29: The Word Picture Approach to Prayer (Jumpstart Your Prayer Life, Part 6) | S4E29

(00:00) Stephanie Warner: Hello, On the Trail listeners! Welcome to Season 4, episode 29. Hello, Father.

(00:07) Marcus Warner: Hello, Daughter. Here we are – Episode 29.

(00:11) Stephanie Warner: We are. And it’s also Happy Holy Week. We are entering into our Easter week here. I’m very excited for all of our Easter celebrations, personally to reflect on the season and be with each other. I’m excited for some devotional content that you are writing that is going to be coming out. This is all very good. We’ll actually be dwelling on some more Easter things next week. But this week we are going to be wrapping up our Jump Start Your Prayer Life series. I’m very excited about that as well.

So the goal of this series is to help you go on a deeper walk with God, specifically, in your prayer life. And to help you with this we also have a Listening Prayer starter kit that you can download for free in the links. It walks you through three different approaches to prayer that we have also been walking through on the series. And so today we are walking through the Word Picture approach. And this is a really, really useful one on multiple levels. So, Father, the Word Picture approach, where did this come from?

(01:33) Marcus Warner: I had a friend named Darrell Anderson. He was actually one of the founding board members of our organization back in the 80s. Darrell’s one of these guys who was a lifelong accountant, retired, and then became a biblical counselor in his retirement, a pastoral counselor, I guess. He wrote a little handy booklet for married couples called Heart to Heart Connections.

Because he was giving assignments to these married couples to have conversations together, and they were like, we don’t know how to do that.  And so he was giving them prompts on how to start. What he chose to use was examples of images and word pictures that God had given him in prayer. And so while it’s helpful from a marriage perspective, it was also the first time I had ever heard of anybody being so focused on this idea that God often speaks to us in pictures. And if we will pay attention, sometimes the pictures that come into our minds are just as informative to us as the words.

(02:49) Stephanie Warner:  Could you maybe give an example… We can dig into deeper examples, but could you give a brief example of what praying for a word or a picture looks like? What does that mean?

(03:03) Marcus Warner: The story of his that jumped out at me was that his wife went through this really difficult season of chemotherapy, and all kinds of things that she was going through. He was just like, God help me to understand. What perspective do you want me to have on this? Can you give me a word picture? And He said when he closed his eyes, what came to mind was a pen of sheep. And the shepherd came walking over and whistled for two of them. And he knew instinctively that it was him and his wife. And he noticed a couple of things right away. One, the shepherd wanted them to go on a journey, and two, he kept a pretty brisk pace. It wasn’t easy to keep up with them.

And they headed out on this journey. At first it was just level but then it started going gradually uphill and then it was clearly going up into the mountains and things would change. It got to a point where they were in the mountains and clouds moved in and he couldn’t see the shepherd anymore, but he realized he could hear the slap of the sandals and the click of the shepherd staff. At one point he got scared as he looked down as the clouds broke and he saw how high up they were.

He’s like, God, are we in the valley of the shadow of death? And the Lord showed him  in the picture, it’s like he saw something very encouraging up there. I can’t remember what it was. But it was like God’s way of telling him, I got you. I’ve got you on this journey. I have prepared for this journey, I’m with you on this journey, and we’re heading to a destination that is going to be good, it’s going to be okay. And so that was a very extensive word picture. I’d never heard of one quite that long.

(05:01) Stephanie Warner: I was about to say, I asked for a brief word picture. And you were like, let me tell you about this time that God  gave him a mini series.

(05:10) Marcus Warner: No, that’s not a brief word picture, that was episode one. I couldn’t wait for the second episode to come out. So that is not a simple word picture. Let me try to find you a simple word picture. Like, just today I was praying about the word picture thing. I don’t know how this will come across…I was feeling anxious about some things and I’m like, God, do you have a picture for me? The first thing that popped into my head was those old Western saloons with the swinging doors. It was like a cowboy walked in and swung the doors open and it was kind of like Jesus.

