several of us at my church gather on tuesday nights to pray. i started coming to these meetings last summer, but during the school year, i hadn’t been able to come because tuesday nights i would volunteer as a tutor at a inner-city ministry.
sometimes, i would skip the tutoring and just go to these prayer meetings. i think i get in touch with my inner mary the best at these meetings – i receive so many blessings through others’ prayers (so much so that i almost feel guilty!), and i would sometimes wish i hadn’t committed to volunteering, so i could keep my tuesdays free all the time!
but now that i am employed by said ministry, i can’t just skip out anymore. as a result, one of the things i’m really looking forward to this summer is the change in
hours at ulc – i’ll be able to make it to tuesday night prayer meetings
on time!
lately, i decided to come to these meeting, despite being late. i went last week, and was still blessed.
this week, i decided i would come, even though i knew i’d miss out on a chunk of it. i parked my car and headed to the doors, hoping someone would be around to open them.
i saw no one through the glass doors. so i walked around, to see if one of the entrance points would be open. alas, all were locked. there was a set of doors where the first were open, but the second were not. i saw two people walk by, and i knocked on the doors, but they didn’t hear (or didn’t care? who knows). i called the brother who facilitates these meetings, but he didn’t pick up, which is just as well, because the meeting was well underway.
[on a tangent: i think it’s a bit strange that there have been preparation meetings for the myriad of short-term teams our church is sending this summer, but the doors are locked.]
anyway, i was kinda discouraged. i walked around, toward the lot, and i think my eyes were almost watery. all this time and effort (and money! $1.25 to take the toll road, which is a bit faster) to get here, only to be shut out.
was God trying to tell me something? was i being selfish in wanted to be prayed for? is it weakness/laziness that i can’t pray as well on my own as i do when i’m in the company of brothers and sisters?
fortunately, as i was walking back, i saw someone walk toward the doors; it was a friend, opening the door to let me in. he told me that there were more people present than usual, which is something is so praiseworthy; i might not have been prayed for per usual (when there are fewer people), but i was blessed nonetheless.
i look back and i wish had prayed more fervently, with focus. and i probably do need to reexamine my motives for going to these meetings. i’ve just begun reading seth barnes’s book on listening prayer and i can’t get past the first day because i need to do just that – be honest with why i want this so badly.
regardless, by God’s grace, i did learn a valuable lesson through this:
whether corporately or solely…Lord, help me to always pray and not give up…
