prayer

Why do Christians pray?

Prayer is about communicating with God. By praying we get to know God better. Through prayer we build up a personal relationship with God. Prayer helps us to see ourselves, our lives and the world around us as God sees them. This helps us to have the right attitude. It helps us to know how to think and what to do.
Prayer also allows us to commend to God’s loving care all the difficult situations in our lives that we can’t do anything about. Offering these situations to God in prayer helps us to trust in God’s love for us, and not to worry.
In prayer we can also ask for God’s help for ourselves and for other people. Especially we pray for people who are sick or dying. God is always ready to help us. He wants to help each one of us to become the person that he has created us to be. Nothing could be better for us than this!

For a simple introduction on 'How to pray', try this Church of England webpage : Learn to pray.

The Church of England also has an Invitation to Prayer website with more suggestions on how to pray and with some specific prayers about justice, peace and reconciliation.

If you are familiar with using words to pray then it might be time to start experimenting with meditative prayer and seeking contemplative prayer. Have a look at this article.

The Taizé Community in France structures its life around three periods of prayer each day.
Their website includes a brief text, updated each day, for mediation.