Last night I was a bit excited with how things worked out with the neighbor because whether the man was healed or not, the hand of God was in it.   It stirred my sense of adventure in the search and discovery of praying for people.  This morning I woke up and for some reason felt kind of stressed at the thought of trying to “find” someone.  This experiment will probably have sacrifice but today I didn’t have as much emotional steam to go out searching.

I asked repeatedly to send someone.  I ended up meeting a man who had more conditions than I can list here but one of those conditions was a shoulder problem.  He was really in pain.  My challenge was that I didn’t know how to break into the conversation with an offer to pray.  I previously tried to encourage him to not give up on his shoulder and to keep praying.  I said that to him because I was shopping for an entrance but he didn’t give me one.  Several minutes later as we were getting to the point of parting ways and I’m praying to God for an entrance, he casually mentions he and his wife pray every night.  I take that as my green light and ask him quickly if I can pray before he goes on his way.  I keep it short, pray quick for healing and then he leaves.  It wasn’t an appropriate time to chat much.  Again I really believe the Lord opened that door.  His mentioning that he prayed every night gave me the entrance I was needing.

So far this hasn’t necessarily looked like what I thought.  I imagined praying for people and having conversation with them, but so far it has been a quick prayer and then depart, mainly because of social circumstances.  That’s Ok but somehow it seems like God is more likely to heal if I stick with them longer.  I think that is probably the spirit of religion trying to rear its ugly head.  Will God only heal if I have intensive prayer with time with someone?  How long is enough time?  Surely He is bigger than that box.  

But it also hasn’t looked like what I expected in another way.  For three days now God has brought me someone or showed me whom to pray for.  That’s really cool.  I really hope it continues.

I still long for someone to go with me on prayer escapades as I do believe God is pleased when we work as a body but I haven’t found someone yet.  I’m considering drafting a teen at church on one of the days but she lives quite far away.   If you’re reading this (not 5 years after the fact), perhaps your prayers for the next 37 days can be that partnership?  Will you join me in prayer?

Learning Lesson for Day #3:  Trust the Lord to open doors.  Rest in him to help you obey.  (I probably will need that one regularly).

Another learning lesson for Day #3:  I labeled these posts as “praying for the sick.”  We’re so programmed in this terminology that even after writing the post called “Jesus did NOT say to pray for the sick,” I slipped right back into it.  Are we entrenched in our ways or what.  Jesus says heal the sick.  Gotta change my label starting today.