#Praytogether – Creative Prayer Coach

“I’m sorry that I’m crying.”

As a prayer coach, that phrase makes my hackles go up. After years of working with people and helping them embrace their communication with God, I know that tears are a vital method of expression. I’ve seen tears be the key that unlocks forgiveness, releasing a person into a new level of freedom. They’ve been an indicator that we’ve walked into a sacred space, where God is so present that nothing but tears expresses the fullness of the experience. Tears have been a warning that we’ve stepped into something that needs a deeper inspection before the Lord. When I’ve prayed with someone, and a new future opens for them, tears of joy often flow. I love it when someone gets a download from God that’s punctuated with tears, because that’s when they’ve entered a oneness with God that’s indescribable. I love people who can and do cry, because I know God is with them.

When I see tears flowing, I think of Psalm 56:8 in The Passion Translation:

You’ve kept track of all my wandering and my weeping.
You’ve stored my many tears in your bottle—not one will be lost.
For they are all recorded in your book of remembrance.

God loves our tears so much that He stores them, so they aren’t lost. Or how about the woman, a sinner, in Luke 7:38 who comes to Jesus:

Broken and weeping, she covered his feet with the tears that fell from her face. She kept crying and drying his feet with her long hair. Over and over, she kissed Jesus’ feet. Then, as an act of worship, she opened her flask and anointed his feet with her costly perfume.

Even though the people in the room tried to stop her, Jesus made sure that her tears are remembered.

Even the other day, as I was crying out of frustration and anger, God was there. How do I know? Later, as my husband read our nightly devotion, God addressed those tears directly through the lesson. He knew about them long before they even happened.

So, please, don’t tell anyone that they shouldn’t cry, or make them feel embarrassed. Instead, embrace the moment as if you can see God’s tear collection bottle. Also, don’t hand someone a tissue before they ask. A tissue offered prematurely is a non-verbal signal that you are uncomfortable with the messiness and want them to stop. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen the movement of God dry up because of the dreaded tissue. It often started a litany of apologies that made me want to cry for them.

So, cry, baby cry, let waterworks flow. Think of tears as a fuel that moves heaven. Either get on board with what God is doing or get out of the way while He works. I’m praying that each of us stands firm in our God-given gift of crying, guarding that treasure as if it’s the rarest of gems.

Andrea Sanger
Creative Prayer Coach

Reminder that in prayer there can be unit in diversity.

I didn’t always love praying. In fact, to make the rote prayers more interesting, my sister and I competed to see who could say them the fastest without skipping words. However, I realized praying must be important since it was sprinkled throughout my day, at home, school, and church, with different prayers for different situations.

It wasn’t until I was in my teens that prayer began to change. In Youth Group my mom, the volunteer leader, started asking us to go off script and adlib “heartfelt” prayers. I went from being bored with prayer to being terrorized by it. Now, I had to dream up something to say that wouldn’t sound stupid in front of my peers. After a few weeks of the teens fumbling over words and passing the verbal ball to the next person in the circle, she switched to “God thank you for…” We each had to fill in the blank with at least one word.

After getting over the initial angst, the simple thank you prayers propelled me into a journey of hunting for things that God was doing. I never wanted to be caught without something to fill in the blank. The hunts for God eventually turned into longer conversations with Him as I moved through my day.

By the time I became a Director of Prayer Ministry at my church. I had developed a quiet communication with God that went far beyond the simple rote prayers of my youth. However, I was now the leader tasked with helping others move beyond the boredom and terror of praying.

I was confronted with various excuses:

I don’t know how to pray or what to say (fear)
God listens to that person more than me (comparison and abdication)
He doesn’t listen anyway (lack of faith)
I don’t have time for it (idolatry – putting something before God)
We should be doing not sitting around praying (lacking the understanding of the power of prayer)
Praying in groups is wrong – we should only pray when we are alone (using only a piece of scripture to justify a position)

As a result of the various reasons people gave me to keep from accomplishing my job, God started giving me creative prayer ideas and a greater understanding that engagement comes in various forms. In prayer, one-size does not fit all. Each of us is wired differently causing us to interact with God uniquely.

For the past twenty years, I’ve been on a quest to make prayer accessible and easy for everyone. I’ve gone to conferences, become a certified Spiritual Formation Coach, and got both a Masters and Doctoral degree in Practical Ministry. I’ve done 1-1 training, taught classes, spoken at conferences, and written articles, all with the underlying philosophy that God wants to spend time with each person growing relationship through communication.

There are four things that drive me:

We are asked to pray without ceasing in the Bible, which includes praying alone and in groups. Jesus didn’t teach His disciples to pray: My Father who is in heaven, but Our Father…
I believe that there can be unity in our diversity in prayer. My sampler quilt is my inspiration – every square is different but together they make something beautiful.)
That God wants every street, every home, and every business prayed for. Though these are all land designations – they encompass people’s lives)
I can’t accomplish the first three without a lot of people participating

Praying that God will give you boldness and increase your desire to communicate with Him.

Andrea Sanger
Creative Prayer Coach