Spending time with the Lord is a vibrant, rich communion. When we take the time to come before God in prayer and scripture reading, something happens. We begin to experience who God is as we spend time in His presence. Our hearts begin to change to look more and more like Him, and we even want to become more like Him! How beautiful it is to dwell in the presence of God.

However, sometimes these experiences with God run dry. We try to read our Bible and pray daily, and over time we are simply going through the motions. We get stuck doing the same ritual day after day after day, until our busyness keeps us from the Lord altogether. Is communion with God supposed to feel like a chore? It is inevitable that sometimes it will. Still, I believe this is because we fall into a predictable routine and expect God to show up in predictable ways. Maybe we just need to change up the ways we spend time with God!

Regardless of whether we are having a mountaintop experience with God or if each day is a struggle just to pray for five minutes, here’s a list of 14 creative ways to engage with God.

1. Write a letter addressed to God telling Him something. Find a creative way to actually mail the letter.

2. Find a passage of scripture that speaks to you. Go on a walk or run while repeating the verse to yourself over and over again.

3. Choose a worship song to rewrite in your own words. Use different colors, patterns, and pictures to represent what the song tells you about who God is.

4. Grab a cup of coffee or tea and have a conversation with Jesus. Out loud.

5. Write a list of areas from your testimony where you have seen God’s faithfulness and sovereignty at work.

6. Hold your own worship service by singing along to a playlist or playing worship songs with an instrument.

7. Read Galatians 5:22-23. Draw each fruit of the Spirit (without using words) in a way that represents how you have exercised that fruit in your own life.

8. Spend 20 minutes sitting in silence. Listen to what the Lord wants to say to you.

9. Have God write YOU a letter, telling you the things He treasures most about you (you’ll have to be His scribe).

10. Find a photo filled with people you love. Spend time thanking God for those people and what they have meant to you.

11. Write Psalm 27 in your own words to include your own specific circumstances.

12. Make something and give it to God as a gift. Ideas: Write a song, plant flowers, knit a scarf, bake cookies.

13. Before starting a task or doing homework, dedicate the first 10 minutes of your time to prayer in order to prepare yourself for this task in order to bring glory to God.

14. Pray in a new posture. Kneel, bow, open your hands, or assume another position in order to humbly preset yourself before the Lord.

These ideas are simply ways in which you can breathe fresh air into the time you spend with God. Never get too comfortable in one spot, because God is in the business of using new things to grow and change us. Try doing one of these ideas for the next 14 days, and see how God shows up.

“But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” - 2 Corinthians 3:16-18