Authorship: Don Love is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Liberty University & Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and is the Founder and CEO of Pray Through It Ministries. In addition to collegiate teaching, Don and his prayer counseling team work to develop prayer communities and teams that “remind the World to Listen & Pray Expectantly, so that each person may experience healing & wholeness in Christ through prayer.”
Thesis Statement: A study of prayer in both testaments reveals imagination and emotions as instrumental in God’s interaction with those seeking Him in prayer. Therefore, those teaching spiritual formation should seek to develop and practice communicative imagination and emotions within the context of prayer.
Overview of Argumentation: Throughout Scripture, God and His people interact through imagery and emotions. This paper is a study of the relationship between imaginative imagery and prayer in Scripture with a practical emphasis on how to engage and implement such spiritual formation practices with conservative evangelicals who do not yet have a grid for traditionally contemplative forms of prayer.
The paper begins with an exploration of Biblical examples of interchanges between God and man whereby imagery or emotions play a pivotal role in the sanctification or decision making of the petitioner. After a brief survey of various prayer models influencing many denominations today, discussion turns to the relationship of these prayer practices with consideration for those training the body of Christ in spiritual formation today.
Contribution to the Field: The Listening & Inner-Healing Prayer Movement continues to gain momentum in all mainstream denominations. As positive and negative testimonials abound from ministries that utilize question-focused prayer approaches to lead counselees to listen in prayer, so do concerns related to various practices often associated with prayer care ministries that focus heavily on evoking and assigning meaning to imagery, emotions, feelings, and memories. Among conservative evangelical seminaries, there is a healthy emphasis on the importance and power of prayer within spiritual formation classes. At the same time, often emphasis is placed on speaking, rather than the listening side of prayer. Even among those that teach listening among prayer, there remains a need for more culturally appropriable articulations on the biblical grounding and role that imagination and emotions have historically been practiced by those in both testaments.