A New Way To Pray

I'm reading Celebration of Discipline again. I've been chewing on the first chapter, oh, for a few months now.**

First, I read about meditation and now I'm digging into prayer. Something of which I've been doing A LOT lately. It's also been on my heart to teach my children to pray. Not that their prayers need improvement necessarily (I am not the prayer police) but I want to give them a tool box filled with skills. Also, I've noticed they tend to pray the same things over and over again. I wanted to help them think outside their "box", so to speak.

So Dustin and I tried something with them. On pgs. 30 &31 of Celebration the author shares an exercise called "palms up, palms down." Basically it's an exercise of turning over those things which may be agitating or distracting you in order to better receive the things of God in preparation for meditation of scriptures, or in our case prayer.

For our version we sat in a circle with eyes closed, palms down and went clockwise letting go of our burdens and distractions. When one person was finished they would tap the person on the right (I can't believe we've never used the "circle tap" method for all our kids. Every nights it's a "can I go next?" fest. This cures that!). Next we flipped our palms up and took turns again receiving help from Jesus. Then we folded hands and entered into prayer. I could not believe how enthusiastic the girls were about this. It really brought up some surprising "throw aways" as they came to call it. They opened their hearts before the Lord and in our hearing "threw things away" we didn't know they were feeling. Things like their burdens over their disobedience, their sickness, their fears. It was amazing! They truly enjoyed throwing them away and then, in turn, "filling up their empty places with Jesus." Their smiles beamed (with eyes closed) while they raked in peace and forgiveness from the Lord for the palms up portion. Then, most rewarding of all, I noticed their prayers were turned to others. Their focus was able to extend beyond themselves and toward others with their burdens lifted having received the gifts Christ offered them.

They woke up requesting to do it again. So we did. I think they plan to make it a daily practice.

** I actually went back to a post where I was last reading the book and I realize it's been a WHOLE YEAR since I've picked up the book. WOW! That shocks me. Can time really be moving that fast? **