Conversational prayer

Years ago, my wife and I learned a technique called "conversational prayer" which radically changed the way we prayed together.

The ideas behind conversational prayer came from a book by Rosalind Rinker, then a staff person with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in the U.S.  These simple ideas were widely adopted in the church we attended at the time and we used them in our own prayer times as husband and wife.

In her book Prayer: Conversing with God, Rinker suggested that when people prayed in a group, they should allow the Holy Spirit to guide their prayers.

An easy way to do this is that when one person prays about a concern, he should pray briefly about one aspect of the problem and others should follow with their own brief prayers on other aspects of the same issue.  Only when that concern had been prayed about should members of the group move on in prayer to something else.

This is different than the traditional approach of one person praying at length about a whole list of things.  Often that method chokes group prayer.  Since one person has prayed about everything on a list, there is no incentive for anyone else to pray - other than going through the same list a second or third time.

My wife and I have found this a liberating way of praying together.  The Spirit brings something to our minds and we pray about it right away.  My wife may pray about one aspect and the Spirit prompts me to pray about another facet of the same prayer need.

We have participated in prayer meetings which have gone on for a long time with people praying in this way.  And at the end, we feel we have been with God - which, indeed, we have.

Now that I reflect on this, I would like to add another wrinkle - an important one.  What would our prayer meetings be like if we included moments of silence to allow God to speak to us?  That would be a true conversation.

After all, it is the way God spoke to Moses and how God had his great dialogue with Job at the end of the Book of Job.  I would like to try that.  I believe we would have an even greater sense of the presence of God.