School of Prayer

Christian prayer is one of the most precious treasures which the Lord had given to His people.

Very often you may hear that you need to pray because prayer is helpful, that prayer is necessary to find solution to difficult situations in life, that prayer is a conversation with God, but it is an obligatory conversation, that prayer is an integral part of spiritual life.

But often raises the problem for us - how is it better to pray? How does a true prayer look like?

Many wise books have been written about prayer, but we will try to provide you with short recommendations about prayer and its various kinds.

In order to better realize what a prayer is and how is it better to use it, let's try to investigate it by several points.

First of all, we'll answer the question "What is a prayer?" because in different sources very different definitions are called a ‘prayer'. What is a worship prayer and how does it differ from praise? What type of prayer is common and personal? What is a liturgical prayer? How does Christian meditation look like? And, in general, what are the kinds of prayer?

An interesting fact is that Christian ignorance of how to pray is not the achievement of latest times. Yet Jesus' apostles begged Him: «Lord, teach us how to pray» (Luke. 11,1). Quite a strange request. Because all the apostles were orthodox Israelites, and every orthodox Israelite, in the time of Jesus, after becoming thirteen had to go through Bar Mitzvah Ceremony in which he became competent member of God's Peculiar People. Being 13 years old, every Israelite was obliged to know how to pray and to read Tanakh (the Old Testament). Historic scriptures of those days tell us that Israelites prayed much and often. Thus, apostles knew how to pray. But, obviously, as they saw Jesus pray, they understood that something was missing in their prayer, that their prayer was not like His prayer.

Nowadays many Christian feel that something is missing in their prayer.

Let's try to help them.