Monday, May 10, 2021

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Katie Snipes Lancaster

Scripture: 1 John 5:14
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to God’s will, God hears us.

Spiritual Practice: Conversational Prayer
Sometimes, intercessory prayer and conversational prayer meet. As we gather to pray and ask one another who and what our prayers should concern, we are both seeking intercessory prayer (to intercede for one another in prayer) and using conversation as a way toward prayerfulness. Our conversation about prayer, itself, becomes a prayer, for how can we distinguish our “pre-prayer” activities from our “prayer” activities, knowing that God is in all and with us always? God hears our prayer, even the prayer that is conversational, less formal, more collaborative, and less directed.

Conversational prayer can also refer to an attitude toward prayer, where your whole day unfolds as if in conversation with God. When we worked at an HIV/AIDS camp in Nassau, Bahamas in 2014, we met a woman who spoke as if in constant conversation with God. She would say, “We are trying to build a hurricane shelter, since the local emergency agencies are afraid of our HIV patients and refuse to send help: God help us build this hurricane shelter.” She couldn’t speak to us without also simultaneously speaking to God. Conversational prayer is an orientation toward the presence of God that helps you stay in tune with God throughout your day by being in conversation with God. For some, maybe it is less of a public conversation, more of a conversation going on at a more internal level, but conversational prayer can deepen and connect you to God throughout all that is ordinary within your day.

Daily Prayer
God of this moment and the next,
Help me to talk with you,
As if you are a friend,
A close confidant,
A companion on this life’s journey.
Be with me and hear me.
Amen.