My prayers have started to sound like a script. I am reciting phrases rather than talking to anyone. How do I get honest again?

“And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD.”

Hannah was childless, taunted at home, and praying at the tabernacle so intensely that Eli the priest assumed she was drunk. Her defence is one of the most striking descriptions of prayer in the Old Testament: she was pouring out her soul. There was nothing polished about it and nothing decorous. Israel kept the story anyway, as a picture of what real praying can look like.

“But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”

Jesus is contrasting prayer with the religious performance around him, where length and repetition were thought to improve the odds. His objection is not to using the same words twice, since he goes on to hand out a set prayer. It is to words that have stopped meaning anything to the person saying them. He assumes God listens as a father, not as a scorekeeper counting phrases.