Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks.

Where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Jeff Parrorot. Are your prayers messy enough? When you connect with

God in prayer, do you approach him with the full range of your experiences and emotions, or has your prayer life become rigid,

stale, or stagnant?

Of course, there's nothing wrong with prayers that are structured or guided.

Those habit-forming disciplines can be vital parts to someone's spiritual formation.

They are in my life.

Having a sense of rhythm and repetition in prayer can be such a gift.

But if we're honest with ourselves, there's a really big difference between a prayer life that's formative and a prayer life that's formulaic.

And if you're like me, it's easy to get stuck in patterns of prayer

that are thoughtless, unintentional, and unemotional, ultimately unreal.

We can be trapped in the formula and miss the formation.

One way to push against stagnation and prayer is to return to that first question, are your

prayers messy enough? Many of us are used to nice, prepared, tidy conversations with

God if we're praying at all. But what if prayer

that regular connection with our maker? What if it's meant to be messier? More

real? That's the image of prayer that we get in chapters 9 through 10 of

Ezra. These two chapters give us a window into the messiness of prayer, the

messiness of life, the

but also the meaningful change that prayer can bring about in our lives

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