; the real motive had an element of competition, or maybe pride, that I didn’t see at first. Looking back, I see how this was gradually revealed.
It is also possible that maybe we are asking for too little and don’t even know it. God is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,” (Ephesians 3:20). The awareness of this too comes through listening as we persistently go to God.
This brings us to the last phase…
Phase 4: Prayer becomes less of a monologue and more of a conversation.
It is useful, thought a little simplistic, to say that God speaks to us through His word (the Bible), and that we speak to Him through prayer.
That is simplistic because God can also speak to us in prayer. Prayer involves listening as well as speaking.
How do we listen when God rarely (if ever) speaks to most of us in an audible voice? We listen through silence, giving room for God to speak through impressions. We don’t rush through our prayer time. We stop and get a sense for what God wants.
In my prayer times, I’ve learned to try not to say the ‘amen’ too quickly. I’ve got to leave room for what God wants to say. Prayer becomes less about things and more about deeping our relationship with God.
Our Christian character is built through conversation. This character is more valuable than getting those things we want. Even so, God still delights in giving His children gifts. We get a double benefit–the answer (now honed to God’s will) that we prayed for and the character depth that came from that process.
These four phases may come in a different order for you than for me. But I believe they mark the usual pattern of maturity in the way we pray.