How to Pray

I have been reading C.S. Lewis' Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. As Lewis is discussing prayer, he says, "We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us . . . I have no doubt at all that if they are the subject of our thoughts they must be the subject of our prayers . . ."

Often when I go to pray I spend far too much time attempting to come up with the right words to say. The reality, however, is that the only "right" words to say are those words that are currently in me. We should not fake prayer. God knows who we truly are and cannot be fooled by our attempts to sound more "Christian." God does not want us to sound a particular way or to act a particular way in prayer, God desires for us to be honest, authentic and true.

When we lay before God what is truly in us, God will help us sort things out. No prayer is too small or too large if it is on our hearts. C.S. Lewis says, "If we lay all the cards on the table, God will help us to moderate the excesses."

God does not need the information we share in our prayers, but God needs us to be real so that we are open to being transformed increasingly into Christ-likeness.