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Creative Prayer: Speaking the Language of God's Heart
by Chris Tiegreen
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Multnomah Books (2007-06-19)
ISBN: 1590529316
EAN: 9781590529317
Dewy Decimal #: 248.32
Paperback: 192 pages
Release Date: 2007-06-19
SKU: 00-S4X9-0FHA
Condition: As New
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
A young man is deeply in love with a young woman. He pours out his heart, singing to her, writing poems for her, giving her beautiful flowers. And how does she express her love back to him? She talks, usually briefly. And that’s all.
That’s an imbalanced relationship,but it’s an accurate picture of our communication with God. God speaks with pictures, symbols, music, tastes, smells, and all the rich diversity of creation. So why do we express ourselves to Him with nothing more than words?
Connect with Our Creative God
In Creative Prayer, Chris Tiegreen encourages us to communicate more intimately with God by speaking the language of His heart. Drawing on Bible stories, psalms, and historical examples, Tiegreen reminds us that our praises and petitions can reflect the unique gifts God has given us.
Singing. Painting. Cymbals. Dancing. God has always encouraged his people to respond to him in bold, visual, active, and energetic ways. As God shows us every day in a thousand ways, real love cannot be contained.
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Customer Reviews
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A great book to jumpstart your prayer life
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-07-15
Chris Tiegreen, a former pastor and missionary, invites you to deepen your prayer life in CREATIVE PRAYER: Speaking the Language of God's Heart. The author of violent prayer and THE ONE YEAR AT HIS FEET DEVOTIONAL, he provides a fresh take on prayer that invites readers to experience the fullness of God in communication with Him.
Tiegreen begins by comparing our conversations with God to a young couple. The man communicated his love in countless ways. He gave her gifts, sang songs, painted pictures and displayed his love in the most beautiful words. He could not hold back. The young woman was in love, too, but she only expressed herself verbally. Though she received all of the young man's acts and gifts of love, she wasn't quite sure what to do, so she just kept on talking.
The author writes, "That's an unbalanced relationship, but it's an accurate picture of the way many of us communicate with God. He speaks to us from the love of his heart with pictures, symbols, music, scenery, tastes, sounds of nature, smells of plants and incense of rain, and the soft gentle caresses of the wind, of the waves and of other human beings. And how do we express ourselves to him? For most of us, during a disciplined time each morning or evening. And it's usually nothing more than words."
While words can be heartfelt, Tiegreen asks us to consider a multi-dimensional God and step outside of our one-dimensional approach to Him. He points to examples throughout the Bible of dreams, visions and experiential lessons, and reminds us of Jacob and a ladder, Moses and a burning bush, David and a physical giant, Ezekiel and dry bones, and Jeremiah and figs. He challenges us to recognize a God who expresses himself in terms of "fragrance, sound, touch, taste, and anything else our senses can take in."
A two-way conversation with God takes place in countless ways, and most of them fit under the umbrella of the word "prayer." The term "creative prayer" just expresses this truth that we are designed to respond to God with the fullness of who we are and how we're created to be.
Along the way, Tiegreen shares stories from his own life and spiritual journey --- expressing some of the strengths and struggles of learning to commune with God. He believes that until you feel free to be yourself in your relationship with God, you don't have a real relationship. He argues that that's true in any relationship --- but particularly so with the One who created us.
Creative prayer invites us to be wise with words and recognize that prayer is holistic. We're invited to give God not just our words but the picture on our hearts. And we're invited to express our emotions, like the Psalms, as part of our prayers.
The book ends with a wonderful section called "Practically Creative," which suggests how to make your relationship with God a richer, fuller experience. Ideas include praying as you read the newspaper, prayer walking and using your artistic gifts to express what's on your heart to God.
Overall, creative prayer is a great book for jumpstarting your prayer life and adding dimension and depth to your relationship with God.
--- Reviewed by Margaret Oines
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Creative prayer for the uncreative
Rating  (4)
Date: 2007-07-19
10 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
"A young man is in love with a young woman. He sings to her, dances for her, writes poems for her, picks flowers for her. How does she express her love back to him? She talks to him, usually briefly, and that is all."
Chris Tiegreen starts his book on creative prayer with this very descriptive, visual example of how God usually interacts with His people, and how we interact with Him. Praying through words has become traditional and the norm, so usually words are all we associate with praying. But it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, we're greatly restricting ourselves, if we don't believe that God can answer a drawn or danced prayer just as easily as a spoken one.
In his first chapter, Chris reminds us that God is not a formula, nor does He always respond to one. If one means of prayer has given results at one point in our lives, we tend to stick to that same formula over and over again. God doesn't work that way. He likes to keep us guessing, because that is how we keep being in a personal relationship with Him. Prayer is not about asking for what's logically the best for us. Prayer is about emotions, it's about getting creative, it's about passion, and it's about being personal.
At first Chris speaks very theoretically about creative prayer, leaving uncreative people like me a bit in the lurch, thinking "Yes, I want to pray creatively, but how?" Fortunately, he takes pity on me, and in the last chapters he offers a list of suggestions of how I may practically implement creative prayer in my life.
Creative Prayer came at a perfect time for me. My personal prayer life had been caught in a rut lately, with me feeling that there must be more to prayer than just what I was used to. This book helped me remember that I was limiting myself by relying solely on words, and that there's nothing unbiblical about praying using more than words--or sometimes not even using words at all.
Armchair Interviews says: This might be the right book for you to look at prayer differently.
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