When I stepped down from the platform, a lady approached me. I knew what she was going to say. I had just finished an enthusiastic and biblical rationale for prayerwalking as an intercessory practice for our communities.
I greeted her, and then she said it. “Janet, I can’t walk. What should I do?”
In the more than twenty years I’ve been speaking about prayerwalking, there has always been one such person who asked the same question . . . one that stuck and softly nagged me. But shortly thereafter, I wondered, What if it has something to do with our God-given personality?
So I went on a Genesis-to-Revelation quest to study how biblical people prayed. And I identified several types of praying people in the Bible, as well as various reasons we each may have a praying style that comes out of our God-given personality.
Cerebral Pray-ers
Cerebral pray-ers approach prayer from a rational mindset and see God as their Problem Solver. They are thinkers, such as Job who wanted to know the reasons behind his suffering. They are alike Moses, who presented a handful of argumentative points with the Lord as to why he could not lead the Israelities out of Egypt (Exodus 3-4). And they seek signs from God so they know He is in control, as we see from Gideon when he fleece-bargained with God (Judges 6). Cerebral praying people understand that prayer is the best problem-solving strategy.
Emotive Pray-ers
Pray-ers carry burdens emotionally into the throne room. We see that in Hannah when she cried out from her misery for a child and then exuberantly praised God after giving birth to Samuel (1 Samuel 1-2). Another example is David, who wrote half of the psalms—many of which express a gamut of emotions. The same poet who wrote “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1) also wrote, “O Lord, the king rejoices in your strength” (Psalm 21:1). And then we have the prophet Jeremiah, who wrote Lamentations, the title of which in Hebrew means “How . . . !” These emotional expressions teach us that it’s all right to go to prayer emotionally wired.
Devotional Pray-ers
You may have a friend who is so close to God that he’s the first person you contact when you need someone to pray. Maybe he has said things like “God just gave me the best idea!” One example is Abraham, whom James called a “friend of God” (James 2:23 NIV). We also see this characteristic in Deborah, who wrote a poetic response of thanksgiving after victory (Judges 5). And we can notice a disciplined, devotional perspective in Daniel, who prayed three times daily. Devotional pray-ers have dedicated spiritual disciplines. They immediately go to their Bibles in the morning—studying, reflecting in their journals, praying over long lists of prayer needs, and sitting quietly as they wait for God to speak.
Physical Pray-ers
Physical Pray- ers find strategies to connect with God in corporal (bodily) ways. We see this quality in Jacob, who wrestled with God, and in Joshua, who responded to God with the physical acts of obedience. Then there were the fasting pray-ers—such as Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther—who deprived their physical bodies to seek God’s wisdom and direction. Perhaps physical pray-ers are simply more kinesthetically wired and so express themselves prayerfully in demonstrative ways.
Studying biblical praying styles as well as personalities, generational praying styles, and even the spiritual gifts can help us free those we influence to shed guilt about what they’re not doing and instead find their natural praying style.
Janet McHenry has authored Praying Personalities: Finding Your Natural Prayer Style. She leads The Bridge Church, Reno, prayer ministries and serves on the CA National Day of Prayer leadership team.
Praying Personalities Quiz: https://prayingpersonalities.com