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n overcast sky made the country night intensely dark and a light drizzle made the highway dangerously slick. On my way home that night, as I passed a semi-trailer and pulled in front of it, my car struck a slippery patch of roadway and went slithering snake-like down the road out of control. Abruptly my car swung around and began careening down the road backwards with the semi-trailer barreling down on top of me!

In terror I prayed, \"God, help!\"

With only moments to spare, my car suddenly flipped sideways out of the path of the oncoming semi. But it kept skidding off the highway and down an embankment. Certain my car would now overturn, in terror I prayed again.

Amazingly, my car didn\'t overturn. Neither did it stop. It swung around and then went forward bouncing through a field. \"Oh no,\" I thought. \"Now I\'ll end up smashing into a tree.\" I thought my number was up. I prayed again.

Eventually my car stopped in front of some bushes. Miraculously, I missed every post by the roadside and every tree. I backed up a few feet, turned around and drove away without a single bruise to myself or a scratch on my car.

Was my safety a coincidence or does God answer prayer?

In my experience, I have found that God definitely answers prayers. Some quickly; others slowly; and some with a \"no\"\'€”or at least not the way I think they should be answered. Many have prayed identical prayers to mine, only to be severely injured or even killed in terrible auto crashes.

Prayer isn\'t a painkiller like a giant
aspirin: \'Take God three times a day
and you won\'t feel any pain!\'

So how should we pray? We live in a fallen, sinful world and we know that God does not promise to give us everything we want or to keep us from all suffering. In fact, the Bible tells us, \"In this world you will have tribulation.\"¹

So effective prayer is not a lucky charm to gain special favors. Neither is it a painkiller like a giant aspirin: \"Take God three times a day and you won\'t feel any pain!\" as John Powell put it. But even though we can\'t always get the answer we want at the moment we want it, God wants His children to communicate our desires to Him. \"Prayer is communicating our heart to God.\"

Here are ten practical principles I believe should guide our praying.

Pray for truth. When we have a problem or need, whether it is a habit that has us beaten, a conflict, or physical illness, we tend to focus our prayers on the symptom rather than on the cause. We tend to look on the surface instead of the deeper cause or problem. We may deceive ourselves, for example, into thinking that our spouse needs to change instead of looking at our contribution to the problem. Or we may pray for a better job instead of getting training to prepare us for one when the opportunity arises. Or we ask God to change our children without looking at the way we parent them.

Whenever I have a problem, I try to acknowledge the problem but also ask God to show me the root cause and then help me do what I need to do to resolve it. Since most of our problems are the fruit of a deeper root, the presenting problem can often be a misleading symptom that avoids our real problem.

Praying for the truth is one of the most effective ways of praying I know. Sometimes I don\'t want to see the truth since it might be frightening or embarrassing so I tell God that I am willing to be made willing to see it\'€”whatever it might be.

Whenever I have prayed this way, I have always had this prayer answered. Sometimes the answer comes quickly, other times slowly. It usually depends on when I am ready to receive it.

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Pray responsibly. God won\'t do for us what we need to do for ourselves. When I was a student, I would sometimes pray furiously for God\'s help at examination time\'€”especially when I wasn\'t adequately prepared! I managed to pass my exams, but not because of any \"pray-instead-of-study\" prayers!

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Pray in harmony with God\'s will. The Bible says, \"If we ask anything according to God\'s will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the request which we have asked from him.\"² Our growth and maturity is one of God\'s high priorities. So prayers offered in harmony with this principle, and with all of God\'s will, will always be effective. Prayers outside His will are not. The key to all effective prayer is learning to pray the right prayer.

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Pray with the right motive. As God\'s Word says, \"You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.\"³

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Pray persistently. Not all prayers are answered quickly. I have prayed for some things for years before getting an answer. If our prayer is legitimate, we may need to be as persistent as Jacob, who once said to God, \"I will not let you go until you have blessed me.\"⁴ Jesus Himself said, \"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.\"⁵ The principle is to keep on asking and seeking until we receive God\'s answers.

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Pray specifically. Recently I had a need for office equipment and asked God to show me how to get the needed funds. That night I was unable to sleep so I got up and worked on balancing my finances. To my amazement, I found a mistake in my favor and was able to order the equipment the next day!

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The key to all effective prayer
is learning to pray the right prayer.

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Pray believing. Faith, too, is essential for effective prayer. As Jesus said, \"Whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive,\" and \"according to your faith will it be done to you.\"⁶

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Pray sincerely. \"Do you want to be made well?\" Jesus\' asked the lame man at the pool of Bethesda.⁷ That seems like a foolish question but Jesus wanted to know if the man really meant business. Being healed would require an entirely new approach to life. He would have to get a job and take care of himself instead of lie by the pool hoping that someone would help him in. If we want God to answer our prayers we have to want the answer enough to be willing to pay the price. If we want to grow in faith, love, patience, perseverance, and maturity, we need to realize that all of these are acquired through experience, often painful experience. As the Bible says, \"Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character.\"⁸ Sometimes we want the goal without the work to get there.

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Pray in Jesus\' name. Jesus said, \"And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to [God] the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it.\"⁹ Jesus is our intermediary to our Heavenly Father.

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Finally, come to God on His terms. Effective prayer is dependent on our having a right relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ. When we are living in a right relationship with God and learn to pray according to His will [which is what will truly be best for us] we can be certain that God will answer. As Jesus put it, \"If you stay in [right relationship with] me and obey my commands, you may ask any request you like, and it will be granted.\"¹⁰

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Prayer is a wonderful gift from God to His children. It is an incredible privilege to talk with our Creator and Heavenly Father. But we should always pray with a certain degree of mystery and amazement because we never know just how and when we will receive His answer.

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1. John 16:33. 2. I John 5:14-15, (NIV). 3. James 4:2-3, (NIV). 4. Genesis 32:26-28, (TLB). 5. Matthew 7:7-8, (NIV). 6. Matthew 9:29, (NIV). 7. John 5:6. 8. Romans 5:3-4, (RSL). 9. John 14:12-14, (NIV). 10. John 15:7, (TLB).

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