Immediately it just sort of made me happy. And like, hey, it’s an adventure, come with me. We’re going to go on an adventure. It changed the whole thing from anxious to, no, I’m taking you somewhere, come with me, and you don’t have to be anxious about this. Let’s go on an adventure together. So that’s one little snapshot.  I didn’t see him clearly, it’s not like I saw Jesus’s face or anything. I just could kind of tell it was Jesus. That would be a simple word picture. It’s like all of a sudden it changed my attitude toward what was going on.

(06:28) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Let’s break this down more. So what we’ve described so far have been honestly, like moving scenes. We say words or pictures or sometimes both. Can you break down even just like the word- word picture?

(06:44) Marcus Warner: Yeah, three act dramas. We could ask for that, I suppose.

(6:47)  Stephanie Warner: God, please send me an opera.

(6:50) Marcus Warner: The simplest word picture things. The very first one I was cognizant of… The first one I realized that God is giving me a word picture, but it wasn’t what I asked for. It just sort of showed up and I was in a fight with your mom.

(07:12) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm, the tea, the tea.

(07:13) Marcus Warner: Yes. I got words and pictures in my head and I wasn’t asking for them. It was be careful, she is precious and fragile. Don’t break her. Those were the words. And then the picture I got was a teacup, and it was a very fine porcelain china teacup. And it’s kind of the idea that I’ve given you a gift and I’ve entrusted her to you. I expect you to take good care of this stuff. And that gave a very different spin, right? Because at the time I was going through everything I didn’t like about her because I’m mad. But that was like God catching you up short and going, no, that’s not actually the picture you should have. Those are not the words you should be rehearsing. Let me give you something different. So that would be the first time I was ever clearly aware that something like that happens.

(08:16) Stephanie Warner: Oh, it’s so good. It’s so good to see the character of God and his heart for us. Going back to your saloon with the cowboy entrance, it’s good. So moving even further, this is honestly a really useful approach. I find myself reaching for it the most in scalable spiritual warfare contexts, in terms of recognizing, okay, God, how is the enemy wanting me to see this right now? How do you want me to see this right now? And sometimes even taking it into three parts. How am I seeing this right now? How is the enemy wanting me to see this right now? Because sometimes those can be different or sometimes I’ve totally bought into the enemy perspective. I tend to like to start with the enemy perspective first just because it exposes it and then God replaces it. Walk us through that sort of a praying word picture style.

(09:22) Marcus Warner:  I don’t even remember when I first thought of this, but the first time I remember doing it was in a marriage counseling situation. And I had the person stop and ask God, how is the devil trying to get me to see my husband right now? And very quickly she said, I see a ball and chain. So there was a clear image and I’m like, what does that mean to you? And she’s said, well, it means I feel like I’m ready to fly and he’s just stuck there holding me back. So I said, how does that make you feel about him? Now I had him leave the room before we did this just so you know, she’s not saying all this in front of him. And she goes, well, yeah. It makes me want to get away from him, I feel like I’m better off without him. And then I asked, do you have facts to back this perspective up? She said,  oh yeah, I have a lot of facts to back up that he’s a ball and chain. So I’m like, all right, I would expect that. The devil’s not going to give you a picture with no facts to support it.

So what these word pictures do is they create a spotlight on which facts to focus on. And then it lets you run through scenarios based on just those facts. Because I’d say deception is like an illusionist trick. It’s like, look, I’m sawing this person in half. It’s like, no, they’re just showing you the things they want you to see so that it appears that way. So the devil is good at getting us to focus on those facts and those data points that support the narrative he wants us to embrace. So I said, would you be willing by faith just to say, I renounce that as the devil’s picture and then ask Jesus for his picture? And the picture she got next was of a little boy hanging his head in shame in front of his father that he could never make happy. And I said, do you have any facts to support that? She said, yeah, I know his story well enough that that could be true. And then how does that make you feel about your husband? Like feelings of compassion, this sort of thing.

