Every night here in Thailand, we have a worship service. We pray, we sing, we dance, we share testimonies, we teach, we play games. And—every night—it fills me with the same joy for this life the Father has given me.
My teammate Katie is a teacher back home in the states; God has given her an unrelenting passion for children. So, one of the items she made sure to include in her pack before she left America was The Jesus Storybook Bible.
Essentially, it is a book that takes all the major stories you learned in Sunday School as a kid and tells them in a way that connects them back to Jesus. It’s a brilliant idea; one that I wish had come about back when I was growing up.
Over the past two weeks, we’ve used it to tell the story of Jonah and the whale, the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, and the story of David and Goliath, just to name a few.
A few nights ago, it was my turn to teach the lesson during worship. I picked up the Jesus Storybook Bible and went to the table of contents. I wanted to see if the Spirit wanted me to teach one of the stories contained in it or if he was calling me into a different direction for the night’s lesson.
One of the main things that I’ve been focusing on throughout this month in Thailand is my prayer life. I’ve always been one who was quick to pick up the Bible or a theological book or listen to a sermon online; but, what I wasn’t very disciplined in was pressing into prayer.
So,coming into this third month of the World Race, I decided to make it a priority to really work on how seriously I take prayer.
As I moved through the table of contents in that storybook, I came across one that immediately caught my eye.
It’s title: How to Pray.
It was the story of Jesus teaching the disciples how they should pray. It began by going through his exhortation to the disciples to refrain from praying like the Pharisees: solely for the sake of being seen. It culminated with the Lord’s Prayer.
After I told the story, I had each of them take a crayon and a piece of paper: they were to write their own personal prayer to Jesus. A prayer thanking him for the cross. A prayer praising him for who he is. A prayer worshipping him for his unending grace and love that he pours out on this village.
I watched as they all grabbed different colors and wrote prayers to their Savior: some in Burmese, some in English. It was beautiful.
But then I noticed something that caught my eye.
One little Burmese girl—the one and only Julia Paul—wasn’t writing a prayer. Instead, she was drawing. I saw a couple of trees, maybe a boat or two. At first I just kind of laughed it off: I wouldn’t have expected anything less from her.
But—in that moment—God spoke.
“Why are you laughing? Look closely, my child, for this girl too is offering her prayer.”
Often, when God speaks to me it tends to be in ways that cause my vision of who he is to completely explode with new life. Revelations like this have spurred me to write blogs like I’m staying in India and Why do we fall?
This time, God decided that my view of what it means to pray was too narrow—so he expanded it.
As I followed his call to look more closely, he showed me right there—in that bamboo church—that the drawing of that tiny Burmese refugee was just as much of a prayer to him as all the words of the other kids there. Through that crayon picture, she was giving praise, thankfulness, and worship to the loving Father that had given her the ability to draw at all.
It made me wonder: what if the passions and hopes and dreams that God places on our hearts were returned to him as praise and adoration? What if when we do those things—those things he uniquely created us to do—we do them with our hearts bowed in reverence at the fact that he would even give us the ability to do those things in the first place?
The teacher standing before her class. The painter sitting before the canvas. The singer stepping up to the microphone. The technician working at his computer. The athlete lifting in the weight room. The surgeon looking over the operating table. The dancer taking the stage. The author writing in his notebook. The carpenter building that table.
What if each of these passions were done through the lens of a prayer to God? What if we allowed the skills and abilities that the Father has gifted to us to be used as a way of giving him thanksgiving and praise; as a way of offering up more worship to him.
Essentially, it begged the question of whether or not it would change the way we lived our lives if we treated our passions—our dreams—our goals—as if they were a conversation with the Creator of the universe.
Imagine that lecture, or painting, or song, or code, or workout, or surgery, or dance, or story, or project as a prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord for giving you this life; as a prayer of praise for how absolutely glorious he truly is; as a prayer of worship to him for his everlasting grace and mercy.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, for this is your spiritual worship.” —Romans 12:1
Now do not misunderstand me here—I am in no way saying that we don’t need to pray to God with words nor am I trying to take away the importance of praying to him verbally. I fully believe that the Father wants to hear us use the gift of language to speak to him and to share with him the pains and joys that are on our hearts.
After all, it was Jesus himself who modeled prayer to the Father in the form of words.
What I am suggesting, though, is that we open up our idea of what God might receive as prayer to him. I’m asking that we begin to view our passions and ambitions as ways of holding a conversation with God; as ways of talking to the Father who wants to be in constant communication with us.
Because our entire lives have the potential to be a prayer of thanksgiving, praise, and worship to our loving Creator if we would only redirect our hearts toward him moment after moment, day after day.
You see, I believe that God looked down on Julia’s drawing and smiled upon her for it. After all, she was simply being who he had created her to be. She was joyfully pursuing her passion; it was her thanksgiving, her praise, her worship.
And yet, she probably had no idea that she was changing the way I would see communication with the Father.
She probably had no idea that she was opening the door for Jesus to step in.
She probably had no idea that it was I who was truly about to learn how to pray.
“So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”—1 Corinthians 10:31
