One of the main lessons that I'm learning right now is that you do need a balance in your prayer life. How can someone pray for 3 or more people plus their own life? I'm learning this right now because I am a part of my church's prayer ministry. I'm also learning how many people really do need prayer. My church is a really small church but I feel like half of them need prayer. I was thinking about this concept earlier this week. Why? You might ask. I was praying for someone so hard that I forgot to pray for myself. I felt the weight of my world come on me after that thought ran through my mind. Yet I don't want to be too selfish and pray just for myself.
I have close friends that I could be praying for and checking on. I have ministries that I could be praying for. It just seems like my mind goes on one person and can stay on that one person for a long time. Funny when we ask, we do get what we asked for. Before joining the prayer ministry, I felt like my prayers were boring and always the same. Same requests over and over. Now if I was honest with myself, same requests aren't bad because the less you know, the less you have to worry. With my caring heart, that is usually better. Yet there is a lot we need to be praying for, not just ourselves. Prayer in balance helps you really see the "real" world around you and sometimes even your "real" church.
You all are not prefect in anyway. Sorry to break the news to you. Sometimes I wonder how prayer people keep all the requests in line and remember to pray for and even sometimes how to pray for them. I am trying to keep a journal but when you have a thousand of journals, adding one more is hard. The How. I know for me, being younger, praying for the older people can be hard if you don't know every detail because it's not something I have been through yet.
Yet as I get older, I see from my older friends that this is what they were going through and this is how I should or could have been praying for them. That's probably another way that prayer can be in balance too. I know I pray for certain things for every request if I don't know every detail. I pray for peace, strength, wisdom, safety, and rest. I even pray for God's Will to be done and His prefect Timing. This whole balance in prayer thing is new to me but I am learning. I have a great ministry and reading some great books on prayer too.
Writing about prayer and being in a prayer ministry and a new one at that, makes me wish that one of my aunts were still around. She was in the prayer ministry at her church too. I have always been thinking about being in one since she passed but the chance never came up til now. I tried to join at my other church but it was just too big and too many prayers for me to keep up with. I was getting 5 or 6 emails a day with a new person to pray for. Not that that is a bad thing but it was just hard for me because I can only take so much at one time. Plus that prayer ministry had you praying with people at the end of the services if they wanted you too and that I don't do either because of my personality.
I have close friends that I could be praying for and checking on. I have ministries that I could be praying for. It just seems like my mind goes on one person and can stay on that one person for a long time. Funny when we ask, we do get what we asked for. Before joining the prayer ministry, I felt like my prayers were boring and always the same. Same requests over and over. Now if I was honest with myself, same requests aren't bad because the less you know, the less you have to worry. With my caring heart, that is usually better. Yet there is a lot we need to be praying for, not just ourselves. Prayer in balance helps you really see the "real" world around you and sometimes even your "real" church.
You all are not prefect in anyway. Sorry to break the news to you. Sometimes I wonder how prayer people keep all the requests in line and remember to pray for and even sometimes how to pray for them. I am trying to keep a journal but when you have a thousand of journals, adding one more is hard. The How. I know for me, being younger, praying for the older people can be hard if you don't know every detail because it's not something I have been through yet.
Yet as I get older, I see from my older friends that this is what they were going through and this is how I should or could have been praying for them. That's probably another way that prayer can be in balance too. I know I pray for certain things for every request if I don't know every detail. I pray for peace, strength, wisdom, safety, and rest. I even pray for God's Will to be done and His prefect Timing. This whole balance in prayer thing is new to me but I am learning. I have a great ministry and reading some great books on prayer too.
Writing about prayer and being in a prayer ministry and a new one at that, makes me wish that one of my aunts were still around. She was in the prayer ministry at her church too. I have always been thinking about being in one since she passed but the chance never came up til now. I tried to join at my other church but it was just too big and too many prayers for me to keep up with. I was getting 5 or 6 emails a day with a new person to pray for. Not that that is a bad thing but it was just hard for me because I can only take so much at one time. Plus that prayer ministry had you praying with people at the end of the services if they wanted you too and that I don't do either because of my personality.
I hope this last paragraph didn't sound too good or mean but I just needed something to fit my personality and I finally found it. It is a small church with a small prayer ministry and not only that. The person "in charge" actually asked me if I wanted to join and said that I should. When people do that to me, I just feel more wanted and needed. I don't like to be a bother just in case you couldn't figure that out yet.
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