Then you begin asking, so God, which of these pictures should I be acting on and which one should be driving my approach to my husband? That was the first time I remember really leaning into that tool and going, wow, that was pretty significant. I could not have done that for her. God had to do that. I could not have given her those pictures or could not have come up with that kind of thing. And so from that point on, I was like, I think this might be repeatable. And so in a marriage retreat context I would have people do it as an exercise and I was just blown away at how routinely they were getting really helpful pictures from this.

And then you began to understand that well, it can’t just be for marriages? Maybe this is a way we can pray and put it together with what Darrell Anderson was doing. I think we’re onto something here that it could be helpful to clarify. One of the things we teach in the marriage setting especially, is that we don’t interact with people as they actually are. We interact with people as we imagine them to be. You can see this from celebrities, right?

We interact with celebrities as we imagine them to be. We interact with our family members and we have word pictures in our minds as parents about our kids. I say to parents, you all know the feeling of one child walking into the room and you’re like, well here comes trouble. Another child walks into the room and you’re like, oh, hey, it’s them! You’re not trying to make a decision, you just have this instinctive reaction to something and you realize that you have an image of this kid that you’re reacting to. And we often don’t stop to ask, is this image pushing me towards the fruit of the spirit? Is this image pushing me towards greater love for the child, or is this image coming from the enemy to do something that’s actually sabotaging my relationship? From there, you can just begin to see the application opportunities here. Of how many different kinds of settings you could apply this to. I will also say that it doesn’t always come immediately. There are times when I don’t get anything when I pray this, but if I pay attention, sometimes in the next couple of days something will happen, and I’m like, oh, that’s the answer to this. So just to fill out that picture a little bit.

(14:28) Stephanie Warner: Oh man, I have a couple of thoughts I want to pursue. One of them is in that vein of, this isn’t just a quarter that you plug into a machine and you get something out of it. It’s an approach to help you take your thoughts captive. It’s an approach to help you connect with God and get his character assessment on things. And also, our brains are all wired differently. I think that there is physical brain stuff happening and there’s also spiritual discipline stuff happening, that you can maybe grow in your discernment and your sensitivity toward recognizing words and pictures.

Also, I know people who don’t see things in their heads. You say, picture this, and they’ve got a list of facts because that’s how their brain is wired. I know other people who you say, picture something, and they’re gonna give you that mini series. They can point to every room in their “little house in their head” and see everything. So I think some of that comes into play. And sometimes it is just the level to which God wants to really impress something upon you. I’ve gotten nothing and I’ve gotten just a simple word to the question, how does the devil want me to picture this person? How do you want me to picture this person? Here’s an adjective and I’m swapping out the adjectives. I was trying to think, when we were talking about the whole, wow, that was a whole video picture. I was thinking, have I ever gotten a whole thing? And I remembered that I did when I was a child. I later turned this into a creative nonfiction piece in college called On the Invasion of a Demon Barbie.

(16:28) Marcus Warner: I think you meant to say, “a creative fiction piece” or was it nonfiction?

(16:31) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, no, it was creative nonfiction.

(16:33) Marcus Warner: I see, create because it was based on a true story, gotcha. Invasion of a Demon Barbie. I think people are waiting for that book.

(16:47) Stephanie Warner: I’ll never forget sitting under a tree with my little small group in that class.

(16:52) Marcus Warner: It’s a movie waiting to happen.

(16:55) Stephanie Warner: It’s not quite as dramatic as people would think, but when you were helping me process what had happened, I saw like a whole animation in my head. God was like comforting me and instructing me and teaching me. I’ve never had anything like that again, but it was very vivid. So sometimes God knows what you need in that moment or where you’re at. All of that to say, if you’re like, yes, now I am going to go get all of these pictures from God, maybe you will get a whole thing or maybe it will just be a word, and it’s okay. Keep seeking him for it.

