Friday, May 15, 2009

The National Day of Prayer

I’ve always struggled as the leader of an organization with what to do with the Day of Prayer: Do we hold a corporate meeting? Do we encourage people to attend meetings at their own churches or other meetings that are in their area? But I felt impressed this year with the idea that all the missionaries, staff, and those who are concerned with the mission of American Missionary Fellowship should gather together at the same time and pray about the same things.

So I wrote a prayer guide, and at 10:00 EST on the Day of Prayer, May 7, all who were able joined together – alone – and worked through this three-page document, confessing our souls, declaring our dependence, and seeking God’s guidance. The most amazing thing that happened as I was praying was to understand that we were doing this together, that all across the country there were people who were coming to the Lord with their needs, with their hopes, with their sins, and with their inadequacies.

The last four minutes of the hour we spent together, I asked people to do nothing but sit and listen. What was God saying to us? What was God speaking into our lives? And then I asked them to email me responses as to what God was saying, to see if there was a pattern or trend, if we might get a corporate answer to what God wants for us.

I was not prepared for the fifty-nine responses. Some were too personal to share, as God really convicted some people, and some had felt that God was instructing us as a mission along certain areas that needed to be changed. But the overwhelming sense was that God was drawing all of us more toward Him. He wanted us to turn our eyes toward Him; He wanted us to embrace Who He is instead of working at what we do. It was a sense of peace, shalom, so to speak, that our God was speaking into our hearts.

It was powerful to read those. Probably in my twenty-five years of running nonprofits, this Day of Prayer was the most significant, and what was amazing was that we did it alone together. I hope to have another one very soon.


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