Prayer Matters
Last night Lisa called me at about 7:45 asking me if I could go to the prayer meeting that J.Yee leads. I thought she wanted to go and didn’t want to be alone… so I was like yeah, sure, I’ll see if I can go. Turns out others were also invited though and she just had this crazy impulse to get youth together at the prayer meeting. The meeting started at 8, and we got there around 8:45.
Sat in for a few minutes, then went into Pastah Steve’s office. Out of the 20+ people Lisa invited, Michelle, Justin, Paul, Bill, Lisa and myself came. At first everyone was just sort of sitting around like “What…. are we doing……..?” I got Steve’s guitar out, and we all chatted about any prayer requests… Here’s everything we offered to one another:
- A girl’s mom in the hospital
- Unity within the Youth… there are currently quarrels.
- Revival.
- The raising up of leaders… anointing. equipping. loving.
- Preparing of peoples’ hearts so that we can love them with God’s love.
- Upcoming ministries (prayer groups, worship teams, outreach groups)
- Broken families
- Dependence on God… not our sponsors, not our pastors, not even each other all of the time.
- Unsaved loved ones
- Pure hearts, pure motives, pure actions
- Hearts of compassion for the leaders… that we would reach out to others and not stay in our comfort zones, “for God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline.” 2 Tim 1:7
I went with little to no expectations, but we prayed, and we worshipped. There were breaks with just conversation, but the entire time we could feel God’s presence. He successfully opened our hearts. Near the end, everyone took a turn praying. It was so unplanned; it nearly made me burst out laughing. We were singing a song… I don’t even remember what it was, and then I stopped singing, but continued strumming, and began to pray aloud. After I was done with my short rant, Lisa prayed over us as well, and before we knew it, everyone in the circle had prayed.
Though it wasn’t something that was particularly burning a hole in my heart, something one of the people there said stuck out so much to me. As someone was praying they said “Don’t let this be like school, God. Don’t let us be like school. We don’t want to be like school… we want…. we want school to be like us!” For one reason or another this just seemed like the wisest thing in the world to say.
I suppose I’ve been struggling with it… since about the second semester of Freshman year. At school I’m so incredibly different than from how I am at church. Though I’m not entirely like school, I definitely just sink into the background, and I’m the shy little asian kid who only talks to a few people… while at church I’m outgoing, loud, so much more myself it’s insane. I’ve realized I need to once again become passionate. become inspired. become confident in myself. and become confident in God. I’m not sure right now how or when it’s gonna happen… But especially over this summer, I’ve learned that God is ridiculous. I give up, I fall down and God pulls me right back. One method being through ridiculous freak phone calls from friends wanting to go to prayer meetings. Thank you, Lisa… I love seeing God work through people to change lives.
The 5 youth that attended… we all plan to continue meeting. We all want more encounters with God, we all want to grow together, build each other up, and serve our Lord and Savior together. This is unity, folks. This is the prayer group I’ve been anticipating and asking God for. This is Prayer Matters.
