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If you're easily distracted when praying, you're not alone. In fact, if you struggle to pray in the first place, that's not unusual either. Tim Chester tells us how we can be great pray-ers. And he admits that that's a really bold claim. 'The secret of great praying has nothing to do with human effort or skill,' he explains. 'Lots of people would like to think that it does because they want to make prayer an achievement.' But the secret of great praying is ... Knowing three things about God: +That God the Father loves to hear us pray +That God the Son makes every prayer pleasing to God +That God the Holy Spirit helps us as we pray Tim looks at: why prayer is easy (how we pray), why prayer is difficult (why we pray) and the arguments and priorities of prayer (what we pray). Prayer is a child asking her father for help. And that's not beyond any one of us.

The Lord's Prayer is perhaps the best-known part of the Bible. Today, it is still widely taught and learned, even by people who seldom enter a church; and the familiar sixteenth-century version continues to be used, even in modern worship services. The Lord's Prayer has undoubtedly been the most widely used Christian prayer, but whether it has provided a model for other prayers is more debatable. If that is not what it is meant to be, then what is its purpose? Surprisingly, there has been very little serious reflection about this. Gerald Bray believes that a new approach to the Lord's Prayer is required if it is to regain the place in our worship which its inherent merit and the universal tradition of the church suggest that it ought to have. In his lively exploration of the Prayer, he shows how it touches on many vitally important areas of Christian theology and conduct. His hope is that we may rediscover what a treasure we have in these words of Jesus, which are on the lips and in the hearts of all Christians.