God speaks: Can you pray in your own words? The truth they don’t talk about
God says: Can we pray in our own words? Yes, if our words are honest. Your words bring God living pain, gratitude, questions, fear, and love. The words of the Church teach us to pray beyond our own state.
Gospel of the Kingdom
When you pray only in your own words, you can become withdrawn. When you pray only in the words of others, without heart, you become external.
Connect. Speak to God vividly. And learn to speak in the words of those who have walked this path before you.
Then your prayer will be both personal and ecclesiastical.
This is true spirituality. This is Orthodoxy without pharisaism. This is Christianity, in which living prayer does not contradict the words of the Church—but breathes through them. The Bible is full of examples of people crying out to God with their own words—and being heard. Jesus Christ prayed with the words of the Psalms—and He prayed with His own words in Gethsemane. Humility is not a choice between form and heart. It is a union. Repentance, expressed both in ancient prayer and in your own groan, is equally precious before Him.