Prayer

As I begin this new journey back to Guatemala God has been teaching me so much already in our School of Missions(SOM). The past couple days we have been having a prayer retreat and it has really challenged my heart. Many times out lives are so busy and we can even busy them with things like ministry and then pray and ask God to bless our ministry. But what if, instead of just surrounding our ministries in prayer, our ministries flowed out of our prayers. Lives and hearts are changed as a result of our prayers, not our actions. Only God can truly change people and make our ministry effective. Our actions are the tools but God is the one working. And so our prayers are the most important part of our ministry. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this quite like I want to but hopefully this all makes sense.
I have really been challenged in my prayer life. If I want to help change lives, it starts with prayer. One thing that was said that I really liked was that there are 3 main parts to ministry: prayer, listening to others, and communication.
We also talked about how there are different ways to pray. The three main ones(that we talked about) are praying with others words, praying without words, and praying with our own words.
We can use the psalms or other scripture to pray, or even join in the thousands of brothers and sisters who join daily in fixed-hour prayer. This one was a little strange to me at first but after doing it a couple days I really like it. Joining with others at a set time to pray and refocus on God can be a powerful thing(if you want more info on this ask me).
Praying without words is something that I learned is extremely hard for me. I get so distracted as I sit and try to focus and I got frustrated. But we also had the story of a little boy who was with his father and he would sit with him for a couple minutes and then get distracted for a bit with toys or other things. But the father loved the moments that his son would stop playing with his toys, even for a minute, and turn his attention to his father and just sit with him. I don't know if I told the story exactly right but the point is that God loves when we take the time to sit with him, despite distractions or even if we fall asleep. This kind of prayer is something I really want to grow in. I want to sit at the King's feet and just listen. It is a discipline I need to learn. Another thing that I learned about it is that there will be times when we feel like we have wasted our time and it wasn't productive but those are the times we must work through and be faithful to continue doing it.
And finally we talked about praying and talking to God as a friend(John 15:5). Just sharing your heart with him and talking.
And to finish we asked 3 questions. Who do I want to be? How do I want to live? How do I want to live so that I can be who I want to be?
I want my life to be one where I am prayerful. I hope this encourages others to pray and be challenged in the things I have been challenged with the last couple days. :)
It excites me that it's only te first week and already God is teaching me so much. :)