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40-Minute Bible Studies
The Essentials of Effective Prayer
Can You Know for Certain God Hears Your Prayers?
Do you sometimes wonder if God hears–let alone answers–your prayers? Do you ask yourself, What’s the point of praying? Do you long to experience the power of prayer in your daily life?
Find the keys to an effective prayer life in this compelling study that explores both God’s expectations of you and His promises to you when it comes to prayer. Through a detailed examination of the Lord’s Prayer and other examples of prayer throughout the Bible, you’ll discover a model for talking with God. You’ll also learn key principles of prayer and gain a deeper understanding of how prayer can draw you closer to His heart.
Do you sometimes wonder if God hears–let alone answers–your prayers? Do you ask yourself, What’s the point of praying? Do you long to experience the power of prayer in your daily life?
Find the keys to an effective prayer life in this compelling study that explores both God’s expectations of you and His promises to you when it comes to prayer. Through a detailed examination of the Lord’s Prayer and other examples of prayer throughout the Bible, you’ll discover a model for talking with God. You’ll also learn key principles of prayer and gain a deeper understanding of how prayer can draw you closer to His heart.
104 pages, Paperback
First published February 18, 2009
40 people are currently reading
82 people want to read
About the author
Kay Arthur
471 books259 followersKay Lee Arthur was an American Christian author, Bible teacher, and co-founder of Precept Ministries International. Renowned for her accessible and inductive approach to Bible study, she helped millions engage deeply with Scripture. Arthur began her ministry informally, teaching teenagers in her living room alongside her second husband, Jack Arthur. Their work soon grew into a global outreach, headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee, under the name Precept Ministries International. She hosted the daily Bible teaching program Precepts for Life and became a respected voice in evangelical circles. Arthur authored numerous books and was a four-time winner of the ECPA Christian Book Award for titles such as A Marriage Without Regrets and The New Inductive Study Bible. Her ministry was rooted in a personal reawakening to faith in the early 1960s, following a divorce and a return to religious life. She and Jack also served briefly as missionaries in Mexico before founding their ministry. Arthur remained active in public faith-based initiatives into her later years and was known for her firm stances on social issues. She passed away on 2025 leaving behind a lasting legacy in Christian education and publishing.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 22, 2021
Since my last Kay Arthur study went much more quickly than I'd anticipated, I decided to do another, and this one turned out to be one of my favorite books on prayer. I would definitely do it again, preferably with a group of people next time.
The title can be either confusing or off-putting, depending on where you find yourself. It's a reference to the "effective" prayer of Elijah in James 5:16-17 which stopped the rain. But, this book, and prayer in general, aren't about how to most effectively get all the neat toys we can get from God or seeing what we can get out of Him. Sure, He does tell us to ask, and He does answer prayer, but prayer goes deeper than that to doing our own heart-check, to making sure that we are aligned with God more than making sure He's aligned with our whims and wishes.
I loved the various praises in this book and the reminders of what God is to us, and the reminders to pray them.
"He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him." - Daniel 2:22b. I love this because God knows the depth of the darkness of our society. It doesn't surprise Him or frighten Him or overcome Him. Beautiful.
What I really liked about this book is the thorough, clear job it did of evaluating ourselves and things that might be hindering our prayers - things that the Health and Wealth Prosperity Gospel wouldn't teach because often they're ugly. They don't like to consider that our communication with God could ever be broken, no matter how we behave or what we do. (And sometimes I think that's why people don't "feel" God or feel like He's distant; there are other reasons, too, such as suffering.) What I liked about this study is its truth, as stark as it can be sometimes.
"But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear." - Isaiah 58:2
"If I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear." - Psalm 66:18. (Other translations have "cherish" instead of "regard" so maybe it's something like "regard highly.")
"You ask and do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures." - James 4:3
Other scriptural possibilities where the Bible specifically mentions a break in communication with God, where He will not hear, include unforgiveness and marital infidelity.
I also like that this section was followed by the grace of "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." - 1 John 1:9
The passages about fighting temptation are also useful.
I have to say something about the popularized Micah 6:8 passage: "He [God] has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" - Micah 6:8.
I was with a group some years ago who used the phrase "to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly" on t-shirts, but that hurt because it left out entirely any reference to God, without which, those actions have no significance. Also, the phrase "with your God" goes with each of those actions in the verse.
"Do justice ... with your God" or else we won't truly understand justice or be capable of fulfilling it. We need His wisdom and His power to do that. We need to do justice with our God.
"Love mercy [or kindness] ... with your God" because, again, we won't even understand true mercy unless we look at the cross, or true kindness unless we have His wisdom to look at all the facets of it. Sometimes what looks kind isn't in the long run. We also need God's grace to act kindly or mercifully in those situations where we really just don't want to. So we need to love mercy with our God.
