Practical Tips to Help You Pray More (Courtney Reissig)

I have had to learn to be creative and recognize that in the same way that I

had to be creative with making my friendships and my marriage work, I had to be

creative with how I make my relationship with the Lord work. And it's not always

going to be a cup of coffee on your couch and it's Instagram worthy. I guess it's

not. Sometimes you're going to be like figuring out a time to do it and God

doesn't care about how it looks. He cares about our heart and if we're coming to

him in a posture of dependency, he cares about that more than anything else.

Courtney Reissig is a writer and teacher living in Little Rock, Arkansas. She's

written for numerous Christian publications including the Gospel Coalition and

Christianity Today. She's also the author of Prayer, which is part of Crossway's

Disciplines of Devotion series, published in partnership with TDC.

Courtney, thanks so much for joining me today on the Crossway podcast. Thanks for

having me. So you start this new book that you've written with a confession. You

say prayer is hard for me. Why start there? Well, the short answer is prayer is

hard for me. Just an act of honesty. Act of honesty. Yeah. So I have probably always

struggled with prayer most of my adult life and I became a Christian in

college and I would often hear of people talk about their prayer life and that

they were that they would pray for long periods of time or it was just came

naturally to them and their impulse was to pray and I often thought like

people have different gifts and prayer is not mine and I thought I want I knew

I was supposed to pray and I knew I was called to pray but I would kind of

always be like, well, I mean Bible study is my gift or reading the Bible is my

gift or whatever and I have struggled with discipline and prayer. I've

struggled with organizing prayer like what what should I be praying for or how

should I pray and I've just struggled with finding prayer effective and useful

in my life and so I when the topic of writing this book came up I was talking

with a friend and I was saying she was talking about different things and I

was she was a person who approached me to write this and I said oh well I should

never write a book on on prayer because that's hard for me and she was like no

actually you should write a book on prayer because it is hard for you and I

imagine if you've had that experience and other people have had that experience

as well but yeah it's not a some people's impulse is to stop and pray right

now that's not my impulse. And yeah and prayer is you said it's hard for you

and you know you so like you're pretty honest about that struggle but I think the

truth is that many of us if not most of us would probably have to say that we

struggle with prayer in some way or another. Have you found out to be the case as

you've talked with other Christians? Yeah I think prayer is it's something that

it's almost like faith it's something you can't see like you you you know you

should be praying to the Lord but you can't see him and a conversation with

someone that you can't see feels very like nebulous and something that you

can't attain reading the Bible feels something you can check off your

list and see that you accomplished a read three chapters today prayer is

something that requires more faith which is harder for us and requires more

lack of control because it's something particularly maybe for Western

Christians it's just something that we struggle with the lack of control that

prayer brings in our life. I think another thing too is that Christians particularly Western

Christians are very self-sufficient and prayer is an acknowledgement of our

lack of control and ability and our lack of sufficiency and when we could just

as easily go do it instead of pray about it I think that that's just that it it

doesn't lend itself to being an American Christian I think as much. And I think that

even that last sentence about we'd rather do something that pray about it

that kind of connects to just some of the the default ways of thinking about prayer that I think

we often have and I want to get into those in just a minute but I think one of the specific

emotions that you you highlight in the book and that I think we've all probably felt at times

when it comes to our dissatisfaction with our prayer life is maybe a sense of shame about just

not not being where we think we should be maybe we've been Christians for a long time even

and we just feel like prayer is not there's something that we kind of constantly fail at.

Sometimes shame can have this like debilitating effect on us it almost makes us

apathetic kind of leads to that. How do we fight against that when it comes to our prayer lives?

