How To Pray With Your Whole Heart

Prayer is our way of communicating with God, who is our heavenly Father. Whenever we communicate, we must do it with sincerity from our hearts. Think of communicating or having a conversation with your loved one. You mean everything you say and speak from the sincerity of your heart. It is not done out of usual obligation or routine, but the desire of your heart to interact with them. The same applies when it comes to praying. We pray because we want to spend time and interact with our heavenly Father. 

Father in heaven, I thank You because You have made access to Your throne of grace, where we can freely pray to You by sacrificing Your Son Jesus to pay for our sins, where the dividing wall of hostility between You and I has been broken down. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

What does it mean to pray with your whole heart?

Praying with our whole hearts means praying with sincerity. For example, let’s say that a football team is losing. They can either play the game for the sake of playing and not have their heart in it, knowing they are about to lose anyway, or they can play as if they can still win, in which they give everything they have. They play with sincerity in their hearts. The latter exemplifies doing something with our whole heart or with full sincerity.

Before we proceed, it might also help to know what the Bible means when we say “heart.” When the Bible talks about “heart,” it is referencing our innermost being—our core. It is the seat of our emotions, desires, thoughts, and feelings. That is why a corrupted heart, like those belonging to sinners, has corrupted emotions, desires, thoughts, and feelings. That is where sin resides. In Mark 7:21-23, Jesus said that it is from the heart that many sorts of sins arise. It is also why, in Proverbs 4:23, the Bible teaches us to guard our hearts above all else, for it is where the wellspring of life emerges.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, our hearts are regenerated; we realize our sinfulness, trust the saving work of Christ, repent, and commit to following Him. With that sort of renewed heart, we have a new relationship with sin. Instead of walking in sin, we now hate it. Our emotions, thoughts, desires, and feelings all long for God, to live for Christ and to be more like Him. In Ezekiel 36:26, it is written that God gives us a new heart, not one of stone, but a heart made of flesh.

With that said, praying to God with our whole heart means praying to Him with all the emotion and affection we hold for God, including the desire to spend time with Him and know more of Him. We must always be thinking about Him and glorifying Him while being zealous and passionate for Him. That comes in the form of praying and communicating with God, our heavenly Father.

No wonder Jesus told us in Matthew 22:37 to love God with our whole heart, soul, and mind. Loving God and praying to Him not only involves intellectual knowledge and every fiber of our being, but also the heart, where all our affections, desires, and thoughts lie.

How do I pray with my whole heart?

We pray with our whole hearts by first going back to the Gospel. When we realize God’s mercy, grace, and love through the person of Jesus Christ, we cannot help but be in love with God. In Romans 12:1, the apostle Paul told the church in Rome to present themselves as living sacrifices to God. In other words, they were told to live their lives for God. Before the apostle Paul asked them to live their lives for God, Paul from Romans 1-11 talked about the Gospel. 

The same truth applies to praying with our whole hearts. We should first go back to the Gospel, which represents the grace, mercy, and love that God has shown us through Christ. We should get back to the Word and study who God is because learning more about those things draws out our affection toward God. There we can pray to God out of worship with our whole hearts. As we are consumed and in awe of who God is, along with His grace and mercy in the person of Christ, we will pray to Him with all our hearts, with every affection, desire, and thought directed toward Him. 

If you are reading this and are not yet a follower of Christ, the first thing you should understand is the Gospel. The Gospel is the good news telling us that Christ lived the life you should have lived, died the death you should have died, and on the third day, rose again. He proved that He is indeed the Son of God, and having conquered death, He offers eternal life and forgiveness to those who believe in Him and repent. Christ paid for the penalty of your sin, which was your debt to pay. Only when you understand the Gospel, believe in it, realize that you have been living your life wrongly, and repent can you finally comprehend God’s love, grace, and mercy in Christ. That is where praying to God with your whole heart comes into play.

Heavenly Father, I pray that You will always break my overfamiliarity with You. Help me always live a life of worship, where all my affections, desires, and thoughts are for You. Remind me of Your grace and mercy in the person of Christ and give me spiritual understanding so that I may know more of You, always set my affections on You, and be zealous, passionate, and sincere in everything I do for You, including my prayer life. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

On our own, we can’t make ourselves love God more and be sincere toward Him in our prayers. It all boils down to knowing or remembering the Gospel and who God is. It is the Gospel that is God’s act of grace, love, and mercy towards us, and it is the character of God that draws out our affection towards Him. God’s character and the Gospel are so amazing that we cannot help but love Him. As 1 John 4:19 says, we love because He loved us first. When something is done out of love, praying to God is never burdensome but something that we delight in doing.