So hold in mind Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom: “Prayer is not for the sake of something else. We pray in order to pray.” And Henri Nouwen’s: “The only way to pray is to pray.” You show up before God, and keep showing up. You block out time in a sheltered space, no matter how hard this may be to find. You make prayer your most inviolable commitment.

It’s a relationship, so whatever holds in your healthiest, richest relationships, holds with God. You spend time together, share what’s on your mind, gauge the other’s reaction, laugh, go places, buy gifts or swap stories.

Maybe like a child’s coloring, there’s no bad or wrong prayer. And yet, there are better, healthier prayers, more in sync with God – which is why we’re encouraged to pray “in Jesus’ name.” It’s not a magical formula to make your prayer work. We try to talk with God, to be with God, in the way Jesus was with God, and lived and spoke among us. People asked Jesus “Lord, teach us to pray.” They saw his intimacy with God, and his peaceful, courageous, compassionate life, and they wanted in on it.

So how do we grow in prayer? While God loves us if our prayer amounts to no more than pleading for help or for a sick friend or asking God for favors. But we’re missing out on a real relationship – which God wants more than we do.

What are the elements of a more well-rounded prayer? Anne Lamott’s bestseller’s title points us in the right direction: Help, Thanks, Wow. We ask for help, we express gratitude, and we invest some time just letting our jaws drop in awe. When I pray daily, or throughout the day, a little tickler in my head reminds me that I’m going to include all three – and I’d add two that Lamott might have skated past: Confession and Commitment. Jot them down. Put a sticky note where you pray. Get a tattoo… Decide that my goal will be that in every prayer, I touch on these 5 things: Help. Thanks. Wow. Confession. Commitment.

We’ll take this up in turn. Confession has fallen out of style, but it’s huge, and Commitment is the boldest of prayers. For now, back to Lamott’s Help, Thanks, Wow. Your habit might be you’ve done a lot of Help!, and a bit of Thanks! but not much Wow! Maybe reverse the order. Take some Wow! time, and then the Thanks! – and only then the pleas. Paul, fascinatingly to me, didn’t say “Ask God for help, and if you get it say Thanks,” but rather “With thanks let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6).

In our worship services, we begin with Wow! We praise, with a hymn – but you can do it with your eyes and ears. Notice. Be amazed. It’s okay if your mouth hangs open. Recently I read an amazing book that heightened my amazement with… everything: Awe, by Dacher Keltner. He’s not writing about faith. But I commend it to you if you want to grow in awe, in praise – which is delighting in who God is. God has strewn God’s marvels all around. Ours is to notice, and to be in awe, to be reverent.

Bible reading induces Wow! Just ponder Creation, or God’s deliverance of Israel, the courage of the prophets, the life and words of Jesus, the birth of the Church against seemingly insurmountable odds. God is great, God is good, let us praise him for.. just for who God is. That’s what anybody wants in a relationship: to be held in high esteem, liked for simply being, noticed for whatever beauty there is, not just what you’ve done for me lately.

Thanks? Not good manners, but far more. And you want to get past being thankful for the nice things you own or whatever “blessing” you have (health, family, job) that others don’t, so moving more deeply into gratitude for love, God’s mercy, life, the last breath you took, another day, chances to do good, even for what you don’t know just yet.

   {Bonus episode: watch/listen to my YouTube conversation on prayer with Dr. Dan Snyder, therapist, theologian, and author of Praying in the Dark. It’s superb.}