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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, \u201cI\u2019ve been cut off from you!\u201d 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 me of my credentials, 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 on Sunday morning. 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 pray that we leave the business of the week at the door and 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), but that we should not leave our baggage at the door? How can we worship God in truth if we our hiding our lives from Him?

Seventy-three of the psalms are linked to David, one of the people in scripture we know a lot about. 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.

His story is told as from the outside. But his prayers tell the inner story. It shows 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..." Prayer then is connecting the story of our lives with the story of God our Father.

Prayer should deepen our lives, laying their insignificance and their significance before God so He can shape and deepen it. 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 too routine. So, if your prayers have become routine, do something about it. Change the way you prepare to pray. Let your prayers be honest. Speak to God from your heart about your life.