How to pray? Different people have different ways of praying. There is no single right way of praying to God, there are various ways. I will discuss two of the popular models of prayers, the Lord’s Prayer: and the ACTS model.

Jesus teaches us how to pray in Matthew 6, verses 9-13. Jesus said "This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass among us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

The Lord’s prayer have 5 key points that we should keep in mind when praying to God. It teaches us to address God as our own Father and to have a personal and intimate relationship with him. A personal and intimate relationship with someone entails the freedom to express anything to each other. That is how our relationship with God should be.

"Hallowed be thy name". By hallowing God, we are giving him praise, honor, and respect. We should always start our prayers by praising, glorifying, and honoring him.

"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." God’s will should always be accepted over our own will. We should accept God’s will in our lives even though it is not what we want. We should also pray for God’s kingdom to touch the hearts of all people.

The next step is to ask God to provide for our daily needs, as well as the needs of others. God teaches us to pray for our daily needs because he wants us to trust in his power to provide for us each and everyday.

"And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us". It is vital for us to ask God for forgiveness and to forgive those who have hurt us in order to maintain a good relationship with God.

It is a fact that forgiving those who have hurt us is very difficult to do. Sometimes we do forgive but then, we find it hard to forget. God asks us to forgive without limit and restriction even though we have been hurt so bad. Otherwise, we will forever be bound to those who have hurt us. Forgiveness is the only thing that will set us free from the hurt and pain.

"And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." We ask God to give us the power to fight temptation and sin. We are constantly bombarded with temptation everywhere, we would not be able to overcome this without God’s help.

Now let's move on to another model of prayer which is ACTS. ACTS is actually

an acronym for Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving and Supplication. I have

touched on these earlier when I was discussing the types of prayer. This is actually a pattern of prayer which you can follow and to a lot of people,

this works well.

Sometimes I follow the model, sometimes I don’t. I prefer to do the CATS instead of the ACTS because I feel that I am able to praise God much better when I have confessed and cleared my heart.

These are just two of the numerous models of prayer. Use these two as your guide in starting to learn how to pray effectively.