Prayer

God has taught me alot about prayer in the past 7.5 years that I've been in a relationship with Him but I still have many questions and wonder about how it really works at times.  For the past couple of months I have been reading Philip Yancey's book called Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?  There are so many great things I am learning from this book but I wanted to share two of them.  This chapter talked all about the partnership that we have with God.

"God chose a different style of governing the world, a partnership which relies on human agency and choice.  C.S. Lewis suggests that we best imagine the world not as a state governed by a potentate but as a work of art, something like a play, in the process of being created."

Another chapter goes on to talk about John 17.  In it Jesus is reminiscing about life before planet Earth, eternity before time.  "He gives the ultimate answer to the "Why" questions: why creation? Why free will? Why human history and the onslaught of time? From the beginning, before the beginning, God willed to share with other creatures the love and fellowship-the life-enjoyed in the godhead before creation, now, and forever."

Why am I sharing all of this?  Because last week God answered one of my prayers, I'm reading this book on prayer, and on top of that the sermon today was on prayer.  For the whole past month I have been missing the interactions I have had with students since they have been back in school.   I told God that I really missed the students and then this past Thursday He brought me one!  I first met Phiona when she was in my group at the first camp I came to in January 2008.  She is one of about 6 girls that I really connected with and kept in touch with after the camp and saw on my multiple trips back here.

Phiona came by the office on Thursday last week just to say goodbye to me.  She is going back to spend time in her village with her grandmother and wasn't sure if she would be able to come back to Jinja before I leave in May.  How precious is that!  She told me she needed to get going because she was going to walk an extremely far distance in order to get to where she was going since she didn't have any money for transport.  So I remedied that problem and asked her if I could spend some time with her and take her to lunch.  She gratefully accepted my offer and into town we went.  We went to Park Villa Restaurant and I had the opportunity to just sit and talk with her for about an hour.  She lost both of her parents right after her youngest sibling was born and has stayed with her grandmother ever since.  She plans to go to vocational school next year to be a nurse.  I told her how glad I was that she wanted to do that because I know that she will be different from the nurses that I've heard about here who could care less about their patients.   It was such a blessing to be there with her!  After we finished we went outside to see that it was pouring buckets.  And of course I had forgotten my umbrella at the office, so I was like well we'd better just walk fast.  So I started walking after the rain had lessened a little bit and then I didn't get very far before it started pouring again so I went under an overhang.  Well Phiona had apparently watched me do all of this even though we both went into two different directions.  So she came down to where I was and kept me company for another 15 minutes before it slowed down again. 

Sunday we went to a different church.  We typically go to Victory Family Center but today we went to one of their church plants which is pastored by Godfrey, who we have hired many times to be our driver to go to the airport or Kampala.  In all of our hours spent in the car we have had many great conversations with him and have learned a lot about Christianity here in Uganda.  He is a really great man and you can really tell that he really loves Jesus.  Today he spoke about praying by faith by using James 5:15-18.  In these verses Elijah is mentioned as" a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months.  Then he prayed again and the sky poured rain and the earth produced fruit."  When Elijah was a prophet in the Old Testament, Israel was involved in a lot of sinful things but he knew God's will for Israel and he knew his God.  Godfrey said that we are so easily prone to being deceived into thinking that the things of this world are better for us than God's will.  We turn from God just like the Israelites did.  Elijah was an ordinary person but he believed in what God said in His Word and he believed in the One he was praying to.   He encouraged us to memorize God's Word and pray God's Word over things because it is so powerful.  He said we need to know God's Word here in Uganda because we are so easily deceived. He told us about a woman who went to a pastor who was staying at a hotel in town and said I will pray for your problems for 50,000 shillings.   The woman said she only had 30,000 and the pastor said that's ok I will pray for you and your problem will be partly solved.  (WOW!)  The pastor had told Mary Ann the previous day about a young boy that came to him and wanted prayer from him because a witchdoctor had put a stone into his body.  The witchdoctor took a stone in his hand and did a (what we call in America-a magic trick) and made it disappear leaving the boy to believe that the stone was now in his body!  (WOW!)  There is a lot of deception here.  My prayer is that God would continue to build up my faith in Him and that His truth would reign here.