Christian Conversation (7)

Welcome to the PMF Workshop for August, 2023. I’m your host, T. M. Moore. Each month we provide teaching, encouragement, activities, and resources to help you in working your Personal Mission Field so that you can become more consistent and effective in realizing the presence, promise, and power of God’s Kingdom in your daily life.

This month’s Workshop is the final part in a series on conversation, which is one of the key disciplines available to us for working our Personal Mission Fields. We need to learn the art of conversation, for this is a primary way the grace of God reaches through us to others. Throughout this series we have emphasized that conversation doesn’t come naturally to most of us. We have to work at it. One of the best ways to improve our conversational skills is by talking with God in prayer. This month’s workshop is appropriately entitled, “Improve Conversation with God”, and our text is Psalm 67.1, 2:
God be merciful to us and bless us,
And cause His face to shine upon us,
Selah
That Your way may be known on earth,
Your salvation among all nations.

Begin here
The safest and best place to hone your conversation skills is in prayer. In prayer we may come boldly before the Lord, just as we are, and talk about anything on our hearts and minds. Prayer provides opportunities for us to develop all our conversational skills and to sharpen our focus on the unseen realm and the far horizon before which and toward which all our conversations should proceed.

If we can work harder at prayer, and pay more careful attention to all the elements and facets of prayer, we will find that our conversational skills will improve. Conversation with God becomes the fount and focal point for effective conversation with the people in our Personal Mission Field.

Prayer is a struggle for many believers. We have short attention spans, and most of us have not received very good training in the disciplines of prayer. Consequently, our prayers are neither very long nor, if we’re honest, very effective in bringing us into the presence of God and His glory. When it comes to prayer, most of us feel discouraged.

But if we can improve our prayers, we will find that our relationship with God will grow stronger and more meaningful, and our ability to converse with others about spiritual matters will improve as well.

Improving conversation with God
Here are some suggestions for improving your conversation with God. First, try using the psalms in prayer. Read through a psalm, then pray it back to the Lord, paraphrasing as you go, putting the psalm in your own words and applying it as the words suggest to situations in your life or the lives of others. The more you develop facility in using the scripts for prayer God has provided in the psalms, the more you’ll find your conversations with others will come easier and be clearer and more consistent.

I know of no better way to make a quantum leap in your prayer life than for you to begin using the psalms—all the psalms—to guide your prayers on a regular basis.

A few other prayer practices can serve to improve your conversational ability.

Pray out loud. Talk with God aloud, as though He were right next to you. This way you exercise your voice and speech and get used to hearing yourself in conversation—an obstacle that keeps many people from talking as freely as they might, but which out-loud praying can help you to overcome.

Practice prayer at different times during the day. Punctuate your day with prayer to the Lord, in complete sentences and around specific topics. If you get used to talking with God four or five times a day, it will become easier and more natural to talk with others.

Pray about your conversations—both those you’re having and those you want to have—and ask God to be there “just in time” to give you the words you’ll need (Lk. 12.11, 12).

The more you pray, and the more you bring prayer into your daily conversations, the more your conversations will reflect the power of prayer to accomplish great things (Jer. 33.3).

When it comes to becoming better conversationalists, the old saying “practice makes perfect” applies, but with a twist. Practice, of course, does not make perfect. Practice, as many have observed, “makes permanent.” If we practice reticence, unwillingness to engage others, and combativeness in our conversations, that’s what we can expect to become.

But if in our conversations, beginning in our prayers, we work to be better listeners, to become more considerate and consistent, and to improve in the areas of clarity and excellence, we will find that God can use our conversations with greater effects in the lives of others more than perhaps we have ever known before.

The far horizon toward which we’re journeying can become more a part of our everyday lives, if we will work hard at the art of Christian conversation, beginning in our prayers.

…

Here are some activities you can practice and resources to help you in working your Personal Mission Field.

1. Again, make sure your Personal Mission Field is updated, and you have included in your Personal Mission Field worksheet any new people God has brought into your sphere. Keep your map with you, so you can take it out and pray for the people you see throughout the day.
2. If you need help learning to pray the psalms, go to our bookstore and order a free copy of God’s Prayer Program. This little book will help you step-by-step make praying the psalms a more consistent part of your prayer life.
3. Pray out loud for the people in your Personal Mission Field. Concentrate on the ones you will see during the day ahead. Praying out loud for them will help to prepare you for talking with them.
4. Continue making a point to speak to every person in your Personal Mission Field as often as the opportunity arises. Greet them by name. Ask about their wellbeing. Pick up on a previous conversation. Ask for a prayer request.
5. Order a free copy of our book, Small Stuff. Here you’ll be encouraged to consider how every small thing in your life—gestures, helps, and conversations—can be used by God to bless others and glorify Himself. Order your free copy by clicking here.

That’s it for this month’s Personal Mission Field Workshop. Until next month, for the Fellowship of Ailbe, this has been T. M. Moore.

We ask the Lord to move and enable many more of our readers to provide for the needs of our ministry. Please seek Him in prayer concerning your part in supporting our work. You can contribute online by using the Contribute button at the website; or you can send a gift to The Fellowship of Ailbe, 103 Reynolds Lane, West Grove, PA 19390.

Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.