How to Pray to God: 3 Contemplative Practices That Changed My Life
Growing up in a Christian home, I was desperate to hear from God — people around me claimed God told them who to marry, what to do, everything. I craved that. By my early 20s, it became an obsession, and honestly, that desperation made it harder to hear Him.
Then I learned something called “spiritual formation” — going deeper with God through honesty and simple presence. That changed everything. I stopped chasing spiritual experiences and started resting in Him. My peace, my self-esteem, my whole outlook shifted.
Today I'm sharing those practices. They will feel overly structured at first — but given time, they'll feel like second nature, as you stop treating God like a fortune teller to give you answers for life’s problems, and start treating Him like someone you intimately know.
Now, before we begin, let me ask you a question. When you pray, are you mostly talking, or are you mostly listening?
A lot of spiritual writers, from Richard Foster to Dallas Willard to Henri Nouwen, have made the same observation: modern prayer has quietly turned into a transaction. We ask God for or about something, we impatiently wait for an answer, then we move on once we’ve gotten the answer or outcome we wanted. But that's not how the earliest Christians — or the great mystics of church history — approached God.
Dallas Willard defined spiritual disciplines as activities meant to bring us into closer cooperation with Christ and His kingdom.[1] Oftentimes when we think of prayer, we think about thanking God for a few things, asking Him for a few things, and then say Amen. There’s nothing wrong with this format, but it’s not all that is possible in our relationships with God. Meanwhile, we see God like Santa: He reads our wishlist, he’s checking it twice, and he also knows who’s been naughty or nice. Having a relationship with a person means listening to what they have to say, and that’s true with God as well. Our relationship shouldn’t solely be lists of what we want.
So in this video, we're walking through four ancient contemplative practices, and a couple of bonus tips that could change how you pray starting today:
The Prayer of Examen
Imaginative prayer
Silence and solitude
I’ve specifically chosen methods that I think are really easy to incorporate into even a busy schedule. Let's get into it.
SECTION 1: THE PRAYER OF EXAMEN
My favorite of these methods, and probably the most practical entry point into contemplative prayer for a total beginner, is the Prayer of Examen.
It comes straight out of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, a 16th-century Spanish priest who developed a whole system for deepening someone's relationship with God. The Examen is a simple, structured review of your day, traditionally prayed twice — once at midday, once at night. Ignatius broke it down into five movements: giving thanks, asking for grace, reviewing the day, asking pardon, and proposing amendment.[5]
Timothy Gallagher explains that Ignatius considered the Examen indispensable — a daily rhythm for discerning God's presence and responding in love, ideally kept to ten or fifteen minutes and supported by journaling or spiritual direction.[6] Gallagher describes it as a way of gathering "the fragments of life into a pattern of greater freedom and hopeful living."[7] Essentially, the Prayer of Examen asks questions like: "Where did I notice God today?" "What feelings arose in me today? What might God be calling me into with those feelings?" “What might arise tomorrow? Who is God calling me to be tomorrow?”[8]
For me, my favorite way to integrate the Prayer of Examen is use the app, “Reimagining the Examen”. I can choose from any of the categories, then follow the prayer prompts.
That's it. Just an honest look back at your day, pondering where God showed up and what might you need to discuss with Him.
John Coe and Kyle Strobel add another layer here: the Examen is about noticing consolation and desolation — the moments that drew you closer to God and the moments that pulled you away — and bringing your whole, fragmented self to rest in Him.[9]
The beauty of the Examen is that it trains you to actually notice God in ordinary life. David Fleming's contemporary reading of the Spiritual Exercises presents the Examen as a relational review of the day that cultivates gratitude and trains our perception to "find God in all things."[10]
SECTION 2: IMAGINATIVE PRAYER
imaginative prayer might actually be one you’ve practiced without realizing it.
Instead of just reading a Gospel passage intellectually — like you'd read a textbook — you actually place yourself inside the scene. You use your imagination and your senses to become a participant in the story.
So picture this: you're reading about Jesus healing a blind man on the roadside. Instead of just noting the facts, you imagine the dust on the road, the heat of the sun, the sound of the crowd. You imagine yourself sitting there. What does Jesus' voice sound like when He speaks to you? What's His expression when He looks at you?
St. Ignatius wove Scripture into his Spiritual Exercises using Gospel passages as entry points for contemplative prayer, encouraging participants to engage imagination and senses so they could encounter the biblical narratives directly rather than merely intellectually.[2] Elsewhere, imaginative prayer is described as a way for Christians to encounter Christ personally — picturing themselves in a Gospel scene and reflecting on Jesus' gaze, tone, and response toward them.[3]
Even later spiritual writers, like M. Robert Mulholland, pick up this same thread. Mulholland draws a distinction between two ways of reading the Bible: informational reading — where you're in control, mastering the data — versus formational reading, where you come with openness, letting the text read you instead.[4]
That's really the heart of imaginative prayer. You stop mining Scripture for information and start letting it search you.
Try it this week: pick one short Gospel story. Read it slowly. Then close your eyes and imagine yourself standing in the scene — not analyzing it, just being present in it. Notice what Jesus' face looks like when He turns toward you. That's imaginative prayer.
SECTION 3: SILENCE AND SOLITUDE
Now let's talk about the practice that modern life makes almost impossible: silence and solitude.
We live in a culture allergic to quiet. Silence feels like wasted time. But the contemplative tradition sees it completely differently.
M. Robert Mulholland describes silence as "the inner act of letting it go" — a relinquishing of our need to control God, and even to control our own lives.[11] Solitude, he says, isn't really about being physically alone. It's about facing the brokenness and darkness within us honestly, instead of running from it.
Richard Foster calls solitude "a portable sanctuary of the heart" — something you can carry with you even in a crowded, noisy world.[12] It's an inward posture that frees you from the compulsion to always be needed, always be busy, always be performing.
And this is where a specific practice comes in: centering prayer. John Coe describes it simply — you sit in silence, often for around twenty minutes, with the sole intention of being present to God's love.[13]
Coe calls it "making and keeping an appointment with God."[14] That's such a helpful reframe — silence isn't about achieving a spiritual state. It's about showing up to the appointment, even if nothing seems to happen.
And here's the key insight from theologian Rowan Williams: in silence, we actually mirror Christ standing before His judges — powerless, vulnerable, yet somehow still carrying God's presence.[15] Silence becomes a place of truth-telling, where we stop managing our image and let God simply see us as we are.
This practice teaches us how to reorient our prayer life from seeing God as a fortune teller, to spending time with Him. Think of someone you know that you are so comfortable with, you can sit in silence together and yet you still find the time meaningful. That is what this practice cultivates in us in our relationships with God. Sometimes God may actually speak to you in these quiet moments, and sometimes you may wonder what you are even doing here.
Practically? Start small. Five minutes of silence at lunch. No phone. No agenda. Just sit, breathe, and let God search your heart instead of you managing the conversation.
Think about how most of us pray when we're struggling with something like anger. The instinct is to pray:
"God, take away my anger."
That's a command. It's asking God to fix the symptom — fast, efficient, done. But according to Coe and Strobel, spiritual theology understands prayer as both conversational and experiential — bringing the believer into the presence of God and greater self-awareness, not simply a list of action items for God to complete.[20]
So instead of demanding "take away my anger," the contemplative approach asks a question:
"God, why am I angry?"
That single shift — from command to question — changes everything. Coe and Strobel encourage praying directly about things like anger, lust, envy, fear, and shame — perceiving them as realities to be carried into God's presence, not hidden until resolved.[21]
This connects to something Henri Nouwen warned about — prayer that's really just self-protection or comfort-seeking in disguise. True prayer, Nouwen writes, "is the act by which we divest ourselves of all false belongings and become free to belong to God and God alone."[22]
If you've ever tried to pray and found your mind drifting — to your to-do list, an argument you had, something awkward from years ago — you've probably assumed that's a failure of prayer. Something to fight against and refocus.
Coe and Strobel flip that completely. They observe that praying amid distraction allows believers to notice where their hearts wander, and to bring those very longings before God rather than suppress them.[23]
In other words: your wandering mind isn't an interruption to prayer. It might actually be the prayer.
Michael Casey, drawing on the monastic tradition, makes a similar point: much of our distraction in prayer arises from "unprocessed experience" carried into times of silence. Rather than fighting distraction, Casey advises a kind of inner housekeeping — acknowledging unresolved experiences, setting disturbances aside, and gently quieting the mind before approaching God.[24]
So next time your mind wanders in prayer, try this: don't yank yourself back by force. Follow the wandering thought for a moment, and ask, "God, why did my mind go there? What do I need to bring to You about this?" That's not a distracted prayer. That might be the most honest prayer you pray all day.
If this video helped you see prayer differently, please like this video and subscribe to my channel, and let me know in the comments — which of these practices are you going to try first?
Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one!
SOURCES & FOOTNOTES
Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1988), 7.
Edward Howells, "Spanish Mysticism and Religious Renewal: Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross," in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, ed. Julia Lamm (Hoboken: J. Wiley, 2013), 424–25.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, trans. Louis J. Puhl (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1951), 47–54.
M. Robert Mulholland Jr., Shaped by the Word: The Power of Scripture in Spiritual Formation, rev. ed. (Nashville: Upper Room, 2000), chap. 5 (see also chs. 1–2).
Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: A Translation and Commentary, trans. George E. Ganss, SJ (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992), nos. 24–31, 32–43.
Timothy M. Gallagher, The Examen Prayer: Ignatian Wisdom for Our Lives Today (New York: Crossroad, 2006), 25–27.
Gallagher, The Examen Prayer, 13.
Missler, Be Ye Transformed, 137.
Coe and Strobel, Where Prayer Becomes Real, 87–93.
David L. Fleming, Draw Me into Your Friendship: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading of The Spiritual Exercises (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996).
M. Robert Mulholland Jr., Invitation to a Journey, 108.
Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, 20th Anniversary ed. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), 96, 117–30.
John H. Coe, "The Method of Centering Prayer," in Embracing Contemplation: Reclaiming a Christian Spiritual Practice, ed. John H. Coe and Kyle C. Strobel (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019), 225.
Coe, "The Method of Centering Prayer," 227.
Rowan Williams, Being Human, 27.
Howells, "Spanish Mysticism and Religious Renewal," 424–25. (Note: your original text does not cite John of the Cross's or Teresa of Avila's own primary works directly — this footnote draws the connection via Howells' chapter, which discusses both alongside Ignatius. If you want primary-source footnotes here, consider adding John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul, and Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, as supplementary citations.)
M. Robert Mulholland Jr., The Deeper Journey: The Spirituality of Discovering Your True Self (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 68–69.
Missler, Be Ye Transformed, 137.
Missler and Missler, The Way of Agape, 245, 249.
John Coe and Kyle Strobel, When Prayer Becomes Real, 13–15.
Coe and Strobel, Where Prayer Becomes Real / Mulholland, The Deeper Journey, 41–43 (as cited in your original text).
Henri Nouwen, "Letting Go of All Things," Sojourners, May 1979, https://sojo.net/magazine/may-1979/letting-go-all-things.
Coe and Strobel, Where Prayer Becomes Real, 32–34.
Michael Casey, Towards God: The Western Tradition of Contemplation (Melbourne: Collins Dove, 1989), 25–27.
Adele Calhoun, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005), 20.
