Say it!

It's often said that prayer can be silent. Some people like to focus on an icon and meditate.
But in the Bible prayer means speaking to God.
So, for example, in Hosea 14:1-3, God calls Israel back from her sin which has caused her downfall, and he says, 'Return to the LORD your God... take words with you and return to the LORD. Say to him, 'Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously.' (And remember that when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray he said, 'When you pray, say...' (Luke 11:2)).
But why do we need to vocalise our prayers?
Words are the basis of relationships, not least our relationship with God. Of course it's common (and popular) to try to bypass God's word and claim that we can know God without that objective revelation from him. But that's one of the great lies of mystic or aesthetic religion. One of the main threads running through the whole of Scripture is that to know God we have to listen to God's word written, and then we respond to that word, not in silence, but in speech - we talk to God in response to what he says to us - again, that's a main thread of the whole of the Bible.
When we read God's word and are convicted of our sin, then we return to God and 'take words with us' - we vocalise our sin to God and we voice our sorrow and regret. Every parent and teacher knows the importance of this for we've all told our children to 'say sorry'. We don't ask the child to be silent in front of the one they've wronged, we tell them to say sorry. The vocalisation of our sin and sorrow to the one wronged is a vital part of repentance and reconciliation.
But then God says that, having been reconciled, there's another act of speech that we need to undertake. The LORD calls on us to 'offer the fruit of our lips'. If repentance is to be vocalised, so is praise.

I'm not a fan of highly liturgical services, but there is surely something very biblical about ensuring that our meetings contain vocalised confession as well as praise and prayers of request.
But what of our personal prayer lives? I have a sneaking suspicion that many people are quick to ask but slow to name their sins to God in repentance and sorrow. And I suspect that praise doesn't feature greatly either.  So let's put this right and 'take words with us' as we repent, and offer God the 'fruit of our lips' in praise.