I think this when you think of prayer prayers called one of the spiritual disciplines and I think

when you think about discipline discipline implies something that is not easy not easy to come by

so the discipline of running running is doesn't always feel good right away but maybe

after you run forever or ever maybe I like to run but I don't want to run like you know I like

the feeling after I run yeah sometimes like it when I'm running but most of the time it's that

once you've pushed through the discipline the discipline becomes easier to get up and do but it's

that first hurdle of doing it and so I think we I think we wrongly assume that to be a Christian

we should always want to do the things that are asked of us and that we should always feel good

about the things that are asked of us and that's just not the Christian life like we are there's

many factors that lead to why we would not want to pray some of it could be tiredness some of it

could be season of life some of it could be hormonal some of it could be um external factors outside

of our control and some of it could be sin in our life and so when we acknowledge that what's

required of us is sometimes going to be hard that makes it that can kind of take that shame away

from it um I don't want to eat vegetables I actually hate eating vegetables I would rather eat

fried food all day long but the discipline of eating vegetables isn't always easy in the beginning

but it leads to I feel I feel better when I eat vegetables and when I eat fried chicken

and so I think we associate shame with it because I think we want to feel like it always feels good

yeah and it's not always going to feel good and that doesn't mean that the end result doesn't

lead to feeling good or the end result doesn't lead to joy it just we might not always feel it

in the immediate yeah yeah we we want this fast results and we also I think you're so right we

when we come at it with the expectation that this should feel easy this should always just feel

immediately beneficial and then it doesn't we're kind of already set ourselves out to just give up

right and it's interesting I I relate more to the prayer the feelings of shame related

to pray because prayer is harder for me so like something that maybe it just a spiritual discipline

that's not as hard for me is like reading my Bible and so that's it that's a an easy impulse that's

an easy thing I feel good when I do it and for me that is easier but prayer I'm still very

distracted a lot of the time I'm just very distracted when I pray and even with the tools that I

have put in place to help me not be distracted I still am very distracted and I sometimes end not

feeling awesome yeah but to recognize that most things of value and most things that lead to good

results in our life come at the with the with great cost and with the great with great exertion

we have to work hard at things and I I think sometimes we think our our relationship with the

Lord should feel easy and cozy and we should always feel wonderful about it natural just yeah and

prayer especially because prayer is very spiritual and it feels like a conversation and and it's

not always natural in the same way that maybe a conversation with my husband doesn't always feel

natural and I had to work at it or a conversation with a friend doesn't always feel natural and I have

to work at it that's the reality of of living I think in a broken world is that in in the garden

out of an Eve talked and converse with God with no broken broken it's no broken relationship

it was easy it was conversing and now we live post fall and we have the Holy Spirit inside of us

that gives us constant fellowship with the Father but at the same time we also are still living in

a broken world and broken bodies and so we're not we're not always going to feel the fellowship

that comes with having the spirit and dwell us we're going to feel some of that tension because

that fellowship was once broken by sin and we're not fully redeemed and we're not fully made new yet

and so I do think some of that understanding what it means to live in the already but not yet part

of our Christian walk helps us deal with why prayer does always feel awesome yeah and this kind of

connects then another one of the recurring themes in this book just emphasizing that prayer

isn't primarily about results however you might define those whether it's a certain outcome that we

want from God or even just a certain feeling that we're going for in our prayer it's really about

the relationship that we're cultivating and I think that can that can could kind of come across

a little cliched it's about a relationship well of course it is but like why is that an important

thing to emphasize so we were always intended to be in fellowship with God God created us in his

image and he created Adam and Eve to be in constant communion with him and so the impulse of

wanting to feel the Lord's presence is is a right impulse because it's going back to what we were

created for and I think sometimes we we struggle because we want to feel that all the time but we're

not fully there yet so if you follow the trace the story of scripture from the very beginning to

the end getting back to God's presence was the goal but that's not fully there until the new

heavens the new earth when God dwells among us and and is with us forever and so you see echoes of

this all throughout the scriptures with the temple and the tabernacle and then and then the Holy

Spirit all of these pieces are reminding us that God intends to dwell with us and prayer is the way

are in communion with the one who indwells us like you're talking about it's not the way to get

your intended outcome he's not a genius in a bottle like you don't pray for this and get this

there are some passages that almost can lead us to think that right like you you do not ask so you

don't receive whatever you ask in my name yeah so yeah how do we what how should we think about that

