P-A-R-R-E-Y. Solving the “Jumble” puzzle in the newspaper is a nightly habit of mine. This was the last word in the scrambled word game, and I was stuck. I asked Bud, my husband, for help. After looking at it for several minutes, he shook his head and handed it back to me. I looked at it again. Suddenly, it hit me! PRAYER! That was the answer. It IS the answer! God keeps bombarding me with the call to pray.
It started a few weeks ago when the Women’s Ministry Team met to plan for the coming year. As the coordinator, I was prepared with an agenda. I had poster board, sticky notes, pens and pencils ready for the team to record their ideas. I was determined that we would settle on at least two big events that would draw in TOF women. We began brain-storming. The phone rang, and I had to excuse myself for a few minutes. When I came back, everyone was in agreement. They decided we needed to pray about it.
I’ll admit that after everyone had gone, I was a little discouraged. I like action, and I’ve never considered myself a prayer warrior. Sometimes when we say, “Let’s pray about it,” we say it and don’t mean it. But as I went to bed that night I said, “OK, Lord. You’re in charge. You know what the women of our church need, and I’m asking you for your direction and guidance.”
Since then, I’m amazed at the way God has shown me that prayer needs to be the focus of our Women’s Ministry. I was reminded of a book I read long ago, What Happens When Women Pray by Evelyn Christenson. The title of Chapter 1 is “Prayer is the Answer!”
She tells the story of the aging custodian of her church who was experiencing some mild dementia. Her husband, the pastor, found him sweating profusely and struggling to push the vacuum cleaner. The pastor looked down, and there, lying on the floor was the plug. “The dear man had vacuumed the whole auditorium without plugging in the vacuum cleaner! “ She asks, “Isn’t that what happens to us? We work, we pull, we struggle, and we plan until we’re utterly exhausted, but we have forgotten to plug into the source of power. And that source of power is prayer – ‘the effectual, fervent prayer’ of a righteous person avails much. Instead of us following our tiny, tiny plan, God wants to pour out His power upon us. It’s exciting!”
I’m excited! As a child of God and a woman of Trinity, I want you to be excited too! Will you covenant with me and members of the Women’s Ministry team to pray for the Women’s Ministry of TOF? Will you pray about how you can plug in to this ministry? What can we do to make prayer a priority and strengthen our prayer lives? Pray about it. We are waiting for His answer.
To be continued….
