At the beginning of August, my team chose individual goals for the month to help us stay intentional with our free time. I wanted to grow in intimacy with the Lord through prayer. I planned to spend 20 minutes in prayer in the morning and 30 minutes in prayer in the evening. However, the Lord changed my prayer life a lot more than just in the amount of time spent.
Every Wednesday in India, I stayed home and helped cook with my teammate Grace. She is so wise, and I learned so much through conversations with her. She talked a lot about praying expectantly for other people. She firmly believes that everything in the bible is truth, and she takes it as promises. So, in verses such as Matthew 7:7, she takes it as a promise that the Lord will give her what she asks for if it is a Godly desire. This changes the way she prays for people, and it makes it easy to give thanks for things before they happen. My prayer life has been changed, especially in the way that I have been praying for my family and close friends back home.
I love how the Lord works to bring all things together. This month in Nepal, we start every day with an hour in prayer. Our host says that before we can tell someone about Jesus, we have to tell Jesus about that someone. He calls it our amad time. Amad is the Hebrew word from 1 Kings 17:1 meaning to abide, to stand, to be in God’s presence.
This past week, we had two opportunities to pray big prayers and declare truth over the city. On Monday, we hiked up to one of the highest points in Kathmandu (that doesn’t require trekking). There is a Hindu temple up there for a goddess believed to help people get pregnant. Our group hiked up to the top, a little away from the temple, and had a time of worship. We also wrote words that we are praying over the city on rocks and built an altar for the Lord, declaring that He is the one in charge of this city.
On Tuesday, our squad split into 3 groups for a prayer walk time. My group went to pray over another Hindu temple. This one was very different than the one on Monday. This one was less of a temple and more of a gated in area around a lake. People bring in deceased bodies to be offered to another goddess. They lay the wrapped body out on a platform and cover it in oils. They stick a lit candle in the person’s mouth (all evil stems from the mouth) and let it burn down until the until body is on fire. After it has burned a while, they push the body until the water, which they believe leads to the mouth of the goddess. While I was praying in such a dark place, the Lord reminded me that the people there were created in HIS image. They have the same deep hunger for something more that we all have in our souls; they have just been misguided about where to find fulfillment.
It is clear that my prayer life has been a big theme in my Race so far. This blog has only been a glimpse of how the Lord has been working. I could go on and on about the big prayers I’ve been praying for my family, what the Lord has been speaking to me during listening prayer, etc. For now, I will leave you with the sweet reminder that the Lord cares about the desires and worries of your heart. Take it all to Him today. He would love to hear from you.
