We continue our New Year series on growing in prayer with an edited extract from Lyndall Bywater’s thoughtful and popular guide, Prayer in the Making.
18 January 2026
The wonder of prayer
Prayer is simultaneously the simplest and the most complex thing I know in life. At its simplest, it is us talking to God and him talking to us. Yet it is also the story of tiny, insubstantial human beings communicating with one who exists outside of time and beyond eternity. It’s as simple as the world’s most basic transistor radio picking up radio waves, but it’s as complex as that same little transistor radio somehow tuning into the echoes of distant stars. If you think about it too much, it can make your brain fizz.
Prayer is a wonder, in every sense of the word. It is unfathomable and beautiful and joyfully real. The God we worship has always spoken, right from the very conception of creation, and he hasn’t stopped. Jesus, God made man, spent the vast majority of his ministry talking and listening. He wasn’t a guru who poked his head out of a cave every six months or so to utter something profound; he was the man who told stories and chatted at parties. When he was getting ready to face the cross, he told his followers what it would be like to have him around in spirit instead of in person, and the Spirit he described was a distinctly talkative one: one who would teach and tell and proclaim; one who would even hear us and communicate with us when we don’t have the words anymore. Our God is ever and always in conversation with us, if we want him to be.
Prayer is a wonder, in every sense of the word.
The ‘guilty prayer slump’
Some years ago, I worked for The Salvation Army as national prayer coordinator. The job took me all over the country, teaching and preaching on prayer, and I absolutely loved it. I was only a few months into the job when I began to discover a phenomenon that will be familiar to anyone who has ever taught on prayer. I call it the ‘guilty prayer slump’. Picture the scene: you stand up in front of an eager congregation, all expectant for the deep wisdoms that the visiting speaker has come to share, and you utter the immortal words, ‘Today I’m going to talk about prayer.’
In the heartbeat that follows, something in the room seems to shift. Shoulders sag, heads bow in mild embarrassment, and you might even hear a few awkward coughs. I remember getting rather distressed the first few times it happened, but mercifully it didn’t take me long to realise that this was no reflection on me; this was a common and widespread reaction to the idea of a talk on prayer.
Mention that prayer is the chosen subject for the day, and suddenly a maelstrom of guilt surges through the average congregation of faithful, dedicated Christians. It’s not that we don’t love prayer. Most people love the idea of that simple, two-way communication with a living God. It’s just that we’re sure we’re not doing it properly.
Fast-forward to the coffee slot after the church service, and I would stand there with my cup of tea, looking forward to some inspiring conversations about prayer, only to find myself talking to person after person who wanted me to know how bad they were at it.
Mention prayer and suddenly a maelstrom of guilt surges through the average congregation of faithful, dedicated Christians.
Everybody does it better?
Some 20 years on, I still have no idea what ‘bad at prayer’ actually means, but I have found one common denominator in all those conversations. When I ask people to tell me what they think their prayer life should be like, they all refer me to someone else’s. It might be a hero of the faith, like John Wesley or Smith Wigglesworth, or it might be someone else in their church or family – a grandmother who prayed for several hours a day or a pastor who told stories of powerful encounters with God in his book-lined study. As they lamented their poor performance, there would always be a litany of comparisons. At the heart of most people’s guilt over prayer is the profound belief that others are doing it better than they are.
In the days before his death, one of Jesus’ strongest messages to his disciples was about the importance of them being themselves.
At the heart of most people’s guilt over prayer is the profound belief that others are doing it better than they are.
You do you!
The way we’re each made is no coincidence. We are the work of a master artisan who has never made a mistake in his life. We are as varied as snowflakes and as complex as stars. He has no desire to make us all the same, but he does long to be in close, intimate relationship with each one of us. That leads me to conclude that his relationship with each one of us must look completely different.
No one in all of history will ever reflect God’s beauty in quite the same way you do, and no one will ever have the same relationship with him that you have. And if your relationship with him is unique, then so is your prayer life. Your communication with him has a flavour unlike anyone else’s. Perhaps you bemoan how feeble and faithless your prayers seem, but to him they are exquisite.
When I was a child, I used to imagine heaven as a mighty sorting office of prayers. I would see prayers drift in like tiny fragments of paper, and then a host of dedicated angels would read each one, digest its contents and sort it to the most appropriate drawer in the filing cabinet, to be processed by the Almighty at his convenience.
One day, my lovely, tidy scene got thoroughly trashed. Suddenly the little fragments of prayers weren’t paper anymore; they were tiny, brightly coloured butterflies, and they were everywhere! Try as they might, the angels couldn’t get a single one of them to stay still long enough to see what it was about. The whole thing worried me. How would my prayers get to him? How would he know what I needed? And then I saw a huge but gentle hand reach into the swirling chaos of wings, and it came out again with just a few butterflies perched on the fingers.
Even at that young age, I knew what God was trying to tell me. My prayers aren’t boring little scraps of paper; they are unique, alive and full of colour. That’s not because I’m good at prayer; it’s because I’m me. The one I pray to doesn’t need angels to read and file my prayers. He recognises them instantly, hears them immediately and knows them fully, because he made me.
To mix the metaphors a little: when I pray, the notes that reach his ears are unlike any other notes he ever hears. When he created me and you, he designed us so that our voices would be unique, beautiful and instantly recognisable to his ears – not just our physical voices but our prayer voices too.
Prayers aren’t boring little scraps of paper; they are unique, alive and full of colour.
Finding your (prayer) voice
So how do you find your voice? How do you discover that intimate relationship with God that only you can have? Other people’s advice will come in handy, but no one else’s prayer life will ever be right for you. The heroes of past centuries may inspire you, the dedication of previous generations may challenge you and the pastor’s stories may make you reach higher, but none of them know anything about the prayer life God has in store for you. It’s yours to discover and yours to enjoy.
If we’re each unique, made by God himself for a never-to-be repeated communion with him, then it stands to reason that our prayer lives will differ radically. For some of us, the methods of prayer that enliven us most will be the contemplative ones; for others, it will be the activist ones; for some, it will be structures and strategies, whereas for others it will be firing up the intellect. If your prayer ‘diet’ has been limited, then it’s even more likely that you think you’re no good at it, because chances are you’ve never tried the sort of prayer practices that suit your personality – you’ve not yet learnt to pray the way God made you to pray.
Of course, there are disciplines to prayer – we don’t always get to do what we enjoy most – but when we begin to access the endless variety and creativity of a one-to-one relationship with the God of the universe, we discover that there is more to prayer than we ever dreamed.
I hope and pray that you will be able to build for yourself a rhythm of prayer that is unique and life-giving. I pray that prayer will never again feel like something you fail at, and that you will never again live under the tyranny of needing to be more like someone else. I pray that you will know the astonishing joy of being one who walks and talks with God, and whose conversations with him change the world.
