When you reflect on your prayer life, do you feel like you're in a healthy rhythm of communication?

Or like many Christians, do you carry a measure of guilt?

Today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindall urges us to abandon the religious rituals that often stifle our

motivation and begin fostering natural conversations with God. Two Bible passages will inform our

way forward, Matthew chapter 6 and Philippians chapter 4. So are you ready to exchange dread for an

ongoing dialogue with a loving father?

Chuck titled today's message,

Strengthening Your Grip on Prayer.

The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, they really believed in prayer.

You see, as they began to get increasingly more intense about prayer and about piety,

they began to stack the list of things on you.

That if you really plan to get serious about prayer, these are the expectations God has of you.

And as a result, the intensity led to an enormity of guilt.

Historians tell us that prayer degenerated because of five particular things in the first century.

Number one, because of formalism.

It became standardized.

It became institutionalized.

Prayer was no longer spontaneous.

It was now formal. By the time the Pharisees got through with the package, it became ritualistic. You know that you prayed three times every day, if you were pious,

nine in the morning, noon, and three in the afternoon every day.

Prayers became formal, ritualistic.

They became long, filled with verbiage.

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