Thought Rhyming = Harmonious Listening Prayer

Do your prayers often consist of asking God for help or venting your needs and concerns?  The book Joyful Journey: Listening to Immanuel, by E. James Wilder et al, offers a way of harmonious LISTENING prayer rather than TALKING prayer.   

The book calls this process Thought Rhyming.  I had to look up rhyming to understand.  Rhyming means to harmonize, to be in accord.  It is both a noun, harmony, and a verb, harmonize.  Then grammar kicks in as the verb can be both transitive and intransitive.  

I needed more research. A transitive verb has a direct object.  It is relational, binding two people, thoughts or items together.  Intransitive does not have a direct object.  It is making or doing or being.  

OK.  Got it.  This is listening prayer that binds God and me together harmoniously so that we can simply “be” together without interference. 

The steps are simple: 

My prayer

1. Dear Lord
2. I’m grateful for…
3. I need….

God’s Response

1. I see you…. (physical presence right now)
2. I hear you… (saying or thinking)
3. I understand that you’re feeling….
4. I understand this is important for you because…
5. I am glad to be with you and I see your weakness…
6. I encourage and help you by….. (God’s answers align with scripture.)

Once I had all the information, verbiage and instructions sorted, I was ready to practice.  Hopefully, I’ve shortened your preparation time and you can now just jump in to LISTENING to God.  

PLEASE LET ME KNOW HOW THIS WORKS OUT FOR YOU!!

If you need more, here’s what it ended up looking like for me on one particular day. Any other day, it will be completely different.   This day, it came out more like poetry because my mind was still stuck on “rhyming means poetry”.  Yours might be something totally different, like a letter from God or a conversation.  

It needs to be noted that this particular example is the result of  practice during a Zoom prayer session, thus “the ladies on the screen” and the fact that my office window overlooks the Potomac River. It starts with God’s response.  

Thought Rhyming Nov 12, 2020

by Susan Sams Baggott

See me, I cry. 

I see you, says my Lord:

wandering, scattered, distracted

joyful, appreciative, comfortable.

And you see me too,

In the rain and the birds

In the river and the fog

The changing leaves

And the ladies on the screen.      

Hear me?  I ask. 

Always, says my Lord.

I hear you

asking for my Word

and to use my words. 

To be my pen, my tool. 

And if you but listen, 

you hear me too. 

In the birds and the rain

In my Word

And the words of others speaking to you.

Listen, and it will inspire and guide you. 

Do you Understand me? Because I don’t. 

Of course I understand you. 

I made you.

I know your heart.

I also know your weaknesses. 

Center on Me.  BE.  I AM. 

Then let us BE,

and no words are needed. 

Resting in you, 

I BECOME.