Prayer

"I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth."
- James O. Fraser

This was not the quote I was looking for tonight, but it is the quote God wanted me to see. I have struggled for quite some time over why I am here. I won't go into the reasons here on my blog. I'll leave it at the point that I realized today that I do not have a very strong personality.

For several months, maybe even a couple years now, I've felt like God has been calling me to a ministry here in Ukraine of prayer. Not prayer as in "never miss the Tuesday afternoon prayer meeting" or even "get together with a couple other people and pray". No, it is a deeper thing than that, although both of those are very important.

I see things other people do not see. I've been poo-pooed so many times and made to feel ridiculous because of others attitudes that I've just mostly stopped saying what I see and what I think. I'm tired of trying to hold my own against other stronger personalities.

Actually, I'm very tired. Very.

I was weaving the other day and was reminded in my inner spirit to pray for something. So as I sat, pushing the weft threads back and forth, back and forth, pulling the heddle down and beating the threads against each other, praying. The last time I worked on my embroidery I prayed for the person it's intended for and that whole family. I prayed for my grandkids, for my husband, for members of my team, the church, and so forth. And tonight, while listening to a sermon with Mel, weaving back and forth, back and forth, I listened and God spoke in that still, quiet voice.

He is calling me to pray. It is a wider call than here, our church, our team, my family. It is a world-wide call, if that makes sense.

I am interested in what is happening all over the world. I see patterns. I see possible/probable outcomes. And if I don't pray, I can become afraid. Afraid for my family, mostly, for my grandchildren, mostly, because they are not yet Believers. But I am also very concerned for the Church world-wide. Fear is not from God, it is from the Evil One.

So a call to prayer, to a ministry of prayer, to a ministry I cannot do if I'm busy doing other things, other things that I have been kept from doing one way or the other. And that gives me a peace I've never had since we arrived in Kherson.

Along with this tonight, over the past several months I've felt that God is calling me to quietness. I have a quiet voice already and am talked over so often. I lost track years ago of how many times I get part of a thought out of my mouth and the other person(s) take off and jabber over whatever else I was going to say. This has happened so many times that when I am speaking, I often just shut up in the middle of a sentence because no one is listening anyway - they are talking over me. There has been a lot of wounded pride in this over the years. Pain. Anger. Depression. Yet, tonight I am realizing that maybe this is a gift. The gift of quietness. Of silence. Of stillness. Of observation. Of seeing and praying. Truly, I have a sence of peace over this that I have not experienced for a very long time.

"I pray that no missionary will ever be as lonely as I have been." - Lottie Moon

I am tired. Very tired. But I have my work to do. To meditate on God's Holy Word, to watch, to listen, to pray. And to rest in Him.

Will I never say anything again? Ha! Hardly! I'm sure I'll get some of my opinions out. I just pray that it will not be so important to me any more to "hold my own".

There is a sense of freedom in opening my hands and saying to myself and to God, "This (ministry, opinion, thought, idea, whatever) is not mine to hold on to, to be proud of, to demand it be attended."

"So many missionaries, intent on doing something, forget that His main work is to make something of them..."
Jim Eliot