“But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.”
(Matthew 6:6)

Prayer was never intended to make us feel guilty. It was never intended to be a verbal marathon for only the initiated—no secret-code talk for the clergy or a public display of piety. None of that. Real prayer—the kind of prayer Jesus mentioned and modelled—is real, spontaneous, down-to-earth communication with the living Lord that results in relief from personal anxiety and a calm assurance that our God is in full control of our circumstances.

I encourage you to start over. Form some brand-new habits as you fight off the old tendency to slump back into meaningless jargon. Get a fresh, new grip on prayer. It is essential for survival.

Many years ago, I decided to do that very thing. I was fed up with empty words and pharisaical phrases. In my search for new meaning, I came across this brief description of prayer, which I set on my desk and carried in the front of my Bible for years. It’s attributed to a seventeenth-century Roman Catholic Frenchman named François Fénelon. Although written centuries ago, it has an undeniable ring of relevance:

“I think you cannot treat God with too much confidence. Tell Him all that is in your heart, as one unloads one’s heart to a dear friend of all that gives it pain or pleasure. Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; tell Him your longing, that He may purify them; tell Him your misliking, that He may help you to conquer them; talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them; show Him all the wounds of your heart, that He may heal them. Lay bare to Him your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, your dissipation, your instability, your leanings to a corrupt world. Tell Him how self-love disposes you to be unjust to your neighbours, how vanity tempts you to be insincere and to dazzle those with whom you are concerned; how your pride disguises you to yourself as well as to others. If you thus pour out to Him all your weaknesses, needs, and troubles, there will be no lack of what to say; you will never exhaust this subject; it is continually being renewed.”

Taken from Strengthening Your Grip by Charles R. Swindoll. Copyright © 2015 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Worthy Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.