What’s your script?

How often do you tell God the things you really need to?
Something like this…
“My soul is weary, Lord.”
“You have crushed me, Lord.”
“I am troubled and need you, Lord.”
“My heart is a little bruised right now.”
“I need you to walk with me slowly.”
“Could you wait a while with me?”
“Don’t leave me while I’m waiting.”
“I’m telling you again that I’m still distressed.”
“Help me to know that you are here.”
In psychology there is a term “Schema” that refers to a subconscious script we have learned to apply in different situations.

Somewhere along the line we have developed a schema for how we talk with God. It says a lot about how we relate to Him. We repeat it so mechanically that we stop short of telling Him what we really think or feel. This mantra stops us from telling Him the last five percent where we’ve stuffed everything that really matters – everything we’re holding back. In our minds, to go there would be to break out of the Christian script that we’ve always repeated. It would be torn up, and we wouldn’t know where to start again. Or would we?

As a pattern of prayer, the Psalms invite imitation. “They offer in their text responses appropriate to God, even righteous for readers who find themselves in similar situations.” They excel at modelling how the knowledge of ourselves and the knowledge of God should and can meet in all circumstances.

Pick a psalm and it won’t take long to see the author operating in first person language. “My heart is, my soul longs, I am, I say, rescue me…” the list goes on in every dimension. It’s clear the writer understands their situation and is not pulling back from telling God about it.
Remarkably, these prayers are rarely without a statement regarding their recipient, Yahweh. They’re nearly always paired with a truth about God such as “according to your faithfulness” or “your steadfast love”.  We see in the Psalms what it means to meet with God in honest conversation. This was not a foreign concept to Calvin who concluded that the knowledge of ourselves informs our utter dependence on God. 2

The Psalms show us all the human emotions, and make sure we have a model by which we can express them to God. In the Psalms,  “there is not an emotion in the realm of human experience not represented as in a mirror”. 3

Try it: Choose a psalm and pray through it once a day for a week. By following them closely we learn to pray freely. Without that old habitual script, there will be so much to share and far, far more to receive.
1 Harper, et al., Finding Lost Words: The Church's Right to Lament. Perlego edition, Ch.4, “Lament as Divine Discourse”.  Gospel context must not be forgotten however, Tim Keller explains this excellently in the following message https://gospelinlife.com/sermon/praying-our-anger/
 2 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. 2.1.1
3 Calvin, Commentary on the book of psalms xxxvii.