praying

here are some things holy spirit broke down for me today during prayer:

1.
Most of my time praying should be spent praying for others. I believe this is the heart of God: to put others above myself. God knows my prayers and my needs, so as I pray for others, I trust that He will remember my needs and meet them without me even asking.
If I'm at a prayer meeting and we are only praying for ourselves, what difference have we made? 10 people will be blessed. BUT, if we pray for the world, then we make strides for the kingdom of God.

Plus, look at the habit that forms: If we go to prayer meeting every week and just pray for each other, then we've brought all of our focus down to one group of people. We make a habit of looking inward and having small vision. That is not God's heart at all. Our hearts should always be going outwards with big vision and big prayers. While praying, we can either choose to practice this or build habits against it.

2.
Why should I pray an hour for the homeless when I could pray 2 minutes then actually help the homeless for 58 minutes? In those 2 minutes, I could make every prayer for the homeless that I can: good health, people to love them, Jesus to show up in their lives, & relationship with Jesus. That only took me 10 seconds.
Yes, we MUST pray before we go, but we cannot let prayer keep us from action. We can no longer hide behind our prayers - we must act.
You know all the needs anyways, so lifting up a quick prayer in faith is as effective as a long prayer in faith. Praying with more faith in less time = more time for action.

The issue that most people have (and the biggest issue that I have) is time.
This brings a peculiar truth: the busier we get, the more we must pray.
If I cannot be the one to act, then I must be the one to pray. The more busy I am, the less time I have for action and the more I must be praying.

I know that I cannot help the homeless and help the orphans and set people free from human trafficking and put God-fearing leaders in every country all in one-day, so I must pray for these things.
In the areas that I can do something, I do it. In the areas that I am unable to do something, I pray.

It is for this reason that I believe Jesus prayed so much and that I believe that we should pray so much. There are just a lot of things to pray for.

3.
you said that if we love you then we will feed your sheep. so God, convict us if we do not interact with non-Christians. If we fail to do this, then we are ineffective as Christians. You only gave us two charges: love You and love our neighbors. How can we love our neighbors if we don't interact with them?

Let's Keep It Simple

the flowers of the field do not toil or labor, yet they are better dressed than Solomon

Before I left for India, I received a rejection email from a missions school that I truly believed God had been leading me to go to for years. This threw me into a confusion - I had no idea what to do with my life. This was the one thing that I was confident God was leading me to, and I was wrong about it. It disoriented me so much that I became unsure about any other choice that I had made about my future. I was unraveled, and desperate for God to mold me again.

I had no time to deal with this in India, and I didn't. I didn't feel a burden in any way - it was the grace of God. It wasn't until I got to Cambodia that I began to search for answers. My first few days, I was alone and frustrated with my fear. I stopped trying to talk to people and I isolated myself. I began to pray and ask God how I could end up in this situation. The next week, I began teaching english.

I continued to pray hours a day while I was teaching. I heard nothing, so I started making plans. I could either send myself as a missionary, one person. Or, I could use my opportunity as an American with a college degree to earn a lot of money and support multiple missionaries to Cambodia. The latter sounds the most beneficial to the kingdom (without anything else being considered) so I became concerned that I would need to change my plans.

Really, there’s no way to know what’s better. God blesses what He blesses. If He blesses me as a missionary, I could bring more benefit than a whole team of missionaries. This is the power of God, and I understand this, which is why it was so difficult for me to make a decision.

Once I came back to the US, I started looking up jobs and their salaries and their demand and I came upon ‘Physician Assistant’. I remembered one inspiring statement from a child in Cambodia. She said, ‘I want to be a doctor for the poor because the people here die just because they can’t afford the medicine.’

At once, I was cut to the heart and I understood the practical need of the people that I consider my ‘neighbors’.

After talking with a close friend a few days ago, I realized that I had spent my whole life making sure I never made the WRONG decision, but I had also spent my whole life never moving forward.
I had always been prepared for every opportunity, saying, “God, as soon as you tell me where to go, I will be ready to go.”

I am now certain that God has told me countless times ‘Come here’ or ‘go there’ or ‘invest here’, and I was too focused on not messing up to hear His call.

My philosophy has changed. Now, I respond to what I believe to be the call. I see people in need of medical aide, so I’m going to use the opportunities I have to meet that need. And if it turns out I’m doing the wrong thing, I trust God will let me know.

It's only when I made things complex that I moved into inaction. So let's keep it simple.

It's not through the world's wisdom that it has come to know God. Christ said, "It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." He came for the ones in need of Him. The needy and poor in spirit that He reached out to were not impacted by the great wisdom of Christ, but by the great LOVE of Christ.

Some demand signs, some demand intellect and argument, but we preach Christ crucified. We say that His death is worth change in my life: my sacrifice for His gain.
I may lose face. Everyone that I've told I would be a missionary will see me as someone who has backed down from the call of God. I don't care. I'm only concerned with obeying God and continuing to preach Christ crucified with my lifestyle. Christ saw a need and He responded. I will do my best to do the same. I now believe life decisions were meant to be that simple, so let's keep it simple.

I think God would be more pleased with me TRYING to do what I think is right than me not doing anything. Like I said in the last email, I don’t want to bury my mina in the ground - I want to take what I’ve been given and multiply it.