If you have never prayed before, the first thing to know is that there is no test at the door. Christians have been praying for two thousand years and the practice has taken every form a human being can take. Standing, kneeling, lying flat on the ground. In silence, in song, in shouted petition. Alone in a forest, packed into a cathedral, walking to work, lying in bed. Memorized words. No words at all.
There is no version of prayer that is correct and a version that is wrong. There are versions that suit different temperaments and different moments, and traditions that have refined particular forms over centuries to a high degree. Most people who pray regularly settle into two or three forms that fit their life. The rest is technique.
Here is what those forms tend to look like.
Form 1: A fixed prayer, said deliberately
The simplest place to start. Pick a prayer that already exists. The Lord's Prayer is the obvious one. So is Psalm 23, or the Hail Mary, or the Jesus Prayer. Say it slowly, paying attention to each phrase rather than racing to the end.
The point is not to get through the words. The point is to mean them, line by line, while saying them.
This is what most Christians mean by "saying their prayers." It has been the dominant form of Christian prayer for two millennia for a reason: it works without requiring you to come up with anything. The words are doing the work. You are paying attention.
If a phrase catches you, stop. Sit with it for a moment. Then continue.
Form 2: Your own words
The form most modern Christians associate with prayer, but historically a smaller part of the tradition than people realize. You talk to God in your own language about whatever is on your mind. Thanks for something. A request for someone. A worry. A question.
There is no script. The only convention is that you address it to God rather than thinking it to yourself.
Some traditions structure this. The Anglican tradition uses a pattern called ACTS, for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication, to give the prayer a shape. You praise, you admit what you've done wrong, you give thanks, you ask. Other traditions are looser. Some are looser still.
The risk with this form is that it can drift into talking about problems rather than addressing them. The fix is to keep it short and direct. Two minutes of focused prayer in your own words is more effective than twenty minutes of unfocused worry presented as prayer.
Form 3: Silence
The hardest form for beginners and the one with the most claim from the contemplatives. You sit, usually somewhere quiet, usually with your eyes closed, and you stop trying to use words.
You are not trying to clear your mind. You are not trying to feel anything. You are just sitting in God's presence, returning your attention gently to that fact when it wanders, which it will.
The Orthodox tradition pairs this with the Jesus Prayer, repeated silently in time with the breath. The Catholic tradition has Centering Prayer, where you pick a single word as an anchor. The Quaker tradition just sits.
Twenty minutes is the conventional length. Five minutes is fine to start. The discipline is the returning, not the staying.
Form 4: Structured prayer with others
If forms 1, 2, and 3 are private practice, this is public. The Daily Office in the Anglican and Catholic traditions, the Divine Liturgy in the Orthodox tradition, the prayers of the Mass: these are forms of prayer that work because they're done in community, in fixed sequences, with people who have been doing them for years.
You don't have to know what you're doing. You just have to show up and follow what everyone else is doing. After a while it gets into you.
This is how most serious Christians throughout history have learned to pray. Not by being taught the theory first but by being in rooms with people doing it, until they could do it themselves.
Practical advice that holds across all four forms
A few minutes is enough. Daily five minutes beats weekly hour. The discipline matters more than the duration.
A fixed time helps. First thing in the morning, last thing before bed, or both, are the traditional Christian times. The reason isn't theological. It's that those moments are bookends to your day, and you'll actually do it.
A fixed place helps too. Pick somewhere. The same chair, the same corner. Your brain learns the cue.
You will be bored. This is not a sign that anything is wrong. Boredom is part of all sustained practice, including the practices that work. The temptation will be to fill the boredom with talk, with phone, with leaving. Don't.
You will be distracted. Also normal. Notice the distraction without judging it, return to what you were doing. This is not unique to prayer. Every meditation tradition in the world reports the same.
You probably won't feel anything dramatic. Almost no one does, almost ever. The feelings reported by mystics and saints across the centuries are the exception, not the rule. The point of prayer is not to feel things. The point is to do it.
A word about not believing
You don't have to be sure God exists to pray. Many Christians who pray daily report periods of doubt that last years. The tradition has a name for it: the dark night of the soul. The practice is doing it anyway.
If you find yourself wanting to pray but not sure if there is anyone listening, the tradition's advice is to pray anyway and let the question of who is listening be its own kind of prayer.
This isn't pretending. It's an old form of honesty.