I have no problems with using one prayer over and over. Jesus has the story of the woman who kept bugging a judge over and over again to give her what she wanted until the judge relented and gave it to her due to her persistence.
I feel that I have benefitted from learning Centering Prayer as taught by Thomas Keating, Basil Pennington, William Menninger and others. (There’s a very brief synopsis about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centering_prayer )Using a prayer “word” is not trying to beat other thoughts out of you, but signals our intention to return to the contemplation of God’s goodness, mercy, love. It allows us to kind of move out of the way while God does the needed work within us. A powerful prayer for me is, “Jesus, help me to love.” My prayer word is “Amen.” With that word, I am telling God that I want to accept all Truth, all love that he has for me and all those who seek him. Because I can tend to be a “negative” person in some ways, worrying about things a lot, my Amen is a positive thing; it is my “Yes” to God. It is my “Do unto me as you will, not as I will.” Other great prayer words can be “Abba” or “I Am” or others.
Centering Prayer is not the only way I pray, but it helps to “anchor” all other forms of prayer.
And I do find it inspiring that Jesus prayed so often and that he often would seek out solitude to do so.

Scot,
Thank you so much for this series. I have truly enjoyed and have been challenged by it. Just because we live in the 21st century does not mean that we have nothing to learn from the Church Fathers – in fact, I would argue that we have much to learn from them if we will listen.

I think part of gaining a healthier God image is to determine and deal with the wrong images we have but may or may not know we have. As we meditate on what we know of God and compare it to Scripture and watch what comes out of our heart in response to experience and the Scriptures, we can offer our wrong beliefs to God and ask that He show us who He is. C. S. Lewis did call him the Great Iconoclast who smashes our false images of Him, so why not enlist Him in the work?

Mostly I don’t pray because I figure God knows what I’m going to say before the words come out. My prayer might be “yeh, that.” And I’m irritated by the “God fix it all” prayers, I think they should be prayers for grace and strength to go through whatever this person has to go through. So I don’t pray those prayers. Lately it occured to me to write down all the prayers in the NT and read one daily. I think it might shape how I pray to be more godly. Perhaps my truest prayer right now is when I say “help.” Because I need help right now. Schaeffer used to say about God being Abba and how kids go to their parents and say “up daddy, up,” to be picked up and held. And that we go to God and say “up abba daddy, up.” That’s what I’m praying now, too.

Recited prayers can be a powerful aspect of our prayer lives. I recite several prayers on a daily basis — besides the Lord’s Prayer, I pray Psalm 23, 51, 63 and 86, among others. Repeating the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner,” is a more than thousand-year-old tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church and has lately become a part of my own prayer practice. I would also say Amen to Abba Isaac’s practice of fixed-hour prayer. These prayer practices are mostly absent from evangelical churches, unfortunately, but it seems a few of us are discovering the spiritual riches of our forefathers.