a heartwarming prayer
30 Dec 2024 It is with regularity that the women of our church get together to pray. This month also, the women decided to meet three mornings to thank God for His care over the past year and pray for His blessing in the coming year. I hesitated whether to attend.
It is sometimes difficult for me to really feel at one with these women because I miss many of their prayers because of the language barrier. When prayers are said in Ewe, I do catch a few words here and there...but I can't say that I myself am edified by those prayers.... Besides, praying for 3 hours in a small, little ventilated and very hot room can just be very difficult. Still, I decided to join the women, at least one morning. My presence would encourage them and I am immensely convinced of the need for prayer! In addition, I realised that I myself also desperately needed to seek God's face! The past few weeks I had been feeling so cold spiritually and this had started to bother me.
How grateful I am that I went! In fact, Natalie was there and she sat next to me. Unasked, she began to gently translate all the prayers for me. And one of the prayers, prayed by a dear sister touched me immensely! The women had arrived at the topic of ‘mission and evangelism’. With regularity, the elders call on the congregation to evangelise together...and also around Christmas, the elders had called on the church to talk to people and invite them to come to church with them...And so one of the women prayed:
‘Lord, You are Almighty God and You can make water flow from a rock! And so, Lord you can also make it a blessing when we share the Gospel with others...while our own hearts are hard and cold...But don't let it be so Lord! Forgive us our cold hearts and may we love You so much that the words, as it were flow out of us...That we cannot stop speaking about You because we love You so much’
This prayer touched me deeply! This is evangelising...speaking to others about the Lord Jesus...because we love Him so much!
‘And on the last, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood there and cried, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture says, Streams of living water will flow from within him.’ John 7: 37,38
