Move When The Spirit Says Move!

By Mark Helpsmeet:

Traveling among Kenyan Friends and experiencing their unabashed and fervent prayers, it was hard not to be stretched and changed. I caught some of their spirit and shared my own prayer with them. It was something like this:

"The words you pray are good. God wants and needs the words you pray. They are good words, but they are not enough. God also needs the testimony of you hands, your feet, your whole body and life. Learn to pray with all your body."

Most ministry I’ve shared in Meeting for Worship has been spoken, but several times I’ve been called beyond our norm of short, evenly spoken verbal messages to truly unprogrammed ministry. One time in particular I obeyed when the message I was given was to move in a circle, stopping at certain positions, facing the center. I was physically acting out the question with which I was wrestling as I moved around the circle. It’s hard, perhaps impossibly to convey to you what happened. I was quaking and feeling foolish because it was so different, so odd, compared to "normal" verbal ministry, but I clearly felt the direction of the Spirit. A couple minutes into this physical prayer, the understanding burst upon me, and I had an answer to my quandary. I was stunned, overjoyed, and I cried. I don’t believe I could have experienced the blessing of that prayer if I had only prayed with my mouth. The same is likely true for many of us, so my admonition to all of us is this: To experience the full fruits of the Spirit, we need to pray with all of our body. We need to sit when the Spirit says sit, Pray when the Spirit says pray, and move when the Spirit says move!