I think so the short answer is I don't fully know like and I think there's okay to have

tension of like I'm not fully I don't think I'm there and my Christian walk yet to fully

understand why there's those passages in the scripture that say you do not have because you do

not ask and I'm like well look I'm asking for good things like an unsaved family member to come

to faith in Christ and God has not answered that prayer but what I do know is that God doesn't

keep time like we keep time and that's the thing that comforts me the most is that my prayer for

something does not mean God won't answer it in the way I want him to I just may not see it in

this lifetime and that that's what I hold on to is that the the arc of my life is very small

on the grand scheme of what God is doing and I am asking for things in faith trusting that

God will do it he might not he might his answer to me might be no and that's because

I didn't ask for the right things and I'm not God I don't know what to ask for I don't know

what are the things that I need the most and what other people need the most but I think

this what a relationship is about is that we are constantly bringing our burdens and our needs

before him asking for him to change our circumstances are asking for him to do things

crying out to him and with our burdens and our pain and he may not answer in the way we ask but

we don't keep time the way he keeps time our time is I ask for this today I expect it tomorrow

and God with a day is like a thousand years I think that's how it comforts me is that he he's not

looking at time the way I look at time yeah yeah and I think the emphasis on him on it being a

relationship with him and not just a relationship but it's a relationship with the sovereign God

of the universe and so he it just makes sense that he's gonna understand things in a way that we

don't and he's going to give us good things in ways that we don't expect or anticipate or even want

in the moment but yeah that that's just that very big difference between our understanding and

our wisdom and his right and you think this is where the fatherhood of God is so helpful and that

you think God is as a parent I'm a parent I have four kids my kids ask for a lot of things and my

kids ask for things that I tell them no to a lot and the parents understand all parents understand that

and I think like children don't understand all the things that could happen if the things they

ask for come true yeah if they got everything they wanted right that would probably mess them up it

would and they don't understand that yeah and in the same way that we are God's children we do not

understand what the things we're asking for mean and we have a hard time understanding that

because we're adults and so we think we're there like we've arrived we're adults we've done all

that life is unknown and someone better than me we have the wisdom right right but we don't because

we're not fully there yet I know more in my 40s than I knew in my 30s and I'm gonna know more in

my 50s I regularly think of 30-year-old Courtney and be like oh my gosh you didn't know anything

and I'm like I'm gonna feel like that about 42-year-old Courtney someday when I'm in my 50s and so

I think that we we just we're always growing and changing and God is unchanging and so because he's

unchanging his answers to us might confuse us but that's why we have a relationship with our

Heavenly Father if we trust that he's good and we trust that he is working all things for our good

than his answers to us might be utterly confusing and heartbreaking sometimes but he knows more

than we know I say this as someone who has unanswered prayers like or it feels like unanswered prayers

that's it's really hard to reconcile like the worst imaginable like someone you love dying in

their sin and not coming to faith in Christ that seems like it doesn't make sense doesn't make

sense and so I don't know why that happens and so those are hard things to come to terms with

and but at the end of the day he's a good and faithful and sovereign loving God and we have to trust him

even if we don't understand yeah and so we've been talking a lot about you know kind of unanswered

prayers when we are going to God and asking him and he doesn't answer us in the ways that we expect

but I think there's the other kind of danger that we can have in our prayer or struggle that we can

have in our prayer lives which is when we just don't maybe feel the need the desire to talk with

him or to ask him for things and you talk pretty honestly and candidly about just how this culture

that we live in in particular this culture of self-sufficiency a culture of distraction all around

us can dull our sense of need for God and how do you think about our phones or the technology that we

have in particular how has that impacted our prayer lives do you think well we can google it

and google AI will tell us everything we need to know so I mean that I mean that's the yeah I

can't tell you how many times like my kid is sick or something's wrong with one of my kids or

