---
title: "Learning to Pray"
category: "prayer"
description: "Four weeks on prayer: what it is, the prayer Jesus taught, how God answers, and fasting."
tags: ["prayer", "lords-prayer", "fasting", "audience/teaching", "small-groups"]
draft: false
primary_passage: "Matthew 6:9-13"
series:
  cut: topic
  sessions:
    - study: christian-life/prayer-as-communion.md
      why: "What prayer is: a child's communion with the Father, as necessary as daily bread."
    - study: christian-life/lords-prayer.md
      why: "The prayer Jesus gave His disciples, line by line, and how to pray it today."
    - study: christian-life/how-god-answers-prayer.md
      why: "Heard from the first word, answered by varied routes on God's timetable, and kept."
    - study: christian-life/fasting.md
      why: "Humbling yourself before God by going without food, and what Scripture never promises it does."
date_created: 2026-10-22
date_modified: 2026-10-26
ai_provider_models:
  - anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
---

# Learning to Pray

**In one sentence:** God the Father has adopted you through His Son Jesus and hears you from your
first word, so prayer is a child speaking with the Father: taught by Jesus, answered on God's
timetable, and sometimes joined with fasting.

The weeks move from what prayer is, to the pattern Jesus gave, to what happens after you pray, to a
discipline that goes with it.

For a household, [Teaching the Lord's Prayer at Home](https://the-way.lewy.au/christian-life/teaching-the-lords-prayer-at-home/)
takes the prayer one line a week for seven weeks, with a story, a question for children and one
thing to do together.

## The weeks

<!-- series-sessions -->