If you're an ISFP, there are three devotional practices that fit the way you're already put together. Make something and let that be your prayer. Read the parts of scripture you can see and hear. And serve the one person in front of you instead of waiting for the right ministry to open up. None of those is a lesser way to meet God, and one of them has an example to follow in Exodus.
God Filled a Craftsman First
Here's the context. Israel is out of Egypt and God is giving Moses the instructions for the tabernacle, which is the tent where the people are going to meet with him. It's an enormous build. Gold work, woven curtains, carved poles, cut stones. And when God gets to who's going to make it, this is what he says:
"See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills—to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts" (Exodus 31:2-5).
Look at the list of what the Spirit is for here. Metalwork. Stone-cutting. Woodwork. God had a tent to build and he did it by filling an artist with his Spirit. Nobody calls Bezalel the warm-up act for the real ministry going on somewhere else.
So if you meet God more easily with your hands than with your notes, look at who God picked to build the place where Israel would meet with him. He picked a craftsman, and he filled him with his Spirit to do the craft.
Make Something and Let It Be the Prayer
So make something, and let the making be the prayer instead of the warm-up for it. Read a short passage first, then put the Bible down and work. Paint what you saw. Play it. Build the shelf. Cook the meal. Take the picture. You're not making a craft project to show somebody afterward. You're praying in the language you're best at.
Start with scripture, even one verse, so you're responding to God and not just to your own mood. And talk to him while you work, out loud or under your breath, so it stays a conversation.
Mary did this at a dinner party and got criticized for it. She took about a pint of pure nard, poured it on Jesus' feet, and wiped his feet with her hair (John 12:3). She doesn't say a word that John records. Judas priced the perfume at a year's wages and asked why it hadn't been sold for the poor, and Jesus told him to leave her alone (John 12:5, 12:7). No speech, no explanation, an expensive physical act, and the only person in the room whose opinion counted received it as worship.
Read the Parts You Can See
Read the parts of the Bible that have weather in them. If you're a sensing person, you take in what's concrete and present first, and a lot of scripture is written exactly that way. The Gospels are full of dust, boats, bread, fish, and people getting up early. The Psalms were written by somebody looking at something. Genesis and Exodus and Ruth are stories before they're doctrine.
Try one scene a day, and read it like you were standing there. Where's the light coming from? Who's standing where? What does it smell like? What would you have heard from the back of that crowd? The writers were angling for that when they bothered to tell us what time of day it was.
Psalm 19 gives us the pattern and the permission at the same time. "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth" (Psalm 19:1-4). Something with no words at all is preaching to the whole earth. So take the walk. Look at the sky on purpose. That counts as worship.
One Person, Not a Program
Serve the person in front of you. If you lead with feeling and you like to keep your options open, a sign-up sheet with a twelve-month commitment on it can kill your willingness before you ever start, and then you carry the guilt about that around for a year.
John says the plain version. "Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth" (1 John 3:18). That might be a meal for the family down the street having a hard week. It might be showing up to help somebody move. It might be sitting with a grieving friend and not filling the silence. It might be fixing the broken door at church that nobody has gotten to. All of that is ministry.
When the Assignment Is Words Anyway
Some of following Jesus is going to be verbal and structured, and you'll have to do it tired. Small groups discuss things. Sermons explain things. Some seasons call for a reading plan you didn't design and don't enjoy. Meeting God through your hands doesn't get you out of those parts.
What helps is doing the rest of the week your own way. If you spent it making something, reading a scene, and helping one person, then you walk into the small group having already been with God that week, and you have something of your own to say when it's your turn to talk.
Bezalel didn't get his own book of the Bible. He got a paragraph, a job, and the Spirit of God, and the tent where Israel met with God was built by his hands. Go make something this week and give it to God.
