Prayer is Poetry

     We have some genuine "prayer warriors," as they say, in our congregation. These individuals do not merely say, "I'll pray for you." These folks write down prayer requests as they receive them. They meet weekly to pray over a large list of prayer requests in our congregation and track how God is answering. And most importantly, they follow up with prayer requests. If you submit a prayer request, they will ask you a week or several weeks later, "So, how are things going?"
     They are a very encouraging group of people, and I am glad that they are in my corner!
     They are also fun to pray with. When I enter into a time of prayer with them, it is not perfunctory prayer. These folks allow the Spirit of God to inspire their words, and they speak the most beautiful and poetic words, drawing upon biblical imagery and the Spirit-infused imagination. They are dialed-in to the usual biblical language of spiritual warfare (phrases like, "arrows in the quiver," "armor of God," etc...). But they also carry prophetic words from God. They sense when God is leading us into a "season of renewal" and are able to name it in prayer, and they have spiritual discernment that pierces through the generalities of life.
     Prayer is not about the abundance of words or flowery language. God hears the simplest of our cries from the heart, and He is not impressed by our experience or maturity in prayer (or disappointed by our lack thereof). On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with allowing our prayer to be poetic and allow ourselves, like the psalmists, to glorify God in our language (both spoken and written). There is something very edifying about practicing prayer as poetry.
     So long as we do not engage in prayer that seeks to impress other, prayer-as-poetry is an effective tool that aids our understanding of prayer (and God's will for our lives and situations) and our level of faith and trust.