In my last post, I talked about remembering what has worked in the past for you as a devotional practice or payer time. Today I want to toss out the challenge to try something new in prayer/devos.
What prayer is and what prayer isn’t can be a topic of debate. That debate is a good place to start since it can limit our prayer expressions. If prayer is one posture with one set of words at one time of day then there’s no room for a new method until we break out of that.
I guess for me it comes down to the definition of prayer being,
prayer is a conversation with God
So, that leaves a lot of leeway. Largely because of who God is and how He is not limited as we are. I think there can be a lot of creative kinds of prayer we can try.
I think you can sing in prayer to God. Some would say but isn’t that worship? Singing is not praying to their thinking. I think that limits the conversation with God saying it can’t have music or a musical quality.
Most days (I never do any one kind of conversation with God every day, that’s why this blog is called wanderingprayer.com) I sing the chorus from Rich Mullins’ song STEP BY STEP (look it up, it’s a great song and makes a great prayer, copyright for Step By Step: 1991 – Kid Brothers of St. Frank Publishing ). I might sing it once or a few times. It is worship but it is also a prayer. I am praying the words, thoughts and heart that the chorus conveys to God.
I don’t think God draws a hard line between worship and prayer. I think He loves us and we can have our conversation with Him in a variety of ways.
Oh, which leads me to serving as a prayer. It is a physical way of praying or worshipping. I’ve done it in shovelling snow, picking garbage, changing diapers, listening to someone in need, serving food, cleaning and the list goes on and on.
There were celtic monks in centuries past who had a practice of serving as prayer. They would actually pray as they were doing it, for example, “I make his bed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.
What if we did our daily activities praying “I shovel this snow in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” or I serve this customer or I meet this client or I teach this class in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?
That could be so powerful!
And I believe that prayer can be done via art, dance, journalling, prose, poetry, silence, meditation, walking, graffiti, listening to people and in myriad other ways. In this blog in posts to come, we will explore those ways and discover new ones together.
One time this year our church community did a collage as a prayer activity. We asked, “who are we in Christ?” and our answers formed a large collage with drawings, pictures and words.
So why not try something new?
Sing your prayers in a worship song
Serve others praying as you go
Make a collage that speaks to God
Dance or write a poem or do some other artistic expression as a prayer ate
Journal your prayers
Take a prayer walk
Meditate in silence
Or try something else new!
And I’d love to hear how it goes.