Prayer...A Lot Like Dancing

Lately, one of my favorite things has been whenever Sophia asks me to turn on Dij.  This means that she wants to me to play Captured by The Digital Age.  Once the song begins to play she says hand, hand, hand.  So I grab her hand and we begin to dance.  Right now that means a lot of bouncing up and down, throwing one leg up, standing on my feet, and me holding her while I dance with her in my arms.  I'm doing most of the work right now.  But slowly she will start to like other music to dance to and her skills will increase beyond recognition.  

Prayer is a lot like this.  Let me explain.  Replace Sophia with you and put God where I was.  When you are a child in your faith you are unencumbered by much of the formality that we sometimes attach to prayer.  We pastors teach different forms of prayer like ACTS, Lectio Divina, The Lord's Prayer, etc....  Now those are all helpful, but sometimes we sacrifice to much.  Instead, what we sometimes need to do is let our heavenly Father know the tune that we would like to dance with Him and let Him lead us.

What does he mean the tune?  Well think about it.  We often decide to listen to music that either matches the emotions that we are currently feeling or that we want to start feeling.  When I am worn out I'll play Worn by Tenth Avenue North.  When I'm angry I turn on Johnny Cash's song Mobil Bay.  Don't ask why it works for me, it just does.  Or I might put on Anger Management by Lecrae.   When I just wanna praise God I'll turn on I Saw The Light by Crowder.  That song makes me want to dance every single time!  

The point is that God let's me call the tune and the Holy Spirit leads me as I pray and try to sort through the emotions that I am dealing with.  It isn't always pretty.  Sometimes I stand on God's feet and let Him do all the dancing/talking while I just cling to Him like my precious Sophia.

As the years have passed I have learned more intricate dance moves.  One of which is Lectio Divina, which I will explain/demonstrate next time.  But just because someone else you know is a better skilled dancer doesn't mean that God doesn't enjoy dancing with you just as much.  I dare you to ask any father to answer the following question:  Which would you say you enjoyed more...Dancing with your daughter when she 2 or when she was 22 the night she got married?  I believe the answer to that would be something like this.

It's hard to compare.  I love her the same and our relationship has evolved over the years.  But no matter how old she is or how well she dances, I will always delight in dancing with my darling daughter.

So my hope and prayer is that if you have been avoiding God in prayer because you are afraid you will mess up, it will look/sound funny, be embarrassing, and/or step on God's toes...let me encourage you to stop fretting.  No one but your heavenly Father will see it when you mess up.  All He cares about is that you want to spend time with Him on the dance floor.

So pick a tune of joy/silliness, sorrow, contemplation, or a mix playlist and step out onto the dance floor of prayer with your heavenly Father.  You won't regret it.