In Give Praise to God, Ligon Duncan quotes pastor/theologian Shedd: "Extemporaneous prayers, like extemporaneous preaching is too often the product of the single instant, instead of devout reflection and premeditation" (164)
Our generation seems to like prayers that are short and to the point. Prayers at mealtimes are often rushed, as if we can't wait to get to dessert, and this is also seen when we are asked to pray for events or to open up a class. It seems like in many of these situations we pray like this:
Dear God, thank you for letting us enjoy this time together. (opt. "in Jesus name") Amen.
I guess the question we should ask is do we ever not pray like this? Do we ever spend more then 10 minutes talking with our Father? Day of prayer is coming soon; it is structured as a bunch of short prayers with different themes, which is good, but would we even be able to actually spend a day (a whole day) in prayer? We definitely fall short of the week-long-prayer-fasts of the OT!
I don't think it's wrong to pray short prayers (I mean, Jesus said we should pray simply and not like the Pharisees) but I'm wondering: Can shortening our prayers this much actually take away from the weight of prayer or cause us to forget who we are talking with?
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