4 Prayer Habits You Should Change in the New Year

We have made it to the time of year where we say goodbye to 2024 and look ahead to what 2025 has in store for us. With the new year comes the chance to start fresh. We see this in all the goals, resolutions, and changes people commit to make in the new year. Some of those changes could be in regard to our walk with Jesus.

One of the best things that we can do in our relationship with Jesus is take an inventory of how things are going or what can improve. For a lot of us I would guess that one of those areas would be our prayer life. Prayer is how we communicate with the Lord. It keeps us connected to him, and helps us grow closer to him. Like anything else, it is easy to form habits in our prayer life that are not healthy. If we are not careful and our prayer life does become unhealthy, it can affect our closeness to Jesus. This is why it is important to take an honest look at how we are doing, and get rid of anything that might hold us back from growing closer to him. 

Here are 4 prayer habits you should change in the new year:

1. Pray Continuously, Not Just if You Feel Like It

Prayer can be one of those things that we do when it is convenient for us. We tend to pray when we need something or if life isn’t going how we want it to. When things are going well, prayer is the last thing we consider because we forget who we are supposed to rely on. 

Prayer can be a continuous conversation with Jesus. We get the privilege of talking to him whenever we want to. It is like any other relationship, the more you are able to talk with them, the more you get to know them. I came to this realization a couple years after I had been following Jesus. I was tired of being legalistic and feeling like I had to win the Lord’s approval to get to him. In the first couple of years when I was following Jesus, I read a book about a Catholic monk named Brother Lawrence who made prayer a way of life. Throughout the day he would talk to the Lord as he was doing his daily tasks. It kept him focused on the Lord, and everything he did was for him. I tried to start following his example, and it has totally changed how I pray. I view it as a constant conversation with Jesus, like he is walking with me through my day. I don’t always get it right, but it has made my prayer life more consistent. 

Make a decision today to start talking to Jesus throughout the day. You may be surprised how much it changes you. 

2. Allow Prayer to Change You Instead of Trying to Change Everyone Else

One of the tempting things to do when we pray is ask the Lord to change others. While it isn’t wrong for us to pray for this, it shouldn’t be our only focus. We may notice if we do pray for this it may not exactly be the answer he gives us. The Lord might give us an opportunity to change instead. 

It's so easy to notice the areas we think others need to grow in and ignore the places where we lack. If we have an issue with someone else, try not to start out by asking the Lord to make them aware of their faults. First, we should ask him to reveal what we need to deal with first and how we can change. Then we can ask the Lord to do what he wants to do in others.

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Kamonwan Wankaew 

3. Your Prayers Don’t Need to Be Perfect; Pour Out Your Heart to Him Instead

Do you ever feel like you need to make your prayers sound good to please God? 
 I used to think this. I would hear others pray and think about how good their prayers sounded, but I felt like I didn’t have the right words.

Jesus doesn’t expect our prayers to be perfect, instead he wants to be close to us. He wants us to pour our heart out to him.  If you read any of the Psalms that were written by David, you’ll notice he was honest and real with the Lord. We can do the same thing. 

We can tell him about how we are doing. We can ask him why things are the way they are. We can ask for help. It does not have to be perfect. At the same time, we can praise and thank the Lord for who he is and what he has done. We can bring him everything that we have and lay it at his feet. 

4. Don’t Make Yourself the Focus of All of Your Prayers; Focus on Jesus and Pray for Others

Prayer is a wonderful thing, but sometimes we can make it too much about ourselves. It is important to bring all of our needs and wants to the Lord, but that should not be our only focus. 

We have the privilege of lifting others up in prayer. We can ask the Lord to intervene on their behalf and ask him to help them. It is such an honor to be able to pray for others and be involved in their lives. I know firsthand what it is like to have others praying for you or to be told that someone is praying for me. It helps me feel like I am not alone in whatever I am going through and that I am spiritually being lifted up by others. 

Focusing on Jesus when we pray is also important. When we fix our eyes on him, he can give us insight into what or how we should be praying. Prayer is not designed for us to get whatever we want, but the end goal should be for us to grow into looking more like him. 

If we are willing, 2025 could be a year of significant change in our prayer lives. As the old saying goes, “Bad habits die hard,” but it is not impossible to change. We can take it day by day and decide to move in the direction that we need to go. Once we do this, we will see the benefits of the commitment we are making. 

I pray that each one of us can learn to develop an impactful and fruitful prayer life. For me personally, learning that I can have a continuous conversation with Jesus throughout the day has been the biggest change in my own life. I have learned to rely on him more through it, and I have grown closer to him because of it. I want to continue to grow in this area, my prayer life to continue to change me, continue to pour my heart our to him, and I want to focus on Jesus and learning to pray for others more often. This sounds like the kind of prayer life we are meant to have. 

Lord, I pray that you would take our prayer life to a deeper level in 2025. Amen.

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/shuang paul wang 

Becky Weber is a wife, and mom to 4 kids. She loves to write and speak. She is a pastor’s wife in Sioux Falls, SD where her husband Adam is the lead pastor of Embrace Church. Her passion is to encourage others (especially women) to learn how to walk with Jesus on a daily basis. You can find more writing over at www.becweber.com and connect with her on Facebook and Instagram.