Blog: Prayer with Words
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Dan HintzRelated Content
Prayer with Words
The last two weeks I have written about approaching prayer with “emotional honesty,” and how to pray to the God who is seated in our own hearts. It is good to pray with such things in mind. But what about words? Doesn’t prayer involve talking to God?
The story of prayer in the Psalms is one with words – lots of words. So, what types of words are we supposed to use when we pray? The more I hear myself pray the more I am convinced that it is hard to pray “new” words to God. I often find “spontaneous prayer” to be one of the most scripted styles of prayer. Why does impromptu prayer nearly always include the words, “Lord, I just ask…”? If prayer is supposed to be the cry of our soul, then why do we keep on using the same hackneyed words when we talk to God? How do we begin the creative process of prayer?
In my own prayer-life, one of my greatest illusions is thinking that I know what I mean before I pray words. Often times, I have to say a word before I know if I mean it. Lately, I fancy simply reading a psalm out loud, without attempting to understand the words I’m saying – a curious thing often happens. I find that I mean the words I say after I say them! It’s as if it comes as a surprise to me that I mean them. In this process the psalmist’s words becomes my own words, but I needed the psalmist to pray it first.
Perhaps prayer is the slow digging, the mining of our hearts for the word we really mean. But, we need an old (praying) prospector to find that golden word. We need someone who knows the land, and can confidently exclaim, “der’s gold in dem dar hills!” We need someone to say the words for us before we can say them, and mean them, ourselves.
The Lord has gifted certain individuals in his church to play this part – people who speak words that the church can say, “Amen” to. People who speak the language of prayer naturally, and help us express to God a word hidden in us, a word we need to say to God but can’t until some poet says it for us. This outflow is the beauty of prayer in community.
This week we are going to explore spoken word poetry and how it can enliven prayer. There will be a guest poet to help us along the way, to find the transept between prayer and poetry – the place where the words of the poet become our prayer to God.
I wonder what word you will discover.
Amen,
D.L.H
The poet leading us this week is a friend of mine named Curtis Tyrone Jones. He is a student at Fuller Theological Seminary. If you would like to learn more about him, you can find his poetry on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#!/loveflowz