It’s easy when talking to God to slip into prayer-speak. All of a sudden a strange tone of voice emerges and theological words flow freely. Even the person praying can seem detached from his own monologue. 

The Psalms — thank God for the Psalms — paint a different picture of prayer. 

The prayer-songs found there are alive and brutally honest. Like an epic film, they are at once personal and transcendent — the camera one second zoomed in on one character sweating alone as he wrestles his own weaknesses, the next zoomed out to reveal armies colliding on the battlefield. 

In these prayers, no feeling is off limits. Joy, anger, loneliness, consolation — by including the Psalms in the canon of Scripture God is saying, Bring it all uncensored to me. 

Chris Hall points us to the Psalms as our prayer mentor. In the Psalms we don’t just find someone else’s words; we find our own. Desert Father John Cassian notes, ​“Penetrated by the same feelings in which the psalm was composed, it is as if we became the authors of it … The sacred words reawaken our experience.”

This week may you feel the permission to come before God with utter honesty. He already knows what’s going on in us. It’s when we find the courage and language to express it that deeper communion, healing, and transformation can occur.