Praying Badly on Purpose

For a long time my prayers had an audience, and the audience was me.

The performance problem

I could tell because of the editing. A sentence would form, and some internal committee would send it back for revisions — too whiny, too specific, too small a thing to bother God with.

Romans 8:26 says the Spirit helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what we ought to pray for. I had read that as a promise about advanced technique. It turns out to be a promise about being bad at this.

What I do now

Shorter sentences. Often just a name. Sometimes the actual complaint, unimproved.

(A fuller version of this post is on the way — I'm still living in the middle of it.)