Turning Points Magazine & Devotional

August 2025 Issue

Uncomplicating Your Prayer Life

From the Current Issue

An Uncomplicated Habit

An Uncomplicated Habit

Parents, teachers, church workers, and grandparents understand that Jesus listens attentively to the prayers of children, and perhaps He smiles at the funny ones. Dear God, are You really invisible, or is that just a trick? Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from email. Heavenly Father, when mom serves leftovers, do we have to say grace over them again?

Children’s prayers are simple and uncomplicated. They don’t use a lot of filters. They speak from their hearts, and their words can touch our hearts. Jesus said, “Therefore whoever humbles himself as [a] little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:4).

We should make prayer a joyful habit and an uncomplicated practice.

As we age, our lives become more complicated. We assume more responsibilities, bear more burdens, chase more goals, and acquire more things. Our minds and spaces become cluttered, and sometimes that seeps into our prayer lives. In Jesus’ day, the seemingly pious religious leaders would “pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets.” They would use ornate language and utter vain repetitions, thinking God would hear them for their lengthy recitations (Matthew 6:5-7).

Jesus had contempt for that. But He was delighted when the children on Palm Sunday cried, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” When the chief priests and scribes saw children praising Him in the temple, they were mortified. But Jesus asked them, “Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants you have perfected praise’?” (Matthew 21:15-16)

What a statement! Can we learn to praise and to pray from babes?

We do better when we pray with childlike simplicity, childlike faith, and childlike love. We should make prayer a joyful habit and an uncomplicated practice. Let me suggest three ways of doing that.

Unclutter Your Life

The world won’t miss a beat if you turn off your phone for half an hour.

First, everything, including prayer, is improved when we unclutter our lives. A good place to start is by buying less. Most of us have all we need. Yes, occasionally we need another pair of socks or a new stove. But instead of buying more things, perhaps we could get rid of some of the things we have.

Now, apply that same principle to your heart. Trina McNeilly wrote in Unclutter Your Soul, “Internal clutter takes its toll on a soul created for wide-open spaces. Soul clutter, if not addressed, can take on the forms of fear, depression, anxiety, addiction, chronic stress, and even physical ailments.”

She suggests asking yourself some questions: “Do you ever feel as if your inner life is tight, busy, or chaotic? Are your emotions calling all the shots? Do your find yourself the owner of an overactive mind, often leaving you paralyzed from moving forward and living life to the fullest?”1

You can pray kneeling at your bedside, sitting at your desk, or walking in the park.

If so, remember what the Bible says: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

The first step in uncomplicating prayer is to find a quiet time and a still place in which you can talk with God without a sense of hurry. It’s better to pray five minutes in an unhurried way than for an hour watching the clock.

Unclutter your time. Make room for unhurried prayer. Unclutter your surroundings. Find a porch swing, an empty writing table, a prayer closet, and make it your space. Some people are messy by nature while others are obsessive-compulsive about neat spaces. Years ago, we got a lot of laughs from the television show The Odd Couple about two roommates. One was neat, and the other was a slob. Whatever your personality, having a small patch of tidiness and order around you may help clear your thoughts.

And remember, the world won’t miss a beat if you turn off your phone for half an hour. I know that seems risky to do. Unheard of. But people lived for thousands of years without phones, and I lived most of my life without a wireless device in my pocket all the time. Disconnecting from our electronic devices is helpful when it comes to connecting with our eternal Friend.

Uncomplicate Your Process

Second, uncomplicate the process. If you’re not sure how to go about prayer, here’s a simple method which you can use by praying aloud, praying in whispers, or praying in your mind. It’s a simple, three-step process that can guide your prayers.

  • Adore. Spend some time in adoration toward God, telling Him of His greatness and praising Him for His goodness. David prayed in 1 Chronicles 29:11, “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty. Everything in the heavens and on earth is yours, O Lord, and this is your kingdom. We adore you as the one who is over all things” (NLT).
  • Acknowledge. Then acknowledge to the Lord any faults or failures you’re aware of. Get them off your conscience. If you were too abrupt speaking to a friend, if you spent money unwisely, or if you harbored an unclean thought—tell the Lord. In many schools, one of the end-of-day tasks is to erase and wash off the whiteboard on the wall. When we acknowledge and confess our sins, we’re clearing the slate, as it were, for a fresh day.
  • Ask. Having spent time in adoration and acknowledgment, now feel free to ask God for your needs and those of others. Cast all your cares on Him. Pray for yourself, your friends and family, your pastor and church, for the persecuted church around the world, and for the spread of the Gospel.

You can pray like this for five minutes or for fifty minutes. You can pray silently or aloud. You can pray kneeling at your bedside, sitting at your desk, or walking in the park. You can certainly vary your approach. In a moment of crisis, your prayer may simply be, Help, Lord! But on a day-by-day basis, this triple-A plan is simple enough for even children to follow: adore, acknowledge, ask.

Unlock the Power of Prayer

That leads to my third suggestion—unlock the power of prayer. Our ability to pray simple, effective prayers should grow as we grow in the Lord. We don’t want our prayers to become more complicated. If anything, the older we become, the more we value a simple life, including praying with sincerity and simplicity. We can look back and see how many prayers God has answered, how many blessings He has bestowed, and how many people He has helped through our intercession. And we’ll also find that many of our prayers offered years ago are still on God’s agenda. He is working on long-term results, even if our prayers were offered in the short term.

In Lead with Prayer, Ryan Skoog said he learned to appreciate the impact of prayer from his mother. “I can remember my mom praying late into the night, night after night, when I was a young boy. From her prayer room, she would cry out to God for us, for our neighborhood, and for the nations. I will never forget staying up late, listening with my ear to the door to hear my mom’s prayers.”

One day Ryan’s mom shared with him something she felt the Lord whispering to her heart during one of those evening prayer times: “There are prayers I’m still working on that you forgot you prayed many years ago.”2

That’s true for you and me. He is still answering prayers we offered long ago, though we may no longer remember them. The Lord doesn’t miss a word of our prayer when it’s offered in the Name of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:7-11)

That’s what Jesus had to say about prayer—and it’s just about as simple as that! Let your prayers be pure, plain, and powerful. Just like those of a child! Life is complicated enough. Let’s learn to pray with childlike simplicity.

Citations:

1Trina McNeilly, Unclutter Your Soul (Nashville, TN: W Publishing, 2022), xii, xv.

2Ryan Skoog, Peter Greer, and Cameron Doolittle, Lead With Prayer (New York: FaithWords, 2024), 205.

This Month's Magazine Resource

Everything to God in Prayer

In Everything to God in Prayer, by David Jeremiah, you will find 100 prayers, along with a key Scripture verse, to guide you as you pray about various situations and burdens encountered on life's journey.

Learn More »

More from Turning Point Radio

/