"Walk humbly with your God" and He will show us how to walk humbly with other people. If we are humble, accepting His directions, His word, His command, then He will show us the rest, how to do justice and love mercy, despite our preconceived notions or our selfish tendencies.
In prayer, this keeps us from presuming to know best how to pray for someone.
A drawback in doing it solo was that I missed out on hearing others' stories. I would've loved to have heard the answer to the question on page 8, referring to "when all the odds were against you," "... share such a situation from their personal experience and describe how they responded." I love triumphant stories like that, and I love the depth of the heart-breaking ones, too, if for no other reason than that we can "love on" the hurting ones.
Also, I found there were more possibilities with the answer to the question, "What does the amount of time you spend with God's Word reveal about your allegiance [to God]?" I felt like the authors wanted us to confront the fact that God's not as high a priority in our lives as we claim. And this may be true, but we also do have other good responsibilities that He's given us. Not that we should neglect God's Word, but we shouldn't neglect our other God-given responsibilities either. There is a balance there, even if most of us tend to be skewed on one side of it.
Also, for me, I find that even when I do spend considerable time in God's Word, I find that the time there is not always for the good of the Kingdom at large, but also for my own comfort. The two things - time with God and allegiance to God - are not always related, even if they can be.
The last chapter of this book, with the various prayers in Paul's epistles, felt like it should've been two chapters, because it was harder for me to absorb it all.
I knew that Kay Arthur's studies do tend to be more detail oriented - well, more like actual studies than devotionals - and I felt like this might be a good fit for me this year, when I wanted something a little deeper to hang onto this summer.
It was "light" for Kay Arthur in that it didn't involve any homework and that it let us through the paces, step by step. But because there was no homework, just weekly group sessions, and because I am not doing this with a group, I found myself doing a week's worth in a day. So, like my last Kay Arthur study, it was much shorter than it could be supposed.
I doubt people will get as much out of it as I did if they don't do the little drawings in the text. Don't skimp on doing this part. One of the other reviewers said she didn't understand what significance illustrating the text had. I think it's for the repetition in understanding the point, and for the continuity of the ideas from one phrase to the next.
Favorite quotes:
"He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him." - Daniel 2:22b.
"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." - 1 John 1:9
"Our worship is based not on emotion but on truth; not on the fervency of our words but on the faithfulness of God."
Not a favorite quote, but nonetheless a true one:
"Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness." - Matthew 7:23b
The title can be either confusing or off-putting, depending on where you find yourself. It's a reference to the "effective" prayer of Elijah in James 5:16-17 which stopped the rain. But, this book, and prayer in general, aren't about how to most effectively get all the neat toys we can get from God or seeing what we can get out of Him. Sure, He does tell us to ask, and He does answer prayer, but prayer goes deeper than that to doing our own heart-check, to making sure that we are aligned with God more than making sure He's aligned with our whims and wishes.
I loved the various praises in this book and the reminders of what God is to us, and the reminders to pray them.
"He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him." - Daniel 2:22b. I love this because God knows the depth of the darkness of our society. It doesn't surprise Him or frighten Him or overcome Him. Beautiful.
What I really liked about this book is the thorough, clear job it did of evaluating ourselves and things that might be hindering our prayers - things that the Health and Wealth Prosperity Gospel wouldn't teach because often they're ugly. They don't like to consider that our communication with God could ever be broken, no matter how we behave or what we do. (And sometimes I think that's why people don't "feel" God or feel like He's distant; there are other reasons, too, such as suffering.) What I liked about this study is its truth, as stark as it can be sometimes.
"But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear." - Isaiah 58:2
"If I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear." - Psalm 66:18. (Other translations have "cherish" instead of "regard" so maybe it's something like "regard highly.")
"You ask and do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures." - James 4:3
Other scriptural possibilities where the Bible specifically mentions a break in communication with God, where He will not hear, include unforgiveness and marital infidelity.
I also like that this section was followed by the grace of "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." - 1 John 1:9
The passages about fighting temptation are also useful.
I have to say something about the popularized Micah 6:8 passage: "He [God] has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" - Micah 6:8.
I was with a group some years ago who used the phrase "to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly" on t-shirts, but that hurt because it left out entirely any reference to God, without which, those actions have no significance. Also, the phrase "with your God" goes with each of those actions in the verse.
"Do justice ... with your God" or else we won't truly understand justice or be capable of fulfilling it. We need His wisdom and His power to do that. We need to do justice with our God.
"Love mercy [or kindness] ... with your God" because, again, we won't even understand true mercy unless we look at the cross, or true kindness unless we have His wisdom to look at all the facets of it. Sometimes what looks kind isn't in the long run. We also need God's grace to act kindly or mercifully in those situations where we really just don't want to. So we need to love mercy with our God.
