Almost every culture has a genie-in-the-bottle-type story in which someone frees a being from captivity and is granted three wishes. Often the wishes go wrong. For example, the man who asks for a pile of money finds it difficult to know his real friends because everyone wants something from him. The woman who asks for a life of leisure finds that a life without stress is boring. The moral is that we do not know what to ask for and that what we think we need may harm us. I bring this up because our prayers often sound like our three wishes list. We ask for what we think we need and overlook what would be most beneficial. On top of that, our prayers can become so repetitive that we just give up. Fortunately, scripture shows us something better. As Paul starts his letter to the Ephesian church,