(17:40) Marcus Warner: To that point also, part of the reason we teach these things is to be aware of the fact that they happen. And by paying attention to them. So nothing we’re talking about is on demand. Like if I just do this, I will always get that, but being aware that it is one of the ways God communicates to us. And so let’s push into it to just see and give it the opportunity. Another thing is, somebody I talked to recently as I was on the road traveling came up and said, I have found something and I am curious if you’ve run into it. I had a positive picture about somebody that God corrected and said, no, you are looking at them and kind of putting them on a pedestal.

You are making them way too high up and you need to change that. Because all of your illustrations are, I saw them as a monster and now I see them as someone to love, have you ever had that? And I said, yeah, actually that makes sense. There are times when people idolize someone and they should not be idolizing them and God wants to correct that. So it can actually go the other direction.

(18:56) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. It can. I can think of stories, of counseling and working with people where they did get a picture of somebody having idolatry issues with someone. But I don’t think it was necessarily stop thinking about them in this way and start doing “this”.  It was almost just like breaking that and thinking about something else as well.

(19:20) Marcus Warner: There was a guy who had a lot of inappropriate relationships in his past and he had gone through and broken soul ties with all of them. But there was one lady in particular that it didn’t seem to be helping with, and when he prayed about it the word that came was idol. He had made her an idol and it had to be renounced that way and not just as a soul tie. So sometimes you know you get these things in other contexts too.

(19:52) Stephanie Warner:  So let’s push into discernment on this now too, because I’ve also heard people who said, I had a dream or vision about X, Y, Z. And it was like, hum, was that from God? So can we press in a little bit on how to discern?

(20:12) Marcus Warner:  Sure. I laugh because I’ve had people say on many occasions, well, I’m sure you have a better connection with God than I do. I was kind of hoping you would hear something for me. And I’m like, I rarely get things for other people. I’m normally getting them for myself. And so my first caution that I’m going to give do diligence, on this kind of thing is when somebody gives me a word from God for something and they say, hey, God wants you to know that you should do this. I’m like, all right, that one I need to take through a whole bunch of hoops. If God hasn’t been telling me that then I need to run that by other people. I need to run it by God for myself  because I’ve had people tell me things like that over time. There are a lot of different scenarios with this.

I’ve also had a pastor sit down and talk with me because he said somebody who got a hold of our listening prayer teaching was starting to make claims like their journaling was on par with scripture. That God was speaking to him and since it’s God’s word it must be God’s word, and I’m like, no that’s not what we teach at Deeper Walk. That’s not how that works. What we’re trying to do is make people aware of the fact that God still guides us, and give us some ideas of how he guides us. Give us some expectations and some processes that can help encourage and put us in a posture and a position to hear from God better. But we don’t want to ever turn it into this just…

Like you say, put in my quarter and get my cookie kind of thing. There’s some people who, because it can be abused, just don’t want anything to do with it. And that’s what we’re trying to discourage. Don’t just throw the baby out with the bath water because there have been things that have been wrong. I was just reading a good book and the first chapter was on the life of George Mueller. George Mueller was famous for his prayer life. And he talked a lot of times about getting thoughts and pictures and images from God about things.

And he would take days, weeks, and months sometimes confirming and reconfirming to make sure that it was really what God wanted. He would pray into it. And so I think we have such an instant gratification culture too that sometimes we’re like, we want to feel better now, so give me the picture right now that’s going to make me feel better. And that isn’t God’s long-term strategy  to immediately make us feel better, but he will guide us through these things. And so sometimes it’s a process of pushing into things again and again over time and seeing the consistency of what God does.

(23:23) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s good. Also, before we get into final thoughts, I know we’re getting close to time here. I just wanted to also broaden out. I took us straight to spiritual warfare and taking thoughts captive stuff, but in the Listening Prayer Starter kit, you talk about categories of areas of your life that you want to submit to God in prayer. Like,  today I want to pray about my family. You can still go through the…how is the enemy trying to get me to see this person or my family? How do you want me to see it and my identity? Like, how is the enemy trying to get me to see myself? How do you want me to see me?