I am stressed about whatever thing and my default is to look it up on the internet and find comfort

was what the internet tells me is true some forum somewhere yes like I I don't understand X Y and Z

instead of there's this him that I just love and it comes to mind all the time and I have

recited it to myself regularly where it's oh what peace we often forfeit oh what needless pain we

bear all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer and the first time that I was convicted

by that line and that's that him is when I was potty training my fourth kid and you would think

by potty training four boys that by the fourth boy it would be very easy and I would not be stressed

about it but I was so anxious to do it because it was during covid and I just I just really wish

to you would just by train himself I didn't want to do it I was super stressed about it and I spent

so much time anxious and looking up more more strategies for potty training because I somehow

maybe forgot how to potty training and and I remember the lord convicted me of like did you

pray about it like did you ask me for grace that your other three children would be fine while

you're potty training this fourth kid all the things that I was anxious about my default was to

look it up and I think we have answers at our fingertips now for the many things we have questions for

whether it's the weather or the what's ailing us or strategies for X Y and Z or conflict resolution

or everyone is pouring information at us of telling us how to fix our short conversation.

Yeah we've never had better access to information and we've never been more anxious

and we've never been more stressed and we've never been more divided and we've never been all

the things that we are right now because we have information in our fingertips instead of

saying put the phone down and praying maybe we we don't actually need fundamentally more

information right we don't really need something else right and I tell my own children

this my my boys are very nervous about whether we had tornado come through our city a couple

years ago it was very close to our house everything we knew was a lot of things we knew were destroyed

and so the weather is not their favorite if they know the tour if they if there's any sirens or

any of the things and I have one son in particular who will want to look at the radar

incessantly and I will have to tell him I will let you look at the radar one time

and then we're going to trust that the radar my change or might not change but that

God is going to keep take care of us as in the same way he always has

no amount of looking at the radar is going to change what's happening and I

used to be frustrated that he would ask me to look at the radar all the time until I was convicted

that when I'm very stressed about something I will look it up all the time same thing same thing

and and but he's a child and he doesn't have a phone and so he doesn't have access like I have

access no one's there to tell you Courtney put your phone down put your phone down like trust the Lord

and so um yeah so I think the access to information doesn't make does not make it go away if anything

it makes us more anxious yeah because it makes us think of new scenarios or new struggles yeah

and it kind of presents us this false idea that if I only if I only had a little bit that last

little tidbit that last little insight then then I won't feel anxious then I'll be okay but that's

a lie that's just so often not the way it actually is and it just feeds that hunger for more yes yeah

so um in the book you talk a lot about how the Lord's Prayer can serve as a kind of scaffolding

for our prayer lives as we think that's another one of the challenges we faces all right I want to

pray I feel the need to pray I even feel the desire to pray now how do I do it like what do I

actually say and so how does the Lord's Prayer serve as that scaffolding well the comforting thing is

that in that passage the disciples are say Lord teaches to pray which comforts me because that

means that people have been wanting to know how to pray for a very long time and so the Bible is

often comforting and that it shows us we the struggles that we have are not unique to us they are

they're perennial they've happened for since time began we've all struggled with these things the

human experience is universal but what's helpful about the Lord's Prayer is that it's it's straight

from the words of Jesus and it reminds us that praying the scripture is actually praying God's

Word back to him which those are the best kinds of prayers the best kinds of prayers the ones

are informed by God's Word which is the very words of God himself it's what he wants for us and so

when you're thinking about praying according to the Lord's will praying his word is his will so

the Lord's Prayer it's not everything you could and should pray but it does provide

these anchors so our Father who art in heaven so acknowledging our dependency at the very very

outset hello be your name wanting God's name to be holy those are right and good prayers so no

matter the outcome we want God to be exalted and then praying for like our daily bread our daily

needs to be met so we don't really wonder where bread comes from anymore we just go to the store

and get it but we wonder where a lot of other things come from like what if you're about to lose

your job or what if your bank account like you you lost a bunch of this stock market or whatever

things praying for your daily needs is a good prayer praying for his kingdom to come on earth as

it is in heaven praying for forgiveness praying confessing our sins it provides us with an with a

framework for thinking and the way scaffolds work is scaffolds provide the anchors for you

and then eventually you remove the scaffold like that's the point now I actually don't think I

in education you remove the scaffold because you want people to learn it and they should be able

to do it on their own but I think in the Christian life I don't think we remove our scaffolds I think

