This
week the Lord has been teaching me a lot about prayer so I thought it was appropriate
to share with the team the things I was learning during our prayer time. It pumps me up when the Lord teaches me new
things, to the point where I can hardly keep it inside, and I just want to
share it with everyone. That is what did
Thursday during our prayer time and it is what I'm going to do with this blog;
I am going to share with you some of the awesome things the Lord has been
teaching me.

    I
have been slowly digesting the words from the book Celebration of Discipline by
Richard Foster and the latest chapter that I have been reading is call The
Discipline of Prayer. I am almost
tempted to retype the whole chapter because I think it is packed with amazing
insight, but instead I will share only a few paragraphs:

    "Prayer
catapults us onto the frontier of the spiritual life. Of all the Spiritual Disciplines prayer is
the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the
Father. Meditation introduces us to the
inner life, fasting is an accompanying means, study transforms our minds, but
it is the Discipline of prayer that brings us into the deepest and highest work
of the human spirit. Real prayer is life
creating and life changing. 'Prayer--secret, fervent, believing prayer--lies at
the root of all personal godliness' writes William Carey.

    To
pray is to change. Prayer is the central
avenue God uses to transform us. If we
are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic
of our lives. The closer we come to the
heartbeat of God the more we see our need and the more we desire to be
conformed to Christ.

    We
do not pray for people as 'things,' but as 'persons' whom we love. If we have God-given compassion and concern
for others, our faith will grow and strengthen as we pray. In fact, if we genuinely love people, we
desire for them far more than it is within our power to give, and that will
cause us to pray."

    I
love how the Lord desires to transform us; He wants to make us in the likeness
of HIS image and one of the best ways for that to happen through the willingness
to communicate with Him. As He is
transforming our minds to think like his and our hearts to beat like his does,
He is creating compassion in us to desire so much more for those around us.

    1
Thessalonians 5:17 says to pray continuously so Thursday morning I challenged
the team to consciously make an effort to pray for our prayer partners multiple
times through out the day. I asked the
Lord to bring my prayer partners to my mind whenever they needed to be lifted
up in prayer and it was awesome to see how the Lord did just that.   I have seen the Lord answer so many prayers
throughout the past 6 1/2 weeks I have been here in Africa. He has reminded me
of how many people are praying for be back home and with those prayers I have
been able to make it through things I thought would never be possible. I have seen the Lord answer prayers within
the same day I pray them, but also throughout periods of time spent waiting.   One thing the Lord has also been changing my
mindset about is the amount of time I spend praying for others. He brought it to my attention a couple of
weeks ago how MUCH I pray for myself and how LITTLE I pray for others. I have been making conscious effort to pray
for others just as much as, if not more, than I pray for myself. Intersession is a powerful thing and I want
to play a larger role in it. 

    I
will finish with one last thing that the Lord has encouraged me with. In the book, The Celebration of Discipline,
the author give the analogy that an occasional jogger will not become an
Olympic athlete without more practice. In the same way, an occasional prayer will not become an amazing prayer
warrior without practicing. The Lord has
encouraged me to remain positive through my process of developing a deeper
passion for covering others in prayer because it is going to take diligent
practice. If I continue to set small
goals for myself then I will eventually become the prayer warrior the Lord has
created me to be.