Ep. 4.17 How to Go on a Prayer Date

On the AU podcast this week, we talk about prayer. What is a prayer date? Why is it so important? What’s the difference between a prayer date and regular prayer time? How can I go on one? All of these questions and more will be answered in the episode. Enjoy!

0:56-1:07 Can you have fun with God?

4:04-4:36 Two ways you need to relate to God

7:18-7:56 God is BOTH

13:23-13:46 Nature isn’t God but…

15:17-15:45 Being God in the world

Want to go on your own prayer date? Here are some ideas to jumpstart your time: https://joy.pinksaltriot.com/prayer-date

Want free resources to help you build your Christian identity? https://pinksaltriot.com/pages/free-resource-to-build-your-christian-identity

Want to learn more about why you should be identifying the lies you are believing and building your toolbox to fight them? Take our totally free School of Uprising program in as little as 30 minutes! Sign up here: https://joy.pinksaltriot.com/schoolofuprising

Visit our shop for amazing, intentional reminders of the truths we want to embrace with our lives here: https://pinksaltriot.com

Join us for an amazing, on-demand retreat experience to help you come to trust God from a place of safety! You can sign up right here: https://uprisingacademy.thinkific.com/courses/trust-retreat

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Get instant access to our library of Christian scripture phone wallpapers: https://joy.pinksaltriot.com/wallpapers

Follow our audio podcast on your favorite platform by clicking here: https://podfollow.com/the-authentic-uprising-show 

