I don’t know about you, but I need all the help I can get when it comes to prayer. I’ve read several books, listened to many sermons, and attended many nights of prayer and worship. Obviously, nothing is better to teach me prayer than the Bible, and the best way to learn how to pray is simply to pray early and often every day.

Here are some helpful words about prayer from a wise old saint from yesteryear, Oswald Chambers. Again, there’s something about the old books of faith that speaks in ways a lot of the new books just don’t. Maybe they were more direct and honest. Maybe they cared less about selling books than communicating God’s unvarnished truth.

“The great battle in private prayer is overcoming this problem of our idle and wandering thinking, ‘This needs to be done, and I have to do that today.’ Enter into ‘the secret place,’ and you will find that God was right in the middle of your everyday circumstances all the time. Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Open the door of your life completely and let God in from your first waking moment of each new day. Swing the door of your life fully open and ‘pray to your Father who is in the secret place’ and every public thing in your life will be marked with the lasting imprint of the presence of God” (Oswald Chambers, from My Utmost for His Highest).

Pray all the time. That means to keep your mind in an attitude of prayer at every possible moment, and when you feel your mind slipping into carnal or otherwise non-spiritual thoughts, practice the discipline of bringing your mind back to God through short prayers, reminding yourself of your need and God’s provision. Or you could just do what Oswald Chambers said.