So we need to hold our guidance lightly and do our praying accordingly. The conditions in Gethsemane under which these words were spoken were so far more tempting for prescriptive prayer than any situation in which we may be involved that it seems not only safe but necessary to suggest that they should always qualify our petitions. How We Ought To Pray How to pray sounds like a question of technique. As such, it is open to both of a negative and a positive answer. On the negative side, the problem with technique is that it is one of the major idols of our time.
People think that there is one set technique for solving a particular problem.
All we need to do is find and use it, like a repairman fixing a dishwasher. But there is no one set technique for praying, because prayer is a matter of communion with God. That can't be reduced to a form without reducing its reality. That isn't a technique but a pattern. If we study and use it as a pattern, and not as a rote formula, we shall undoubtedly learn how to pray.