The best bit of advice I ever received about how to pray was this: keep it simple, keep it real, keep it up.

The best way to start praying, therefore, is actually to stop praying. To pause. To be still. To put down your prayer list and surrender your own personal agenda. To stop talking at God long enough to focus on the wonder of who he actually is. To 'be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him'.

Greatest theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth, said that 'to clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world'.

Prayer can detonate mission.

I am convinced, however, that our constant activity is fruitless without first making that humble act of kneeling to pray. I am convinced that prayer is not only our greatest privilege, but also our greatest source of power.

What if the call to pray is a call to bleed as well as to receive blessing?

But the children inside her struggled with each other, and she said, “Why is this happening to me?” So Rebekah went to inquire of the LORD,

Then he washed his face and came back out. Regaining his composure, he said, “Serve the meal.”

So now I pray, may the power of my Lord be magnified, just as You have declared:

Then Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered them on a rock to the LORD. And as Manoah and his wife looked on, the LORD did a marvelous thing.

In her bitter distress, Hannah prayed to the LORD and wept with many tears.

“No, my lord,” Hannah replied. “I am a woman oppressed in spirit. I have not had any wine or strong drink, but I have poured out my soul before the LORD.