The 7th Day

This last week was an intense week. A really intense week. The church I’m apart of here in Corvallis had a corporate fast for 7 days. I decided to participate. I never thought God would open my eyes to some things like He did. He moved in a mighty way throughout the church, and it was an amazing thing to see. So powerful. God taught me some things.

1) Fervent, persistent, prayer with expectation.

Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much – James 5:16

At the beginning of the week, I had some things I wanted to pray about, but wasn’t really fervent about them…initially. I went to evening prayer meeting on Monday, and one of the pastors of the church talked about a passage in scripture where Elijah prayed for rain for 7 days, with expectation. That really spoke to me. I realized that yeah, I pray for things on a repeated basis, but did I really pray with expectation? Did I really expect God to answer, expect God to work? I noticed that so often I didn’t. I think this is a weak spot in so many Christians today. They don’t pray with the expectation that God will move, that God will work. God wants us to believe. He wants us to expect the amazing. He is a capable God, capable of doing anything that you bring to Him, BUT we have to pray in expectancy.

Along with this is fervency. Another way of putting this is, praying passionately. We shouldn’t pray passively, with a lackadaisical attitude. We should pray with every ounce of  passion we have. This brings to mind the prayer of  Jesus in Gethsemane. He was praying so passionately He was sweating blood. If only we could have half of that passion, imagine how much more God would move.

2) Being patient before God

Be still and know that I am God – Psalm 46:10

I realized that so often I pray and do all of the talking, and rarely do I wait on God to speak or to move. On Thursday night, my roommate prayed that we would be still before God, and I realized that I am never still before God. I pray and move on. I need to wait for God to speak. I need to be patient and wait for His still, small voice. So often God wants to bring us to a place of waiting before He will move. I think this is because when we are waiting, we are trusting, because we have nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. We need patience before God, only then will he move

A New Term

Well, it is that time of year again, when I am school, being spiteful of the rest of the nation that still has at least one more week off for Christmas break . Anyway, I’m two days into classes, and I like most of them. I have this one class though, it will be an odd one. It is my Philosophy class. The title is thus “Quest for Meaning: World Religions” I have to say, this shall be an interesting class. I am required to go to two services of different faith traditions than my own. So, for those of you in Corvallis, if you see me walking into some weird building or something, fear not, it is for the quest of an A. I also have to watch two movies on some other faiths. The professor seems nice enough, but I’m not sure where he is coming from in the class, raised Lutheran, spent four years living in a Buddhist temple, and who knows what else. I also plan on resuming my daily prayer points this term, so tune in and join with me in prayer!