WHENEVER WE PRAY, what and how do we pray? Think of the prayers found in Scripture: though they are all offered to God, they take different forms on different occasions, and are offered up for different reasons.

In the Psalms, for example, there are prayers that praise God for who he is and what he’s done, and there are prayers that complain about a variety of situations, sometimes wondering whether God has fallen asleep on the job. There are prayers in which the psalmists are confident of their righteousness and innocence, and prayers of deep regret over their own sin. There are prayers of joyous celebration, and prayers filled with anger, in which the psalmists shamelessly curse their enemies.

Thus, there’s no single “right” way to pray, just as there’s no single way to reduce conversations between friends to a universal formula. Having said that, though, I do appreciate the well-known ACTS acronym for prayer, in which the four letters stand for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication respectively. Again, we shouldn’t treat this as a rigid rule for all prayer, as if God won’t listen to anything that doesn’t have all four elements in exactly that order.

Rather, the acronym is a useful reminder of the different and often overlapping kinds of and reasons for prayer. In adoration, we remember the character of God, praising him for his goodness, grace, compassion, and so on. In confession, we bow our spirits before him to admit our sin and guilt and submit ourselves to his mercy. In thanksgiving, we come with a spirit of gratitude for all his blessings. And in supplication, we bring God our requests, asking for his help.

Remembering these four can help us examine our own prayer life. Do we ask God to do things for us but never confess our sin? Do we thank him for his help but never praise him for who he is? And perhaps even more to the point: can we praise him for who he is even when we’re still waiting…and waiting, and waiting…for help that never seems to come?

THE APOSTLE PAUL, of course, had a robust prayer life. He regularly prayed for the Gentile churches — even the ones he didn’t plant. And he often began his letters to these congregations with a reference to his prayers for them. We see this in his correspondence with the Romans, the Corinthians, the Ephesians, the Philippians, the Thessalonians, and of course, the Colossians. For some reason, the Galatians don’t make the list, unless you count the brief benediction at the very end of the letter (Gal 6:18). But this is also the letter in which Paul seems the most upset with a church, going confrontational as soon as the opening greeting is done. He even calls them “foolish” later in the letter — not once, but twice (Gal 3:1, 3). That’s not to say Paul didn’t pray for the Galatians. But apparently, as he wrote the letter, he had other things on his mind.

Here, then, is how the main body of his letter to the Colossians begins. It’s a longer passage than usual, and we’ll unpack it bit by bit. For now, listen for his references to how he prays for them:

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people—the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us of your love in the Spirit. For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. (Col 1:3-12, NIV)

This is the first of the two times Epaphras is mentioned in the letter. He is the one who brought the gospel to Colossae and planted the church there. Near the end of the letter, Paul sends greetings from Epaphras, which suggests that Epaphras had come to visit him in prison, bringing news of what’s been happening in Colossae.

The theme of prayer pervades the letter. Here, Paul says that when he first heard about the Colossians from Epaphras, he began praying for them — and he hasn’t stopped. Later in the letter, Paul will instruct them to be diligent in prayer themselves, and even asks them to pray specifically for his own missionary work (4:2-3). Finally, he lets them know that Epaphras, too, prays for them continually, that they would be strong and mature in the faith (4:12).

Paul’s supplication for them is similar. He prays for their growth; he prays for their endurance. He prays that their lives would bear fruit just as the gospel itself was bearing fruit throughout the empire.

And in all of this, in a spirit of adoration, he gives thanks to God the Father: thanks for their faith, hope, and love, thanks for what God has done and will do in and through them.

SO AGAIN, WHAT and how do we pray? Paul’s letters give us a peek into how the apostle himself prayed as well as how he directed others to pray. He didn’t just ask God to intervene in this or that difficult situation, as he did when he prayed for God to take away his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor 12:7) — whatever that was. Such are the supplications we make for ourselves and each other when we share prayer requests.

But even then, his prayers were always in line with what he understood to be the will of God for the progress of the gospel. He prayed for the strength and opportunities to preach the good news. He prayed for the churches to remain strong in the faith. He prayed for the growth of the gospel in and among them — that they would become wiser and more loving.

And in all of this, he prayed with deep gratitude for the privilege of joining with others in the work of God. We don’t have to be pastors or missionaries to pray that prayer. And maybe, just maybe, that might be the perspective we need to deepen our own prayer life.