Writing Prayers & Writing Worship

Writing Prayer & Writing Worship

Jesse Tyler

Day 1 of 5: Introduction

God commands Their prophets to write:

“And the LORD answered me: ‘Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.’” -Habakkuk 2:2 (ESV)
“Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you.” -Jeremiah 30:2 (ESV)

And God speaks in the language of writing:

“Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.” -Proverbs 3: 3-4 (ESV)

The Bible is a collection of writings. The genres contained within bleed into one another: myth begets history, history begets poetry, and poetry shares its visions with testimony. It is a book much of the world respects and reveres. And it was written by humans.

Brown Wood Bed & Breakfast Inns Instagram Post (2).png

While it is not unusual to still hear that the scriptures are infallible (a wholly inerrant word of God), the fact remains that the texts were written by people in a specific context. Not the Word of God, but the words of God: a divinely-inspired text written by holy enough folks with sometimes fallible, and often errant, words of individuals seeking to capture their sliver of experience in a world that is simultaneously our own and also alien to us.

If these were writers and storytellers, then so are you.

Have you spent time writing your story? If you come from an evangelical background, you might be familiar with the “testimony.” Those testimonies were a very specific genre, too: an account of your sins in detail, the turn where you confessed them and asked Jesus into your heart, and your glorious life after that moment. (It’s a little hint of prosperity gospel before an altar call.)

As we begin thinking about prayer, let’s start with our own testimonies, where the only altar call here is your own.

For today, simply journal about your own messy, complicated relationship with the divine—whatever comes to mind. The story of God is your story, too. As we move forward and begin to think more about writing, consider the following thought from Ursula K. LeGuin:

”Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want, too. If we never find our experience described in poetry or stories, we assume that our experience is insignificant.” -Ursula K. LeGuin

Day 1 of 5: Introduction

Start reading this 5-day devotional in the app. Find it on the Featured shelf.