How the Bible Says to Pray
I am asked quite often how one can pray effectively. This
article will show you the way the Word of God tells us to pray.
We are going to look at the Greek word pray (prayers, praying
and prayed) proseuche and proseuchomai but only in the Mystery
Epistles of Paul, Ephesians, Colossians and Philippians.
The Greek word proseuche appears in the New Testament 37 times
in 37 verses and proseuchomai appears 90 times in 82 verses,
this is quite an abundance of uses so I want to limit the study
to just the three books of the Apostle Paul also know as the
Prison Epistles.
We must first start our study with some Greek grammar lessons,
very basic for now. When the words proseuche or proseuchomai are
used as verbs, or as nouns the verbs that are used with them,
are always in the present tense. The present tense represents a
simple statement of fact or reality viewed as occurring in
actual time and in most cases this correspond directly with the
English present tense.
Another characteristic of these verbs are that they are in the
middle voice. The middle voice indicates the subject performing
an action upon himself (reflexive action) or for his own
benefit. E.g., "The boy groomed himself." Many verbs which occur
only in middle voice forms are translated in English as having
an active sense; these are called "deponent" verbs, and do not
comply with the normal requirements for the middle voice. A
different way to look at