Thinking-writing is a technique that I have come across since starting college. My Living for God post actually began life as a thinking-writing exercise, and you can use them for almost anything. But a thought occurred to me the other week: you can also use it for prayer.
Thinking-writing is an exercise that requires only two things: a pen (or pencil, whichever you prefer) and a piece of paper. You could also word process it, I suppose, but personally I prefer to write it out. The basis of the exercise is to time yourself (five or ten minutes is a good time limit) and just write. Without stopping. Without thinking. There are only two rules: you can't go on beyond your time (even if that means stopping in the middle of a word), and you can't stop. If you stop, you find yourself thinking, and that kind of defeats the point of the exercise.
This would be a great way to pray, and would really help with opening up to God and being honest with Him as I've been talking about in my last post. Just begin with however you begin a prayer ("Dear God", "Heavenly Father", etc.) and then set the timer. Then write. Write about anything. Write about the advert that annoys you on the television so much. Write about the fact that your shoelaces are different colours today, or that you really want a bacon sandwich for lunch. The more you open up to God, the closer you become to God, and this seems a really cool and fun way to do just that.
Tweet this challenge using #thinkingwritingprayer
That's sounds like an intresting challenge, I know that if I was to time myself writing I would start panicking and end up writing absolute nonsense! I guess it would be good for situations when you want to try and write down a shopping list or any sort of written competition really. But writing for the purpose of communicating with God would be great. However I'm not really familiar with all the Christain ways you can pray to God, you'll have to excuse me if that makes me sound completely stupid. I really hope hashtag trends, as it would help many people.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't make you sound completely stupid - you're not a Christian, why should you know? But basically, we believe that in the Old Testament God told Solomon to build the Temple so that God's Presence would dwell there, and people could pray to Him in the Temple. When Jesus came, He told those in the Temple that He could "tear down the Temple and rebuild it in three days". However, He was not talking about the physical Temple; He was talking about Himself. When Jesus was crucified, we died with Him and were raised with Him three days later, so now He is - in effect - the Temple, and therefore we are always in a place where we can pray. So it doesn't really matter how or where we pray, because we are always in the Temple if we are in Christ Jesus.
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