God is far too creative to insist that every person interacts with Him in exactly the same way. He designed each of us differently. There are prayer principles that apply to all of us, but God leads each of us as individuals. We are all at different places in our walk with Him, we are all at different levels of spiritual maturity, we all have different types of experiences in prayer. Yes, we need to learn the fundamentals of prayer. But then we need to move beyond intellectual knowledge about how to pray, and take those principles to the Lord and say: ‘Teach me to apply this to my life, in my situation, to my heart. Show me how this idea is supposed to work for me. God, I’m depending on You to teach me to pray, to make me effective in prayer, to make my relationship with You through prayer the richest, most rewarding aspect of my life.’ When you say, ‘Lord, teach me to pray,’ you’re asking Him to teach you to pray in a distinctly personal way, and to enable your prayers to be easy, natural expressions of who you are. You need to go before God just the way you are, and give Him the pleasure of enjoying the company of the ‘original’ that He made you to be. You need to approach Him with your own strengths, weaknesses, uniqueness and everything else that so wonderfully distinguishes you from everyone else. God enjoys meeting you where you are, developing a personal relationship with you, and helping you grow to become everything He wants you to be.