Give praise to the Lord. He showed me his wonderful love when my enemies attacked the city I was in. I was afraid and said, "I've been cut off from you!" But you heard my cry for your favor. You heard me when I called out to you for help (Psalm 31:22-23). "All prayer is prayed in a story, by someone who is in the story...Spiritualized prayer is denatured prayer, prayer in which all the dirt and noise of ordinary life is boiled out" (Eugene Peterson, Answering God 47, 49). I think we might pray too often. Now, before you call for me to be defrocked, let me explain. As I was growing up, our family gathered around the table three times a day for meals. No meal began without prayer and no meal ended without it. They were all about the same length and the content was similar. The greatest variation was on Sunday mornings. Breakfast would end with a longer prayer than usual. As children, we knew to settle in for the long ride. These were good rhythms for us. But there was also a routineness that led to a lack of engagement. The words were being said, but the mind and heart were elsewhere. This is the problem Peterson identified: our prayers are somehow separated from the life we live. Faith and prayer become an add on to life. Something perfunctory. This same problem sometimes surfaces in our Sunday worship. I hear people talk about leaving the business of the week at the door to worship God without all that stuff cluttering our spirits. I believe that God wants us to bring all that stuff into our prayers and worship. What else did Jesus mean when He said to the Samaritan woman that God's worshippers "must worship in Spirit and in truth" (John 4:24)? How can we worship God in truth if we our hiding our lives from Him? Seventy-three of the psalms are linked to David. We know a lot about him. The Bible records stories of David as a boy, a teen, an adult, and an old man. He is shepherd, soldier, outlaw, and king. He is son, brother, husband, and father. He is wondrously obedient and disastrously disobedient. The stories tell us about him, but his prayers tell his inner story. They show his passions and fears, his longings, and his revulsions. Read Psalm 31 and identify all the inner workings of David's soul. Note all the things it tells us about him. Jesus tells us that prayer is not meant for long recitations of empty expressions (Matthew 6:5-15). Rather, it begins, "Our Father who is in heaven..." When we pray in Spirit and in truth, the story of our lives is enfolded into the story of God our Father. Prayer should expand our lives, laying their insignificance and their significance before God so He can shape and deepen them. It is about ex-changing false gods for the God of the Bible; admitting our idolatry and longing to pray to God alone. It is not really that we pray too often but that our prayers are not about our lives. So, if your prayers have become routine, do something about it. Change the way you prepare to pray. Let your prayers be honest, speaking to God from your heart about your life. As you journey on, go with the blessing of God: May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you. May he guide you through the wilderness: protect you through the storm. May he bring you home rejoicing; at the wonders he has shown you. May he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.

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