we are in a classroom setting you're teaching people to launch in the Christian life we are always

children and that means that we are always going to need a scaffold to help us know how to come

the scaffold is until we're in heaven and we don't need to scaffold anymore because he's right

there with us always and we and we are completely made new but I think we're going to need the

scaffold until we're in the new heavens the new we don't grow out of the Lord's prayer we don't

need a helpful resource for us right and I think when you use words like scaffold you can think oh

it's a scaffold because you remove the scaffold eventually and I think again God doesn't keep time

like we keep time in this already but not yet season we are going to need the scaffold and not

outgrow it yeah because we are always going to have a veil over our eyes slightly and being able

to fully engage in his presence in the way he he wants for us until we're out of these bodies

yeah until we're getting a new body and I'm sure you're familiar with this book with another

another crossway book that has just been so helpful in this regard is done when he's praying the

Bible yes yeah was it just again it's just that simple idea that can feel almost too simple

but it really is just praying the words of scripture both the Lord's prayer in particular but

all throughout the Psalms and all of the Bible there's ways to pray pray scripture back to God

and it's it's such a helpful thing yeah so Dr. Whitney was my personal spiritual

assistance professor and seminary and that's where I learned how to do this so none of this is

unique to me I mean nothing is unique to anybody but I heavily heavily was influenced by Dr.

Whitney and I remember in seminary in in that class he we prayed a Psalm every day at the start of

class and the way if you were the last person in class that day you had to say the Psalms of the

day which is like if it's the first day of the month it's one 31 and then you add but so I'm not

great at math and I remember he would have you say what the Psalms of the day were and I remember

if I was the lot I was always I'm not on time to anything but I didn't want to be the last person

in class because I never wanted to do the math in front of everyone and be like um because yeah

after like yeah after the after your first time through the Psalms yes then you're going to

Psalm 31 yes for day one I'm a month and so yeah and 61 but then you get into like four and five

and you're like what's 30 30 plus 60 and like things like that and so so he would have you do that

and then he would he would model it for us in class and I did not start doing that in my own life

until within the last five or six years I would often on do it because I my husband and I both

were in that class we're in at different times but both of us use those models in our life

but it's only been recently when I really just kind of came to like a realization like I need a

better model I need a better structure to my life and I started using that model and so I prayed

the Psalms like I read through I don't do the Psalms of the day I just go through the Psalm like

Psalm 1 Psalm 2 whatever wherever I'm at the next Psalm is the next one and then I pray a Psalm

yeah and it's on what I'm praying for that day it's so simple but so effective and so effective

so so encouraging yeah if you're struggling to know what to pray what to say yeah yeah so maybe

you could just even speak that a little bit what all of us have different habits different things

that kind of work for us and I think that's one of the blessings of the Christian life is that we

can there's a lot of flexibility and freedom in how we structure our spiritual disciplines and

in particular prayer so what does it look like for you do you do you have do journal alongside

with your prayers do you have a book that you write out prayer requests in do you yeah well how do

you how do you structure that time for yourself first I know how much time I'm praying for that time

so I heard a podcast I heard Jamie or Lana podcast talking about setting a timer when you pray

and what encouraged me is that she had just started doing that as like well she's older than me

and she has started a new discipline I can start a new discipline so she started with five

minutes every year she adds another minute to it so I'm I started five that year and now I'm at nine

minutes so I set a timer so I know I'm praying nine minutes a day so and I break it down based

on days of the week what's the time or due for you what why is that helpful tool well it gives me

like a time frame that I know that I'm praying it for me it's just a discipline of like I know

that I'm devoting a certain amount of time to it and it kind of helps me I don't know why it helps me

it just does it helps you kind of know how long like I need to focus and be intentional and not

feel like it's just you kind of don't know when to and there's like science on timers like why

timers work and like timers work in a classroom setting where it does lead people to be focused they

know if they don't know there's an end point they cut my dilly dally but they know there's an end

point it might focus them in on their work interesting so I do that and then I I do break it down

by the day of the week and so I have things I'm praying for categories I pray for and and I just

kind of write them down and then in my prayer journal I don't I don't journal my prayers but what I

do is journal what I see the Lord answer and so mine's broken down by month and so every month I

feel it out again and every month I'm able to reflect on what the Lord has done that month

and being able to see how he's answered prayers and you keep these I do yeah I have one for each

year so um and it's it's helped me yeah and it's helped me tremendously to be able to focus in on

what I'm praying for and I'm not just kind of so I I pray a song which helps you not say what

