There are no rules about prayer (if there was one, it would be to come to God honestly and vulnerably knowing that is how He calls us to approach Him).
During the next few weeks, our Adult Sunday School class will be talking about prayer. We started this week talking about the benefit of structure to our prayers. Structure to our prayers is not necessary, but often it can help. Eugene H. Peterson writes, "Prayer, which we often suppose is truest when most spontaneous -- the raw expression of our human condition without contrivance or artifice -- shows up in Jonah when he is in the rawest condition imaginable as learned . . . Honesty is essential in prayer, but we are after more. We are after as much of life as possible -- all of life if possible -- brought to expression in answering God. That means learning a form of prayer adequate to the complexity of lives."
That form Peterson refers to is the book of Psalms. N.T. Wright online states, "The use of the Psalms in worship as aids to prayer goes back to the early years of the Christian church."
In A Christianity Today article dated November 9, 2020, Tish Harrison Warren writes, "Reflecting on, memorizing and praying the Psalms also helps us find (ways) that direct our emotions away from self-worship or narcissism and toward God himself. The practice of praying the Psalms teaches us over time that, along with our minds and our wills, our emotions need to be disciplined."
Also, the emotions can also be discipled like our minds and wills can be.
Early Christians prayed aloud together by reading/reciting the Psalms together daily. One site said they went through the Psalms month after month, five a day. By engaging in this kind of prayer, our prayer language will grow deeper and we ourselves will grow deeper and closer to Christ Jesus.
If five Psalms a day is too much for you, just pray one Psalm a day. Any amount of time you spend in the Psalms will help develop your emotions in ways that will help you spiritually.
Back to the reference to Jonah, if you take his prayer which is found in Jonah 2 (click here if you want to read it) you will find many phrases and words that come directly out of the Psalms. Very likely Jonah had been through the Psalms hundreds of times which led to them being incorporated into his own prayer language.
What will you lose if you spend more time in prayer this year? Maybe the better question is: what will you possibly gain if you develop your prayer practice in 2023?