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Hello and welcome to today's episode
of the Authentic Uprising podcast.
I'm your host Jill Simons, and I'm
so excited to grow in the radical
art of standing in what God
says about you with you today.
The show is a place where we
pour into the sense of who God
is, who we are, and how we can
live more in the freedom that He
has for us every
single day.
Hello and welcome to the Authentic
Uprising Podcast.
I'm your host, Jill Simons. We've got
a really fun episode for you today.
Because I think that that's
something that doesn't get kind
of melded with spirituality
enough, which is fun.
Do we ever talk about having fun
with God or embracing the joy
of the Lord with Him, like
in conversation with Him.
I don't really feel like I have
ever heard a message about this.
And this has been something
that the Lord has really taught
me just through my personal
relationship with Him and times
in prayer. I'll tell you some
stories of some just hilarious
things that God has said to
me before that are just so
encouraging and
just so human.
There's just such a real relationship with God available.
And so if you have nothing like that in
your life, or you are there with me,
either way, I hope that you
enjoy this episode and that it
helps you think about maybe a new
way to go deeper with the Lord.
And specifically, we're gonna be talking
about how can you go on a prayer date.
How can you really go
deep with the Lord?
And if it's not, if you're not
comfortable with, like, the date word,
if you're maybe males
listening to this,
maybe feel uncomfortable or date has
really stressful connotations to you.
Think of it as a play date like
you had when you were five,
like not a stressful, you
know, sweaty first date,
an actual time to have
fun with the Lord.
Play with Him, get to know
Him, explore together.
So to start off with a lot of people
that I know, especially, have very,
very regimented strict
relationships with God.
I think that this is not
wholly a bad thing.
There's a lot of discipline
around their faith life.
There is a lot of discipline around
how they interact with God.
This is not... I'm not... I don't wanna
throw the baby out with the bath water.
Those kinds of devotions and things
like that are not negative or bad.
But I think that
there is more.
I know that there is more because
every single one of us have
more that the Lord is inviting
us into whether you were,
like one of the greatest saints
in history or you are someone
who's just starting out, the endless
call from God is that there is more.
Because how could they're not
just on a logical basis,
if God is eternal and
God is, you know,
all of the grand outside of time
terms that we use for God,
then we cannot in our finite
lives exhaust what He has to offer.
This is just a logical
conclusion.
And so I always like to frame
conversations about how we
interact with God using something
I think is a really helpful
metaphor and it's
extremely biblical,
but we don't usually like push
it all the way to its natural conclusion,
which is this idea that God is both
King and Father. Totally scriptural.
Right? We talk about
God King all the time,
we talk about God the Father
all the time, but very rarely,
do we look at what is the reality of your
life? If your father is the king.
What does that look like?
What does that mean?
And so I find that people are usually
comfortable with one or the other.
But when you start talking
about the fact that we need to
relate to Him in both ways, pretty
much everybody gets uncomfortable.
And so I like to do that. That's
how I like to begin conversations
is looking at again,
what's the reality?
If your actual father
is actually the king.
And so we can look at royal
families around the world that we
see and we know that there's
monarchs with children and they
are living this sort of complicated
dynamic where there's a public
life where we're really looking
at the father as king in that
specific scenario where
there's, you know,
bowing protocols and social protocols
and rules about etiquette
and standing and etcetera,
etcetera, etcetera.
And a lot of people are comfortable
with that that's sort of
the as many of you know, my
faith tradition is Catholic.
And so there's a lot of
Catholics that are specifically
comfortable with very
formalized forms of prayer,
which a lot of Protestants say
is not necessary because they're
typically primarily relating
to God as Father.
And again, I don't want
to demonize either camp.
They're both totally
scriptural and totally necessary.
What I want to posit is that
you can actually do both.
And you actually probably
should, do both.
Because then you're stepping
into the fullness again of who
God is and not just kind of lopping off a part of Him and saying
I will have a relationship
with this part of you,
but that part of you is makes
me uncomfortable and I don't
want to have
a relationship with that.
And that's the same as with
our relationship with people.
You probably wouldn't
stay in a relationship,
a romantic relationship or even
a friendship very long with
a person who is like, I'm
comfortable with this part of you,
but I don't even want to acknowledge
that this other part of you exists.
That's very dehumanizing isn't it To
have someone say, you know,
to really draw the example acutely,
I have a son with autism,
and it would be very dehumanizing to
have someone say, you know,
I'm I'm comfortable with the part
of you that's a math savant
that's able to be my study buddy and
help me, you know, do better in math.
But I'm uncomfortable with the part
of you that it is socially
awkward and doesn't always
pick up on social cues.
And so I'm just going to completely
ignore that side of you,
basically get what I can get out of this side of you,
and that's the extent of our relationship.
We don't do that to people.
Why are we doing that to God?
God tells us that He is this
fullness of King and Father
and we have a very clear path
forward to cooperate
with both.
When we relate to God as King,
that's our more formalized times
of prayer when we are really
participating in the larger Church,
in participating in worship,
participating in recognizing
the grandeur and importance of who
He is as our God and our Savior.
But He's also our Father. And so when
that time of public worship is over,
He also wants to invite us to
sit down at the kitchen table and
tell them about our day.
And both are necessary.
And so the prayer date bringing
it all the way back what we're
actually talking about today.
The prayer date idea is let's
relate to God as a person.
Let's relate to God as Father.
And so choose your terms, whatever
makes you feel comfortable.
Prayer date, prayer play date,
prayer, you know, coffee with dad,
whatever. I'm not going to be
strict on the terminology.
But the energy around it is
let's hang out with someone that
we are intimate with. Let's have
time to really truly be present
to each other as individuals.
And so there's obviously a ton
of ways you can do this. Just
like there are a ton of ways
that you can hang out
with your friends.
I am gonna share a couple ideas
that you might really enjoy.
And then I'm gonna share some
thoughts about really how to do
this in frequency at which
it's helpful to do this.
Obviously, it would be super
awesome to have time, flexible
time every single day to sit
down with God in this way.
If you were at that stage of life,
please do it, more power to you,
like, what a gift. I am not
at that stage of life.
I do not have kind of long chunks of
unbroken time available for this.
So what that looks like for me is
that I try and use daily prayer time,
definitely use time
for declarations,
reading my bible, and short conversations
with God during the week.
