Do you feel like a prayer expert? I don't, either. Luckily, God doesn’t call us to be prayer experts; ‘just practising’ is good enough.
It has always seemed to me that the way to encounter God and find out about prayer is to try it: “Taste and see that the Lord is good”, as the Bible puts it (Psalm 34:8).
With that in mind, here are three ideas you can “taste and see” and experiment with different ways to pray. These might just “shake up” your prayer pattern and help you freshen things up in your relationship with God.
The word ‘experiment’ is important. These are not ideas telling you how to pray “properly.” Think of them, perhaps, in a similar way to a recipe book: full of ideas to try, to put your own spin on, to taste and decide that you would prefer to tweak it a little.
But don’t just read these ideas; there’s nothing to be gained by that. You’ve got to try them out!
Colouring the Bible
One of the oldest forms of Christian prayer is reading the Bible. That might not sound much like prayer if you’re more used to thinking of the Bible as something you read for information or instruction. But reading the Bible prayerfully is a very important strand of the Christian spiritual tradition.
Mindfulness colouring books have become a publishing phenomenon in recent years. Millions of people have found that spending a long period of time concentrating on something beautiful is relaxing, calming, and meditative. There is an increasing choice of Bible colouring books, but why not try making your own?
Choose a short passage from the Bible. Take a sheet of paper (A4 is fine, A3 is even better) and fill it with the words. Try to think not so much about writing it out but of drawing each letter or word.
Enjoy exploring the best way to lay the words out on the page and what style of writing best suits them. If you want to, illustrate them with doodles. Make the writing hollow (like bubble writing) so that you can first draw the outlines of the words and then colour them in.
Use the whole page and decorate every centimetre. Make the words the stars of the show. Alternatively, you could combine the process of writing out the Bible passage with the design from a mindfulness colouring book by adding the passage's words to the design.
Approach this activity deliberately as a prayer, not just as a decorative activity. Expect the words to become part of you and speak to you.
Prayer walking
Prayer walking is a great way to pray for a particular area when you don’t know exactly what the people there need or who they are. It combines two ancient traditions of prayer: intercession and pilgrimage.
When we pray while walking, we aren’t just saying prayers; we are physically expressing our care for the place we are praying for. We are putting in some effort, not just sitting comfortably at home. The action of walking occupies part of our conscious mind so that prayer can flow more freely without us worrying too much about the exact words we use.
So, go for a walk!
As you walk, pray – not out loud, just in your head – for the places you pass. You might ask God to bless the people who live in the houses you walk past.
If you pass a school or offices, you could pray for the people who work or study there. A particular business might inspire specific things to pray for. For example, passing a supermarket might spark a thought about fair trade, struggling farmers, or those who can’t afford food. A newsagent might make you think about people in the news. A florist might remind you to pray for people buying flowers that week to celebrate or mourn.
Just let thoughts arise in your mind, and when you notice that you’re thinking about something, turn that thought into a prayer.
As you return home, ask God to bless the whole area and to show you how you can be a blessing to it. You might like to end by praying for your own home as you enter it.
Jar of thanksgiving
Strangely enough, learning to be polite can be a problem when it comes to prayers of thankfulness. We don’t thank God for quite the same reasons we thank other people. We don’t say it just to be polite or to make God feel better. We say thank you to God mainly because of what it does to us.
Saying thank you means we are doing two important things: looking at the good things in our lives with gratitude rather than only focusing on the things that aren’t right and acknowledging that everything we have comes from God.
But our prayers of thanks can become quite repetitive and boring. People often find that when it comes to saying thank you, their minds go blank. Or we repeat ourselves, thanking God for the same obvious things every time we pray.
Try making a ‘Jar of Thankfulness’. First, get a clean, empty jar (a jam jar with the label removed would work well). Then, cut some paper into strips. If you’re using a glass jar, coloured paper is good.
Write one thing you are thankful for on each piece of paper and add it to the jar. Keep a spare supply of paper strips next to the jar, and whenever you think of something new to say thanks for, add it.
Keep your jar somewhere you will see it regularly: perhaps on your windowsill, bedside table, or prayer corner. When you sit down to pray, take out a handful of the contents at random and say thank you for those, adding to the jar any new ones you have thought of that day. Doing this will mean you keep some variety in your prayers while slowly building up a collection of more and more things for which you can be thankful
None of these ideas are new —they’ve all been around for ages. But it’s surprising how many people are coming to creative prayer for the first time.
Try out these ideas and see where it takes you with Jesus!
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