Contemplative Prayer Stations

This contemplative prayer station focuses on many aspects of our brokenness or need to be broken before God. It involves throwing Pottery!
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Directions for leadership:
This station is had the most impact out of every station we have ever set up… but it is also very complicated and messy. It focuses on our brokenness or our need to be broken.
We set up the room dividers outside in a curved line. We posted the quotes, and songs and verses along the dividers in a line, so people would start where the arrows pointed and move along the wall. The readings are in a specific order for the purpose of bringing people into a certain frame of mind and heart. At the end there is a bench with tons of pottery (cups, bowls, plates, flower pots… all gathered from the thrift store or garbage cans or garages). The person then picks out a pot, stands up on a chair and throws it down into a tarped off area. The idea is to smash a pot into a million pieces as a symbol. It is awesome. All throughout the service you can hear things getting smashed outside. It was a really sweet sound because everyone knew what it symbolized.
Make sure you have arrows and a sign saying beginning as well as goggles for the person to where when they smash.
A second idea: when we cleaned up we saved all the pieces. The next week we began a series on missions and we took all those pieces and made a mosaic table of the world. We then used it as an entrance piece. It was a potent piece of art work. At the end we auctioned it off and gave the money to our missions team.
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Quotes, verses, and poetry… in order:

“Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn’t get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he did in fact was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty!
At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I asked and then he told me:
My grace is enough; it’s all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness.”
2 Corinthians 12:7-10

When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.
1 Corinthians 2:1-5

SOMETIMES WE MUST BE BROKEN, BEFORE WE ARE TRULY READY TO GIVE OUR HEARTS AND OUR LIVES TO JESUS CHRIST.

AND IN OUR BROKENNESS, GOD FINDS HIS GREAT OPPORTUNITY. IN LUKE 9:23, JESUS SAID, “HE WHO FOLLOWS ME MUST TAKE UP HIS CROSS DAILY.” IT IS FINALLY OUR OWN EGOS, OUR DESIRE TO RUN AND CONTROL OUR OWN LIVES, WHICH MUST FINALLY BE SMASHED AND BROKEN, SO GOD CAN ASSUME HIS RIGHTFUL PLACE AS THE RULER OF OUR LIVES.

“O break my heart; but break it as a field is by the plough up-broken for the corn; O break it as the buds, by green leaf sealed, are, to unloose the golden blossom torn; Love would I offer onto Love’s great Master, set free the odor, break the alabaster.
O break my heart; break it victorious God, that life’s eternal well may flash abroad; O let it break as when the captive trees, breaking cold bonds, regain their liberties; And as thought’s sacred grove to life is springing, be joys, like birds, their hope, Thy victory singing!”
-Thomas Toke Bunch

But we have these treasures in earthen vessels, that the greatness of the power is from God and not from ourselves.
2 Corinthians 4:7

The Story of the Broken Jar
The master lived quite a distance from the stream. Every day his servant, the water bearer, would walk from his master’s house to the stream with two large pots, each hung on opposite ends of a pole which he carried across his neck. One pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the walk, while the other pot had a crack in it and arrived only half full. This went on for a full two years and the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, but the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its imperfections and of the fact that it was only able to accomplish half of what it had been made to do. Finally the cracked pot summoned up enough courage to have its own conversation with the water bearer. It went something like this. “I am ashamed and I want to apologize to you for I have let you down. Because of my flaws you have had to do twice as much work.” But the water bearer would have nothing of this conversation. “Did you notice the beautiful wild flowers along the path and did you notice that these beautiful flowers were only on your side of the path?” That’s because I have always known of your flaws and I took advantage of them and planted flower seeds on your side of the path and every day you watered them. And these beautiful flowers that you have watered everyday grace the master’s table. Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house.”

WHAT IS BROKEN IN OUR LIFE? SHATTERED? FRAGMENTED? WEAK?

THE TRUTH IS, WE ALL ARE BROKEN IN SOME WAY.

THE CRY OF KING DAVID – HIMSELF A BROKEN MAN AT TIMES –ILLUSTRATES THIS IN THE 31st PSALM. DOESN’T DAVID SPEAK FOR ALL OF US, WHEN HE WRITES THESE WORDS:

“I HAVE BECOME LIKE BROKEN POTTERY.”

BUT WHETHER WE ARE BROKEN IN BODY, OR IN MIND, OR PERHAPS IN SPIRIT, WE CAN TAKE HEART, BECAUSE EVEN IN OUR BROKENNESS, WE ARE BLESSED. IN FACT, OUR BROKENNESS MAY BE THE VERY THING THAT ALLOWS GOD TO BECOME REAL IN OUR LIVES.

Why you holdin’ grudges in old jars?
Why you wanna show off all your scars?
What’s it gonna take to lay a few burdens down?
It’s a beautiful sound

When they all fall
Like a million raindrops
Falling from a blue sky
Kissing your cares goodbye
They all fall
Like a million pieces
A ticker tape parade high
And now you’re free to fly
-Excerpt from Million Pieces by Newsboys

What in your life needs to be smashed? Pride, desires, attitudes?
What is it that God has asked you to do that you haven’t due to your fears or because you don’t think you are the right person for the job?
What things both weakness, physical and emotional, do you need to let go of so that you can live a free life to serve God and Others?

Choose one of the various dishes on the bench, stand on the bench where indicated and smash the dish by throwing it on the ground in the designated area (follow the arrows).

As the dish shatters think about what you are asking God to smash in your life so he may use you for greater things. Or perhaps you are letting go of a weakness and becoming obedient to Gods invitation to use you. In either case, as the dish smashes, take joy in the fact that God will use the pieces to create a beautiful mosaic.