Interactions with God #70

I had been teaching a teenage Sunday school class at the church for a while now. A woman and I were taking turns teaching one month on, one month off. During my month, like I did at the other church, I taught my own lessons. When this particular month started, I had in my heart to teach the teens about prayer. Each week we would focus on different area of prayer.

On the first week, God gave me a really crazy idea. To be honest, I was a wee bit unsure it would work. But, I did it anyway. I set one chair in the center of the room and all the others circled it. When the teens came in no one sat in the center chair. One girl said “Tell me that is your chair”. I told her no. I then told them that each of them would sit in that chair and pray to God while the rest of us would just watch and then critique them. Yes, that was what He wanted me to do! Nuts isn’t it!! I can’t tell you the awesomeness of the looks I got from them all.

After quite a bit of pressure, and absolutely no volunteers, the first student got in the center chair. They prayed a canned prayer. “God, please help me to be good. Please help me to do better in school…blah, blah, blah.” Yea, I am sorry, it was pathetic. I stopped the boy. Then I asked each of them to picture themselves as God and tell us what they thought of the prayer. “I didn’t like it.” “It was boring.” “I quit listening.” They were brutally honest…and correct in their assessment.

The poor boy quickly went back to the outer circle. With even more coaxing, another took his place. Their prayer was rather similar. The others reacted the same. Then the third, then the fourth…all the same boring, heartless prayer. Finally, the girl who asked about the seating arrangement sat in the center. She started to pray saying exactly the same things! I stopped her, now a little frustrated that they were not getting it. Out of nowhere I asked her, “Do you love Jesus?” She said, “Yes”. I said, “Then tell Him so.”

She bowed her head, obviously saying the prayer to herself and God. Almost immediately, she jumped up a wee bit freaked out and said “What was that?!” I responded, “He touched you, didn’t He!”

I didn’t have any trouble getting the others to take a turn in the chair.