A Call to Prayer

I started to blog for several reasons.  I won’t list all of them right now, but we have already discussed one of the reasons – To become a better writer.  I also wanted to take advantage of the free opportunity to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Sure, there are a ton of websites that share scriptures and biblical teaching concerning the great commission.  However, I wanted to share how God reveals himself in the day-to-day lives of ordinary people like me.  In writing and sharing, I expected and looked forward to the opportunity to give… 

            I did not know what to expect in return.  Maybe I would receive a comment or two, but I did not expect to receive anything of significant value and certainly not right away.  I have been surprised by the way my heart has been stirred in these few short weeks of sharing with my friends.  I paid attention to my surroundings before, but now I am more aware.  When I am excited about blessings or become shaken by the harsh realities of life, I want to know: What God is saying? What he is doing? How is he revealing himself to us, and how should we respond?  I always want to respond by doing something…ANYTHING.  If I can, I should at least try to do something, right?  Are you following our book study? 

Here is the problem: Sometimes I don’t know what to do, or feel as if I can do nothing at all.  Both thoughts make me quite uneasy.  I can’t rescue all of the impoverish children from their slums, or the women that are trafficked all over the world from their pimps, or all of the American children that are stuck in the sometimes vicious foster care system (and I won’t address the travesty occurring in our public school system).  So I began to ask the Lord, “What can I do?” 

The response is a simple call to prayer. 

I can ask God to show his love and grace in these difficult situations.  I can trust that he will show me what to do, even if I am only responsible to pray.  For me, this has been the first hidden blessing of blogging.  Over the past couple years I have had a desire to enhance my commitment to prayer.  I pray daily, but sometimes get too distracted with the busyness of life to commit the necessary time that I feel prayer is due.  I was thinking that I needed to devote all of this time to prayer during my personal bible study or directly before bedtime.  This was a misconception on my part.  When the “allotted” time presented itself for prayer, some requests would sadly and accidently fall by the wayside.  We have extended the church bulletin and Sunday school requests to include our phone lines, email accounts, and who would have thought even Facebook, as regular mediums for prayer requests.  Prayer requests are constantly flowing in, and I do not want to miss the opportunities to pray. 

I wanted to avoid those “accidents” so I began to pray right away.  Read email – Pray.  End phone conversation – Pray.  Read the news – Pray.  Check Facebook – Pray.  Enter the bloggers world – Pray.  Check Twitter – DEFINITELY pray (Side note: Gaga has the most followers on there).  So I am paying more attention and praying more frequently, “Thank you, Blog!”  Thank you for joining me on this journey.  Let us pray, shall we…