And then on Sunday, I try and go
on a prayer date each Sunday.
That doesn't necessarily mean
I physically go somewhere,
but I try and have time that's
extended with God getting to
know each other time. I think
that that is why I primarily
use that word date is because
I think that that's a helpful
social construct that we're used to where
when you go on a date with someone,
that's time to get
to know each other.
That's time to grow in intimacy
with each other because you
potentially wanna spend
your life together.
And this is someone that you're
gonna spend your life with.
And so why not spend time getting to
know each other better because
you're on the road together,
and you can kind of enjoy it or
you can be strangers to each other.
God doesn't push it either way.
But obviously, there's so
much benefit to intentionally
cooperating with walking with God
as you go through your life.
So this is something that I think
starting out is really helpful
to do on a weekly or
monthly basis.
If you are in a crazy
time of life,
if you're new to getting to
know the Lord in this way,
maybe monthly is what you feel
comfortable starting out with.
But I recommend this to be
a longer time where you take maybe
one to two hours to really
spend talking with God.
Now, we also like a first date
don't want this to be something
where we have no plan.
Nothing to actually do.
Accept it and stare
at each other.
Because that can be something
that can actually deter us from
wanting to do this again. If it's
a really just kinda negative
awkward experience, and that's
not something that is necessarily
super motivating
to return to.
So what we'd like to do instead
is have sort of a plan for
your time together and that's what
I have several proposals for,
but that's certainly
not exhaustive.
And if you have
your own idea,
I'd love for you to share that in
the comments about how you go
about taking this time or how
you'd like to go about taking
this time with the Lord
in the future.
So number one idea would be to
actually take this time on your
prayer date to use the the technique
that we talk about all
the time and hearing from the Lord
to write back and forth to
script the conversation between you and
God, say, me, and say what you say,
Jesus, say what He says, and
just keep going back and forth.
This is really really cool
because you have then a written
record of what is said in this time
together that you can return to.
And so especially if you're
learning the Lord's voice kind of
for the first time or you're
early in your journey.
This is really, really helpful because
then if you kinda lose the thread,
get away from it
a little bit,
you can kind of go right back in
to that same place of relationship
by rereading what the Lord
has said to you.
And so taking an hour or two hours even
to journal this way back and forth,
creates a ton of content, a ton of space
for you to ask the Lord questions,
get information from Him about His
heart for you in the situations
in your life, how He wants you to
pray for those situations,
all kinds of things. And in the Pdf
that's linked in our description,
we have a whole different set
of prompts for a writing prayer
date where you can go through and write
out that back and forth with the Lord,
but these prompts are kind of
places to start the conversation.
So ideas like ask God about a situation in your life that's confusing
to you right now or share with
the Lord one thing that you
really realized you were
grateful for this week.
Something like that were it's kind of
a place to start the conversation.
So again, like a first date, you're not
just sitting and staring at each other.
Another awesome idea for a prayer
date is to go out into nature
and to spend that one to two
hours, praying as you go,
asking the Lord to show Himself
to you in what you experience
in nature around you, not
because nature is God,
but because God is
nature's Creator.
And as the Creator, there
is so much of Himself.
There is so much of His fingerprints on all the created things
that we observe when
we are out in nature.
And so when we take that time to
very intentionally, ask God,
where are you in
what I am seeing?
What do you wanna show me in what I
am seeing that you have created?
Then we have this whole new way
of seeing opened up to us.
This way of experiencing nature that
becomes a spiritual experience.
And I know a lot of people
experience this organically in
nature where there's a spiritual element
to being just amongst the trees
and the mountains and the ocean, and
whatever locale you are in,
He is the Creator
of all of it,
so you can go wherever you have
access to and ask Him to show
you how He is present and what He wants to
show you about Himself in that place.
A third idea that can be great
starting point for a prayer
date is praying for God's
word for other people.
And and really looking for
God to share with you,
how He would actively like you to
be His hands and feet in the world.
So this is going to be just
another type of personal prayer.
It can be coupled with writing
if you want to do that.
But it's going to focus on how is the Lord
calling you to be Him in the world.
How is He calling you
to use your gifts?
How is He calling you to serve
the people in your life or
the people that you meet
throughout your day.
And really, how does He want
you to think about that?
How does He want you to see your
role as a Christian in the world.
This is something that was really helpful
to do in a long format like that.
Because again, you can have a lot
of conversation and get a lot
of information that can give
you clarity about how to move
forward for a long time after
this prayer date and that's this
whole idea is based on the fact
that it's beneficial to have
these times to go deep. A lot
of focus is paid to what's our
daily rhythm of prayer. That's
totally it important that's
totally foundational. Again, if
we think of this like a marriage
where there's that level of
intimacy between partners,
we absolutely need to be
talking about, you know,
what's the physical interaction
look like on a daily basis.
What's the verbal
interaction look like?
Is there time to touch base and hear
about each other's day on a daily basis,
but any marriage professional
therapist prep you know, leader,
whoever will tell you that it is
deeply beneficial to marriages
to take whether it's a date
night or a short overnight or
something like that on a regular
basis because people need
time to go deep
with each other.
There needs to be a forum for
us to really encounter each other
outside of this regular
day to day level.
And so I hope that these ideas kind
of bring up some other ideas in you,
some ideas for how you can
use this in your life.
As I said, there's a Pdf we've put
together on how to go a prayer date,
and there's a variety of ideas more
than I mentioned in this podcast.
So it's well worth checking out
as well as some prompts for
prayer in each of
the situations.
And I'd love to continue to
update that pdf with your ideas.
So if you have ideas, drop
them in the comments,
let me know how you plan to or
have already taken time to go
deep with the Lord and really encounter
Him in a very personal way
so that you can build that intimacy and
carry it into your every day life of prayer.
I hope you've enjoyed
this episode.
Leave me a comment, let me know
what you think and let me know
if you're going to try this
because I would love to pray for
you as you embark on your prayer date
journey. I hope you have a great week.
I'll talk you soon. Thank you so
much for joining me on today's
episode of the Authentic
Uprising podcast.
It is always a joy
to be with you.
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I love you. I'm praying for you.
I hope you have
an amazing week.