Many people, including myself, have look for guidance in prayer. One of the obvious answers that easily gets overlooked in the Psalms. They capture every emotion, thought, and circumstance. When we pray the Psalms (as has been universally done by the church through history), we join the Church in prayer to God with the words he gave us.
As Bonhoeffer, the martyred German pastor, wrote, "If we prayed out of the poverty of our heart, we might pray for only what we want to pray; but God wants our prayers to be much fuller, encompassing not only our needs but the life of the whole community of God's people...the book of Psalms is teaching about how we are to come before God in the proper way." (from "The Prayer Book on the Psalms" (1940))
