You Are Good at Prayer: Setting Prayer Free from Guilt

Introduction

We have believed lies about prayer. We thought we had to be pure, high performing, inspired before we could dare speak to God. We imagined a spiritual elite who prayed three hours a day, and then the rest of us, down at the bottom of the ladder, with our choppy prayers and our distractions.

In the ninth episode of the Replica podcast from La Chapelle, David Pothier, senior pastor, sets the record straight. Prayer is not a performance. It is not a grocery list you hand to God. It is not a spirituality contest either. It is a conversation. A conversation with the King of kings who, remarkably, has made himself available to you around the clock.

This article picks up the heart of that pastoral conversation. The goal is not to add a new box for you to check on your list, but to give you back the desire to enter God's presence, just as you are, right where you are.

Outline of the Article

1. What prayer is not
2. What prayer really is
3. Getting free from the guilt that keeps you from praying
4. The astonishing privilege of prayer
5. The great forms of prayer (ACTS)
6. Finding your rhythm: scheduled and spontaneous moments
7. Where to start when you do not know what to pray
8. Praying with Scripture
9. Prayer as the leader's work
10. Why we do not pray more (and how to come back)

1. What prayer is not

Many people see prayer as a grocery list: "Lord, give me, I want, I need..." Making your needs known to God is biblical, but if you reduce prayer to that, you turn it into a tool. Prayer is bigger than the sum of your requests.

Prayer is not a tool for manipulating God either. Some sincere Christians are convinced that what they want is what God wants, and prayer becomes a way to pull the strings. God is not a puppet.

It is not a spirituality contest. We may be impressed by the person who prays for three hours straight, but Jesus warned against prayers where the heart is not invested. It is better to pray less and be present than to pray more and be somewhere else.

Nor is it a public performance where you turn your prayer into a disguised sermon, reciting chapters and verses to impress people. And it is not dull. Prayer is never boring once it becomes what it truly is.

Finally, prayer is not primarily a way to change your circumstances. It can do that, if it is God's will. But it always changes you.

2. What prayer really is

Reduced to its simplest expression, prayer is a conversation with God. John Mark Comer breaks it down into four postures: talking to God, talking with God, listening to God, being with God.

Talking to God is the most obvious form. You express what you are carrying. Like a child coming home from school and telling a parent about the day, you do not need to be articulate or coherent: the Father simply delights that you are talking to him.

Talking with God adds a conversational dimension. It is no longer a monologue. You speak, but you also wait for God to respond.

Listening to God is harder. You take a posture of listening, you keep quiet, you wait. In a world saturated with noise, this form of prayer takes perseverance. You have to learn to tell God's voice apart from your own thoughts, your frustrations, and the enemy.

Being with God is contemplative prayer. David tells the story of a man who used to go to church and say nothing. When asked what he was doing, he answered, "I look at God, God looks at me, and we are happy." It is the same as a couple watching a sunset with no need to say a word.

3. Getting free from the guilt that keeps you from praying

For many Christians, prayer is synonymous with guilt. "I do not pray enough, I do not pray the way I should, my prayers hit the ceiling." Part of that feeling comes from our nature. Another part comes from the church, which at certain times has hammered prayer as a performance to achieve.

The biggest reason people pray so little is this inner lie: "I am not worthy, I am not ready, I need to clean myself up first." That is exactly the opposite of what Jesus does. No one in the Gospels cleans themselves up before going to him: people come to Jesus, and it is Jesus who cleanses them. In the Lord's Prayer, we worship God before we even ask for forgiveness. Prayer is the place where we let ourselves be washed, not the reward for already being clean.

David shares a lie he believed for a long time: he thought there was a small, select group of Christians who were "good at praying," and then everyone else, including him. The truth is different. Every Christian is good at prayer. Birds are good at flying, fish are good at swimming. If you have received the Holy Spirit, you have everything you need to pray.

The picture of children helps here. When a child does something wrong, the instinct is to hide, like Adam and Eve behind fig leaves. But the father simply wants the child to talk to him. When you feel dirty, the right response is not to pull away from God: it is to run to him.

4. The astonishing privilege of prayer

David tells how, at eighteen, he had a meeting scheduled with the CEO of a regional Swiss bank. He bought a new shirt, a tie, and arrived an hour early, honored that such a man would give him his time. Then he realized: that CEO was small next to the kings of the earth. And God is the King of kings. He gives you his time twenty four hours a day.

"Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." This verse changes everything. You have access to the throne room, with confidence, even when you have sinned, even when you do not feel well, even when you have failed.

A moment of prayer is never insignificant. An author David quotes compares prayer to atomic power: one minute of true, sincere prayer releases energy comparable to that of the atom. Never underestimate a short moment of prayer just because you did not have a whole hour.

5. The great forms of prayer (ACTS)

There are many forms of prayer. Wayne Grudem offers a useful acronym: ACTS.

• A, Adoration. You focus on God, you lift up who he is, you gaze on him. Contemplative prayer belongs here.
• C, Confession. You confess your sins, but also what you feel: anger, discouragement, the sense of falling short.
• T, Thanksgiving. You thank God. Gratitude is a full form of prayer in itself.
• S, Supplication. This has two sides: intercession, where you stand between God and another person to carry them, and petition, where you bring your own needs.

Practicing all these forms keeps your prayer from becoming routine. Each one has its own benefits and lets you glorify God in a different way.

6. Finding your rhythm: scheduled and spontaneous moments

David has his scheduled moment in the morning, after his shower: a time of prayer, reading the Word, extended prayer. He does it at the office rather than at home, because it helps him wake up and settle.

Alongside these scheduled moments, there are spontaneous ones: starting every meeting with prayer, refocusing before a decision, welcoming God's presence throughout the day. He makes this valuable observation: without a scheduled moment, you will have few spontaneous ones. That is true in a marriage too. Take away the planned moments, and spontaneity disappears along with them.

Your rhythm needs to fit your personality, your season of life, your capacity. Some people cannot pray in the morning because of young children or a sleep schedule. Make peace with your reality.

Recently, David added an evening routine, inspired by a book from John Mark Comer. In Jewish culture, the day begins in the evening: how you feed your spirit before sleep shapes your night and your waking. He uses the Lectio 365 app (in English), inspired by the prayer of examen. Four parts:

1. Receive, you invite the Holy Spirit to walk back through your day with you.
2. Rejoice, you thank God for every time you saw him at work.
3. Repent, you ask the Spirit to show you the moments when you sinned in thought, word, or deed.
4. Rest, you entrust your night, your dreams, your subconscious to God's protection.

Ten minutes that change the color of your waking hours. David adds another practice: reciting Psalm 23 the moment he opens his eyes, to anchor his day before he steps into the chaos.

7. Where to start when you do not know what to pray

Jesus said, "When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans." He never valued long prayers for their own sake, and he criticized long prayers with no heart behind them. Simplicity is a good place to start.

Richard Foster speaks of "simple prayer": tell God what you are carrying right now. Do not try to find the perfect wording. It can be messy, disorganized. You are tempted, you are tired, your kids are getting on your nerves, you are afraid you will drop the ball at work. Say it. That is your prayer.

Dallas Willard sums it up this way: what kills prayer more than anything is trying to say the "right" prayer. Whether through polished language or by choosing the "right" subject (the one that does not really move you but seems more spiritual), you disconnect. Pray about what is on your heart. Even if it seems shallow, you have entered a conversation with God. And that conversation will deepen on its own, into what Willard calls "the circle of God's love."

The Psalms confirm this approach. They are full of simple, uncensored prayers: "Why have you forsaken me? Break the teeth of my enemies!" Job too roared at God. And often, prayer transforms the one who prays, and lament turns into trust.

8. Praying with Scripture

What structures David's prayer life is the Bible. Without Scripture, his prayer runs dry, he no longer knows what to pray. His method: pray before reading, asking the Holy Spirit for light, read, then pray from the text. What is challenging me here? What do I need to repent of? What do I need to pursue?

He compares it to a rowboat with two oars. With just one, you go in circles. With both (the Word and prayer), you move forward. That is the backbone of a living prayer life.

9. Prayer as the leader's work

Acts 6 tells how the early church, several thousand strong, faced a conflict between the Greek and Hebrew widows. The apostles delegate that management so they can devote themselves to "prayer and the word." Two priorities. Not three. Prayer and the word.