"Walk humbly with your God" and He will show us how to walk humbly with other people. If we are humble, accepting His directions, His word, His command, then He will show us the rest, how to do justice and love mercy, despite our preconceived notions or our selfish tendencies.
In prayer, this keeps us from presuming to know best how to pray for someone.
A drawback in doing it solo was that I missed out on hearing others' stories. I would've loved to have heard the answer to the question on page 8, referring to "when all the odds were against you," "... share such a situation from their personal experience and describe how they responded." I love triumphant stories like that, and I love the depth of the heart-breaking ones, too, if for no other reason than that we can "love on" the hurting ones.
Also, I found there were more possibilities with the answer to the question, "What does the amount of time you spend with God's Word reveal about your allegiance [to God]?" I felt like the authors wanted us to confront the fact that God's not as high a priority in our lives as we claim. And this may be true, but we also do have other good responsibilities that He's given us. Not that we should neglect God's Word, but we shouldn't neglect our other God-given responsibilities either. There is a balance there, even if most of us tend to be skewed on one side of it.
Also, for me, I find that even when I do spend considerable time in God's Word, I find that the time there is not always for the good of the Kingdom at large, but also for my own comfort. The two things - time with God and allegiance to God - are not always related, even if they can be.
The last chapter of this book, with the various prayers in Paul's epistles, felt like it should've been two chapters, because it was harder for me to absorb it all.
I knew that Kay Arthur's studies do tend to be more detail oriented - well, more like actual studies than devotionals - and I felt like this might be a good fit for me this year, when I wanted something a little deeper to hang onto this summer.
It was "light" for Kay Arthur in that it didn't involve any homework and that it let us through the paces, step by step. But because there was no homework, just weekly group sessions, and because I am not doing this with a group, I found myself doing a week's worth in a day. So, like my last Kay Arthur study, it was much shorter than it could be supposed.
I doubt people will get as much out of it as I did if they don't do the little drawings in the text. Don't skimp on doing this part. One of the other reviewers said she didn't understand what significance illustrating the text had. I think it's for the repetition in understanding the point, and for the continuity of the ideas from one phrase to the next.
Favorite quotes:
"He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him." - Daniel 2:22b.
"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." - 1 John 1:9
"Our worship is based not on emotion but on truth; not on the fervency of our words but on the faithfulness of God."
Not a favorite quote, but nonetheless a true one:
"Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness." - Matthew 7:23b
July 11, 2017
The reading information was great. Got a lot from it. The questions I didn't understand what making icons taught me.
November 7, 2019
Simple, easy to understand, gives scripture verses that you can Mark up as you study them to understeer what God says about prayer.
June 23, 2021
A good study to help you develop and grow your prayer life. With a good selection of scriptures that you can use to pray in certain situations
September 29, 2024
Great book just a different style than what I’m used to.
August 13, 2009
The Essentials of Effective Prayer by Kay Arthur and David & BJ Lawson is a six week Bible study meant for small groups to enrich and enliven your prayer life. They are part of the 40 Minute Bible Study/No Homework series. The authors use several examples of prayer throughout the Bible to show readers how to worship, confess, and intercede through their own prayers. I loved how the Bible verses were in the margins of the pages so I didn't have to juggle my Bible and the book at the same time. The questions encourage readers to dig deep into the purpose and message in each prayer. The Lord's Prayer from Matthew gets special focus, as does intercessory prayer. I learned a great deal about how to pray for others, as well as spending more time worshiping God for who he is within my prayers. This is a terrific tool for small groups, as well as for individual use (which is how I did the study).
January 1, 2014
This book was very helpful and insightful. I felt like I was perfecting and understanding how to pray better and how The Lord intended us to pray. This 40 minute bible study plan worked great for me with my busy schedule, I practiced it both in a small group and alone and it works great either way. I liked this book very much and thought it was very educational and easy to understand. I would recommend this to anyone wanting to gain a better knowledge about effective prayer and learning passages that explain it through Jesus's words. Great read! And I look forward to reading more of these 40 minute Bible studies.
June 23, 2013
Wow! What an excellent study of scripture on prayer. Having grown up in the church, I often heard about praying how to pray, what methods to follow and so forth. This study takes you straight to scripture to see the purpose of prayer. It takes you through God's model for prayer to understand each step ~ worship, declaration of allegiance, petition, confession and worship. Take the six days hours, days, weeks or even a full quarter and learn to pray effectively.
July 25, 2014
I have never read a book or done a Bible study by Kay Arthur that I did not like. I think my favorite was Marriage Without Regrets. I always get so much out of her books and she breaks it down to the simplest form to understand complex principles.
Currently reading
March 13, 2009I am doing this study with my hubby and brother in law
July 16, 2015
A great short and concise book on effective prayer. Lead this in my apartment building - only 6-7 of us. A good basic understanding of prayer and who we are as prayers.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews