Prayer in Your Own Words

On one side of the coin we have formal prayer on the other extemperaneous prayer, prayers that you pray in your own words, off the top of your head and from the depths of your heart. This includes things like "converstional prayer" when a group of three or four people will pray aloud together someone beginning with a short prayer and another picking up on that particular thought and then adding something and on it goes back an forth among the participants until there's nothing left to say and someone says Amen. This kind of informal prayer is the heritage of many post-reformation, "low-church" denominations. Baptists, Quakers, Pentecostals, and most Evangelical denominations. It has it's own benefits. Revelance is one, you pray in your own words about the things on your heart, it's extremely personal. This type of prayer also helps to build an intimate relationship with God. It also allows you to direct your prayers specifically to the Father, to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit. There's less chance of prayer time becoming rote and stale. On the otherhand it can often feel directionless and rambling. Who among us hasn't been at a worship service or prayer meeting and struggled to pay attention as someone droned on with a well intentioned but disorganized and lengthy prayer.

My suggestion is that whatever method of prayer your used to, switch to the other for a while. Change is good. Also keep in mind that Jesus gave us the example of both types of prayer. He taught his disciples the formal Lord's Prayer, but we also have Jesus own personal conversational prayers recorded in John 17 for example. So both types of prayer are biblical and beneficial to your spiritual growth.