For anyone carrying responsibility, whether pastor, parent, or leader at work or in a small group, prayer is not a box to check at the bottom of the to do list. Prayer is your work. It is even the most important part of your work.

JD Greear puts it this way: in Acts 2, the early church prayed for ten days, Peter preached for about ten minutes, and three thousand were converted. Today we flip it: we pray ten minutes, we preach ten messages, and three people are converted. A quote from Kinlaw Dickinson drives the point home: we pray in the context of ministry, but Jesus did ministry in the context of prayer.

Exodus 17 illustrates this concretely. While Joshua fought Amalek in the valley, Moses prayed with his hands lifted up on the mountain. When his hands dropped, Israel lost ground. Aaron and Hur had to hold up his arms. The leader's prayers change the game down in the valley.

10. Why we do not pray more (and how to come back)

Several reasons explain why prayer is so hard to build into life.

Spiritual warfare. The moment you decide to pray, your phone rings, ten emails come in, a tree falls. The enemy is afraid of a Christian who prays. There is a real conspiracy against your prayer.

Narcissism. Ronald Rolheiser identifies three major obstacles. The first is our cultural narcissism: we are so centered on ourselves that we no longer even see it. True prayer begins when we step off center from ourselves.

Hyper pragmatism. Our era demands the concrete, the data, the measurable. We underrate the supernatural because we cannot touch it. Yet God, angels, and evil spirits are part of what is real.

Restlessness. Our hyper connected world steals our attention. Without attention, there is no prayer. And once the outside noise settles down, the inside noise starts: the clapping monkey, the jugglers, the party going on in your head.

A quote from Thomas Keating has helped David a great deal: "Ten thousand thoughts or distractions are ten thousand opportunities to return to God." Every distraction is not proof that you are failing. It is a fresh opportunity to return. You can no longer be performing when you come back for the hundredth time in a minute, you are living in grace.

Key Takeaways

• Prayer is a conversation with God, not a performance to nail.
• You are good at prayer: if you have the Holy Spirit, you have everything you need.
• Do not clean yourself up before coming to God. Come dirty, he will cleanse you.
• Prayer changes you before it changes your circumstances.
• Without a scheduled moment, you will have few spontaneous ones.
• Pray about what is on your heart, not about what seems "spiritually correct."
• Every distraction is a chance to come back to God, not a reason for guilt.

Personal Application

1. What lie about prayer are you believing right now? "I am not good at it," "I have no time," "I need to clean myself up first"?
2. What time of day could you set aside as a scheduled appointment with God, suited to your season of life?
3. Of the four postures (talking to, talking with, listening to, being with God), which one do you need most? What could you try this week?
4. What could you add to your evening routine so your mind falls asleep on God rather than on the news or social media?
5. Are you a leader somewhere, family, work, church, small group? Do you treat prayer as your work or as an extra?

Verses Cited

• Matthew 6:5-13 · The Lord's Prayer and the warning against empty words.
• Philippians 4:6 · Make your needs known to God.
• Hebrews 4:16 · Let us approach the throne of grace with confidence.
• Acts 2 · The early church prays for ten days, Peter preaches, three thousand are converted.
• Acts 6:4 · "We will devote ourselves to prayer and to the word."
• Exodus 17:8-13 · Moses, Aaron, and Hur, the victory over Amalek.
• Psalm 23 · The psalm of David that the pastor recites upon waking.
• Genesis 3 · The fig leaves and the covering God provides.

FAQ

Do I need to pray every day at a fixed time?

A scheduled rhythm helps enormously, without it, spontaneous moments become rare. But that rhythm needs to fit your season of life. A new parent, someone facing health challenges, a night shift worker will have different windows of time. The goal is not the schedule, it is the regularity of the meeting.

What should I do when my mind wanders everywhere while I pray?

Do not reach for the whip. Every distraction is a chance to come back to God. If you come back a hundred times in a minute, that is a hundred acts of love, not a hundred failures. Grace brings you back every time, and that is already prayer.

I feel unworthy to pray after sinning. What should I do?

That is exactly the moment to pray. Do not hide like Adam behind fig leaves. No one in the Gospels cleans themselves up before coming to Jesus: we come to him, and he does the cleansing. Tell him everything, ask for forgiveness, let yourself be washed. Prayer is the place of cleansing, not the reward for already being clean.