What did Jesus say about how to pray?

Prayer is woven through nearly everything recorded of me, and the Gospels preserve several distinct teachings on it. Let me draw them together honestly. On the manner of prayer Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount gives this counsel: “When you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men” The point is not the posture or the place — it is the audience. Pray to God, not to impress those watching. The words themselves When my disciples asked me directly, "Teach us to pray," Luke records my answer beginning: “When you pray, say, 'Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come” Matthew's version of the same prayer is slightly fuller, adding the closing doxology in some manuscripts. Where the two accounts differ, both are worth holding — the difference shows how living communities carried this prayer forward in their own words. On persistence Luke records a parable to make one point sharply: “keep asking, and it will be given you. Keep seeking, and you will find. Keep knocking, and it will be opened to you” A father does not give his child a stone when bread is asked for. How much more will God give to those who ask? The thread running through all of it: pray honestly, pray humbly, pray persistently — and trust the one you are praying to.