Pastor and author Max Lucado long struggled with prayer before a breakthrough a few years ago, he said Wednesday on "America's Forum."
"I've wrestled with why God would want to hear from me," Lucado told the
Newsmax TV program. "I've wondered if I've misprayed, if I'm praying the wrong. Should I pray longer, louder?"
He changed his prayer life, he said, after coming up with something he calls the "pocket prayer concept."
Story continues below video.
Note: Watch Newsmax TV now on DIRECTV Ch. 349 and DISH Ch. 223
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system – Click Here Now
Lucado read through the Bible and took all the prayers he could find and condensed them into a single prayer. While the Bible contains many prayers, they can all fit under one of six different stanzas, he said.
"For most of us, prayer is not a 40-day retreat," he said. "It's not a two-hour session. It's just this background conversation that we have with God on and off throughout the day."
Lucado's pocket prayer goes like this: "Father, you are good. I need help. They need help. Thank you. In Jesus' name. Amen."
He hopes other "recovering prayer wimps" like himself find the pocket prayer helpful. He wrote a book on the subject entitled "
Before Amen: The Power of a Simple Prayer."
"I think the key in prayer is understanding that prayer is not so much asking God to do what we want, as it is asking God to do what is right," he said. "For certain we make requests, just like any child would make requests of a loving father, but we also honor the wisdom of the father.
"And acknowledge God knows more than we do. We believe that he's good and will do what is right."
People who pray enjoy a feeling of calm that is contagious, according to Lucado.
"The first promise of prayer is peace," he said. "If we could invigorate our own prayer lives, we'd be amazed how much peace we would find in our own lives and how much peace that would translate and dispel into our culture."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.