The PRAY Prayer Method: Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield

The PRAY prayer method is uses an acronym (P.R.A.Y.) to help structure your prayer time and focus on praise, repentance, asking God for what you need, and yielding to God’s will. Using this prayer acronym can help to give structure to and deepen your prayer life.

This is a great prayer to help you to bring your requests to God but also to hold onto your cares and concerns loosely. The PRAY prayer method encourages you to pray that God’s will be done. If you want a simple method to help you to deepen your prayers beyond gratitude and listing your needs before God, then this is a great formula to try.

For more simple prayer formulas to help structure your prayer time, you can also check out the ACTS prayer method.

The PRAY Prayer Method

The P.R.A.Y. acronym stands for praise, repent, ask, yield. This simple prayer method can help give structure to your prayer time and make your prayers more meaningful. The PRAY prayer method also helps you to slow down, listen to God, and yield your will to his.

Praise (P)

Repent (R)

Ask (A)

Yield (Y)

Praise

This is your opportunity to focus on who God is and how he has shown up in your life recently. We can praise God for who He is: loving, protector, provider, just, merciful…. We can praise him for where we see him in our lives. We can share with God any “wow” moments and recognize that all good things come from him.

Repent

When we use the word “repent”, we often mean feeling sorry for something that we have said or done, and trying to do better. The Hebrew word for “repent” also carries the idea of “turn”, “return”, “turn away”, and “seek”. To repent is to change directions, to turn around, and it signifies a change in your relation to God.

In this stage, you can confess any sins, shortcomings, and mistakes that you have made. Those may be concrete confessions like “I yelled at my kids yesterday,” or “I chose to spend my time scrolling social media instead of in Bible study and prayer.” Or it may be something more general, like “I could be more patient,” or “I could be more kind with my words.”

Ask

In this stage, you bring your requests to God. Ask Him to help you with any challenges you are facing, ask for provision and protection, pray for those around you who need God’s help. God wants to engage in conversation with us, and wants to hear what is on our minds and on our hearts. Shares your worries, your needs, and your challenges with Him. Pray also for family, friends, coworkers, classmates, the poor, the lonely, those in your city, and around the world.

Yield

At the end of the PRAY method, we yield to God’s will. This is an opportunity slow down, sit in silence for a few minutes, and listen to what God might have to say. It is an opportunity to lay down all your cares and concerns, to try to sit in quiet without going through your list of things you need to do, worries, and responsibilities. Take a few deeps breaths and just sit in the presence of your Creator.

At the end of your prayer time, remember that it is not your will that God will do, but his own. Try to yield your will to his. Acknowledge that he knows what is best and he knows the whole story. Remember that Jesus, too, prayed for that he would not have to face the suffering that he knew was coming, but concluded “not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).