Silence

Trying to find silence.

Missions

There are two missionary families that I'm connected with who are moving to new places and a third who are moving back to where they have been serving after a few months visiting family.  All three are in the process of moving and will be in their new home within a week or two.  This week I'll be praying for them, that they will be able to travel and settle without difficulty and that these moves will be fruitful.

Renewed Relationship

This week I start my senior year.  I'm praying for a renewed relationship with God through prayer.  I want to get back to the relationship we had in France on the retreat when I had a few hours a day of silence dedicated to prayer alone.  I know that prayer will be the only way to get through my senior year.

Listening

My prayer for this week sort of relates to last week's.  I was listening to the radio and I heard a segment about listening and how important it is but how most people don't really listen.  It got me thinking.  This week I'm going to pray to learn silence and listening.

Social Skills

This coming week I want to pray for better social skills.  Summer has been awful for my social skills and after being thrust back into the social scene I feel myself being uncomfortable and unwilling to engage in conversation, even with my close friends.  I prefer to just watch in silence.  On the occasions that I do join in conversation, I seem to forget all the rules of proper social conduct.  So I'm praying for the strength to not be afraid of conversation, but the restraint to be enjoyable to interact with.

Peace

Now that I'm home again, life has picked back up and stressed me out.  I'm glad I had an easier time adjusting in terms of culture shock than I did last summer though.  I found silence and peace when I was in France and I enjoyed it very much.  My prayer for this week is to find peace in my daily life to focus on God.

Taize and Conversational Prayer

It seemed appropriate to begin this blog this week because on Friday I leave for a prayer retreat in Taize, France and soon after I return I begin my senior year.  The focus of this trip is silence and prayer, with cultural experience and learning mixed in.  I'm looking forward to just being myself because I don't know a single person there, so I don't have any previous images to live up to.  I think it will be really good for me.  Just to have an idea of the event, it's a week long prayer retreat for young adults (ages 16-29) from all over the world.  So there will be about 5,000 "Christian" young people from all over the world, speaking dozens of languages.  At least one of them is bound to have an interest in missions, right?  I'm really praying for some opportunities in terms of new relationships.

So in terms of my first weekly prayer log:  I'm going to be praying for God to help me stay focused when I'm in prayer with Him.  I want to be in constant prayer with him, throughout my entire day.  I'm praying to learn to pray in a way that is pleasing to God.  Right now that means learning to treat prayer as simply a conversation with God that continues through the day.  Lately I've learned a lot more about prayer and how, even though God knows what we are going to ask before we say it(Matthew 6:8), He is still waiting for us to ask because He wants that relationship with us.  So my prayer while I'm in France is that my relationship with God would be strengthened through prayer, and that it will not be weakened after I return.