What I've Learned About Prayer - Part 1

Twenty-eight years ago, I was falling apart physically. I was overweight, out of shape, and reliant on painkillers to silence my screaming hips at night. The worst moment was when I walked out my back door one day and found myself in a crumpled heap because my knee had given way.

     I knew I needed to do something about my health, so I decided right then that I would get up a little earlier the next morning and go walking. But I also knew that God had been beckoning me to spend more time with him. So, the next morning I got up fifteen minutes earlier and began praying while I walked.

     There was a lot of “my-ness” in those early weeks of prayer. My four kids. My marriage. My job as a high school English teacher.

     But that all changed one morning when I saw a young, single dad turn over his blanketed toddler girl to the daycare center manager before six in the morning. And that little girl said, “Bye, Daddy. Love you.”

     I knew right then that God had me out on the streets of my community less for the “my-ness” of my prayers but more for the needs of others. So, I prayed right then for that young father, and then I opened my eyes to the needs around me.

     I prayed for the Golden West restaurant owner’s wife, who was experiencing loss of eyesight. I prayed for the couple who owned the pharmacy—they’d lost their only son in a recent tragic accident. I prayed for the loggers heading out into the woods and the millworkers driving to the mill. And I prayed for the people whose homes I passed.

     A passionate desire arose within me that morning—to learn all I could about prayer. I had been reading through the Bible each year, but I then started a practice of noticing references to prayer on those pages—teachings about prayer, conversations biblical people had with God, and prayers, such as those in the Psalms. I found that God was schooling me in prayer as I marked those circled Ps in the margins of my Bible.

     And while eight of my books are about prayer, there are four teachings that resonate across the pages of those books.

We Can Pray Without Ceasing

     One of my earliest struggles about prayer related to Paul’s teaching from 1 Thessalonians 5:17: “Pray without ceasing.”

     How Paul? I wanted to argue. I’m a full-time English teacher with four kids at home! But my frustrations didn’t whisk away the words from my Bible.

     To try to figure out how to do that, I read books like The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. But my argument—which really was with God—continued. After all, the brother was a single guy whose only responsibility was washing dishes. I could pray all day too if a hundred other voices weren’t asking me for something!

It was the months and then the years of prayerwalking that helped me make that mind shiYou see, when you understand that wherever you are, there’s a need for prayer, you’ve developewhat I call “prayerwalking eyes.” Your natural approach to personal encounters with others,daily tasks, the news headlines, and problems shifts from a problem-solving or managementmode to prayer. And you have begun your praying-without-ceasing life, or, as my late friend, Jennifer Kennedy Dean would say, instead of having a prayer life, you have begun having a "praying life."

The second half of Janet’s article will be published in July.

Janet Holm McHenry is an inspirational speaker and the author of twenty-seven books—eight on prayer, including the bestselling PrayerWalk, which is now in its 25th year, and Praying Personalities, which was a 2025 ECPA Christian Book Award finalist.

She is involved with California leadership for the National Day of Prayer and has led the prayer ministries at The Bridge Church in Reno for twenty years.

You can connect with her through her website, www.janetmchenry.com.