I often get asked, “How do you do what you do? All that flying and traveling and going so many places? Don’t you get tired?” The easy answer is “Yes, I get tired.” But the deeper answer to all the questions has struck me forcibly this week.
How do we do this? One word. Prayer. Oh, and one more word. Technology.
Not our prayer, though of course we too pray. It’s the prayer of God’s people that we request and receive. The women like Katherine who toddled up to me last weekend at a meeting in Lancaster with a huge smile. My husband says she was old when she ran his middle-school camps, so who knows how old she is now. But Katherine is a warrior who prays. “Oh, I was hoping you would be here,” she said. “I love getting your email and I pray you through.” Then she proceeded to ask specific questions about our recent travel to Asia. Who said older people can’t enjoy the internet?
Tuesday it was a note from Kay telling me that she and her sister are praying for us this week. “Just love having the news regularly. We go everywhere with you.” Then there’s Jo who “stalks” us on Facebook and travels the world with us even though she doesn’t like to fly. Wednesday night it was Marian, Sam, Jay, Gladys, and a crew of others who wanted to ask questions because they read, and then, they pray.
There’s no magic to this. No formulas. No incantations. No hocus pocus. Prayer does not change the plans of God, but I firmly believe that prayer pulls us alongside God’s will and helps us understand His plans.
Thursday night I sat in the middle of hundreds of students at the end of several days of concentrated focus on God’s heart for the world. We had requested prayer for this week, for these students, for our interaction with them. God worked in their hearts and all of us who were there to represent the world had deep and frequent conversations with students seriously asking how to know what God wanted in their lives.
The speaker asked those who had done some “business with God” this week to come forward. He wasn’t asking for commitment to overseas service, but for commitment to follow the heart of God -- wherever that led. Probably half the students streamed to the front and knelt together across the front.
Later they stood in silent lines, moving forward to serve themselves in communion. At the close, they gathered around the speaker and his wife to pray for them as they prepare to return to Europe.
Most of these students will not serve overseas as missionaries, but they will be senders. They will be the prayer warriors of a distant generation. They will toddle up to younger missionaries in 60 or 70 years and tell them how much they enjoy whatever communication they get at that point in time. Maybe they will be able to virtually visit “their missionaries” on the screen, better than Skype and all we have now. I don’t know what it will look like, but prayer has always moved people to follow the heart of God. The Apostle Paul asked for it and got it from his friends too.
Technology just makes it happen faster, and brings huge blessings both directions – to the warriors at home and the warriors on the front line.
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