This coworker and this opportunity, or this tough situation? It doesn’t have to be like, in this moment I’m feeling X, Y, Z and God help me. That is a great thing to do if you are in a tough spot, to in that moment pause and seek God on it. But if you ever want to just take time to say, You know what, I want to spend time with you and like let’s do a check. I want to pray through this area of my life or whatever. This would be an approach that you could also use on that as well. Any thoughts on that?

(24:37) Marcus Warner: I think that having categories and building things in…Some people are just creatures of habit and they love doing things the same way over and over again.  I’ve never been that way. I am a creature of variety. And so it’s very difficult for me to do things the same way over and over. I find that I need a little variety in these things. And so that’s one of the reasons why we have these three different approaches. Sometimes I’ll be intentional and sometimes I’ll start off with one and realize partway into it that I’m moving in another direction now. This is going to look different. Not every prayer session needs to be a dramatic encounter with God. Sometimes we’re just asking Him for things and we’re just casting all of our cares on Him without getting answers or clarity or all the other things.

There’s a time when it’s just, God, this is weighing on my heart and it’s causing me to be anxious. I want to cast all my cares on you, or God, you said we have not because we ask not. So I’m just asking. And I want to be careful, listening prayer is just a part of the puzzle. There are times when God just wants us to come and ask him for things and talk to him about those things. And there are other times when it’s going to be more conversational. There’s other times when it’s going to be more clarifying. So that’s kind of where I’m coming from on this. There was a season where I was like if I didn’t get something clear from God in listening to prayer I was discouraged. I felt like I’m not doing this right and I felt like I was a bad Christian. It was actually a burden because it was turning into a performance. So we don’t want to put that on people.

(26:41) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. I’m glad you brought that up. We’ve been focusing a lot on listening prayer, but prayer is a whole thing. Being relational with God in multiple contexts and in community and all the things is really good. Well, I am going to thank everybody for being on the trail with us. We’re so pleased to be able to offer series like this and resources like this for free to people around the world. Thank you to each of you who keep us here. We rely heavily on our prayer partners, our donors, our volunteers, and even to each of you who just shares a word of encouragement. Thank you. It means a lot and we are so happy to be here with you. Father, I’m gonna ask you for final thoughts on the series as a whole. And then I would like to ask you to pray for us to close this out.

(27:47) Marcus Warner: One of my all time favorite books on this was Paul Billheimer’s, Destined for the Throne, which had kind of the premise that someday we’re going to reign with Christ in a kingdom here on earth. And our core preparation for that is our prayer life. And  God wants us to bring everything to him in prayer and talk to him about everything. And to develop the kind of intimacy that only comes in prayer. And this is the core training we undergo as we walk through this. I’ll confess that has not come naturally for me. I was very left-brained, very academic, it was much easier to study the Bible than to pray. Still is, but it’s getting better. So I just want to encourage people to take the next step in your prayer life and don’t beat yourself up for what you haven’t done. Don’t beat yourself up for what you could be. But just take the next step and begin building some of these practices in and see if it doesn’t add a little richness and depth to your life.

And with that, let me pray for everyone. So Father in heaven, you are a good dad and you love us well. You have plans for our lives and you’ve made preparations for us. And you know when we’re gonna go through hard things and you know when we’ve to go through the fire. And you haven’t said, don’t worry, you’ll never have to go through it. You said, don’t worry, I’ll go through it with you. And I just pray that you’ll give people the ability to connect with you when they really most need it. That you won’t feel so distant and that you will grant breakthrough in people’s lives in terms of growing their ability to feel that connection. And we know we all have more to go. And so we’re just thankful for your mercy, thankful for your patience, thankful for your love, and thankful that you are powerful, and have all things firmly in your hands. So we just commit our pathway to you and all that it entails in Christ’s name. Amen.