No matter where a student is attending, walking to and from classes, club activities, and appointments is a part of the college experience. As a senior in college, I know for a fact that my fellow students spend plenty of time walking all over campus.

In talking with fellow college-attending Christians, a topic that can be difficult to discuss is maintaining a healthy prayer life, or daily conversation with God. But from personal experience (particularly in my failures to maintain my own prayer life as a busy college student) I have found a simple and practical step that I believe every Christian attending college or university classes can implement to strengthen their daily prayer time:

Pray while walking to and from class.

Turning my walks to and from each class I have into short prayer walks not only improved my flow of communication with God, but also better conditioned my heart and attitude to participate and actively listen to what my professors and classmates had to say during our time together. This practice is most helpful to me in the morning, when I could allow the early morning grogginess to sour my mood and ability to engage with others in a Godly, Jesus-loving way. Praying after class also has the benefit of meditating on the knowledge taught, as well as processing through any words people spoke that convicted you in any way.

King Solomon was blessed with incredible knowledge by God and had a true way of words when it came to giving Godly instruction on how one should live a life of fruitful devotion to the Lord. In one of his proverbs, he instructed to "Get all the advice and instruction you can, so you will be wise the rest of your life." (Proverb 19:20, NLT).

Using our time walking to and from class to pray helps condition our hearts to receive the instruction and knowledge others both intentionally and unintentionally give us. When I pray while walking to class, I ask the Lord to keep me alert, that I take in whatever word of wisdom departs from someone during our class time. Even while attending secular university classes, I am always praying for God to reveal Wisdom about Himself or others to me, that I may grow in understanding and "be wise for the rest of my life." In-class discussions on economics, world history, and societal injustice brought (and continue to bring) larger understanding to the complexities of the world I inhabit.

Perhaps I felt convicted of devoting my time walking to and from classes and school activities when I spent one morning last week reading the Bible, and God reminded me of 1 Thessalonians 5:16-17, in which the Christian teacher, Paul, teaches to "rejoice always, pray continually" (NIV). To pray "continually," or as some translations of the Bible say, "without ceasing," we shouldn't limit our time of communicating and praying to God to just whatever time we can cram into our schedule in the morning or evening. Transforming my commute to class as a prayer walk has done more than just "improved my mood." Prayer walks have proved essential to my life as a university student: they condition my heart to understand the knowledge I am seeking in class, prepare my mind to be actively engaged in discussion and lecture, and allow me the space to process what I learned and mentally took in with God, as I discern and extract a better-informed worldview.

If you are a college-attending Christian and have never considered the helpfulness of using class-commuting-time as a space for prayer walks, I recommend that you give it a shot! In dedicating our class time to God, we consciously allow His presence to bless and elevate our academic experience.