Dr. Whitney would say the same old things about the same old things but then I also have people

I pray for each day that I know like it's broken down by like um I use a prayer journal that

hasn't has categories for me so it kind of helps me kind of know where to go it's another scaffold

I suppose yeah of helping me kind of know what to do and it it's really helped me be organized

and helped me think through what I am praying for and it doesn't I don't always feel awesome like

I sometimes I'm like okay I did nine minutes yeah um but one thing I have found is I almost always

will pray longer than the minutes that are allotted and so the timer will go off and uh and a big

thing for me was my phone is not there so I use an like Alexa tells me it's my timer okay or

put your phone away my phone away I don't touch my phone until I had to person I had to personally be

like I'm not gonna like look at my phone until after I do these things so I would get so distracted

so you're doing this in the morning in the morning yeah yeah yeah how do you navigate that as a mom

drive to school like sometimes I do I'll drive to work if I don't have time that morning how do you

navigate it as a mom that's because that again that's a stage of life that many listeners would be in

younger young-ish parents and man morning since sometimes just feel really hectic it depends on I

think it depends on on like my kids are in school so they're not babies like I don't know no one's

waking up early super early no I do think I think by and large most of us would say that

judging by our online habits we we have nine minutes somewhere hmm so I mean you think like

it's nine minutes yeah so um and if you start out with five minutes you probably have five minutes

yeah right the starting point is five minutes according to Janie Orland yeah according to Janie

Orland is surrounding points five minutes and so you can yeah and I think we we probably are

scrolling hmm more than that yeah if you look at our screen time habit so we probably are

and and it's a discipline for a reason it's called a discipline for a reason it requires us to

say no to something else in order to say yes to something better yeah and so I think I would

probably for someone who I would say look at your life like look at your what where you're spending

your time and God wants to commune with you he wants to bear your burdens he wants to be in

relationship with you and are you choosing relationship with something else over the relationship

with the one that matters the most and so I think probably there's five minutes that we could spare

I look at my own life and I think I spend too much time scrolling yeah and so like finding

your pocket of time that works whether it's a nap time or it's drive time or like I've had to

learn different strategies like so my I mean a woman's life is very seasonal and so now I work

full time and sometimes I do what I'm driving to work um I listen to the Bible now more when I'm

getting ready you could do what you're bowed right in your hair I mean there's things there's

different yeah I have had to learn to be creative and recognize that in the same way that I had to

be creative with making my friendships and my marriage work I have to be creative with how I make

my relationship with the Lord work yeah it's not always going to be a cup of coffee on your couch

yeah and it's Instagram worthy yeah yeah like it's just not sometimes you're going to be like

figuring out a time to do it and sometimes that's that's a hindrance to us right if we have a certain

expectation of what it needs to look like and it doesn't work that way or can't for whatever reason

we get discouraged we lose we lose the the desire to kind of keep going and God doesn't care

about how it looks he cares about our heart and if we're coming to him in a posture of dependency

he cares about that more than anything else yeah yeah well Courtney thank you so much for helping

us to to think a little bit more uh carefully about uh what this incredible privilege we have in

prayer and what it can mean for us as Christians the the the lifeline that it is for us as we

think about our Heavenly Father thanks for having me that was Courtney Riceig on the value of prayer

for our lives as Christians for more check out her book Prayer which is part of Crossways

Disciplines of Devotion Series published in partnership with TGC pick up a print copy of the book

for 30% off or get the ebook for 50% off directly from Crossway by visiting crossway.org slash

plus and if you like this interview check out another conversation I had with Winfrey Brisley

and Shuranda Cooper entitled how the Psalms act as a model for prayer lament and praise to listen

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