I have a confession to make. For most of my life, I have hated praying. I have always known it was important and, theoretically, one of the most powerful tools made available to followers of Jesus. But I rarely experienced that power in all the years I spent growing up in church, or as a volunteer and professional leader in various ministries. Prayer was my place of shame, and I struggled with the guilt of hating prayer and not doing it well, or sometimes, even at all.

For an extrovert addicted to people, prayer seemed like the worst kind of torture...