March? What happened to February?

Okay, I know it's been shamefully long since my last post. I am at a place now where I feel like so much has happened that nothing has and there's nothing to say. My kids have been sick for one thing. I have the ever-looming talk on Titus 2, and then there's regular daily life...it's warming up and I have been piddling some in my garden. My peas and turnips are just peeking out of the ground. The daffodils are blooming, along with my pear tree...which in the words of my friend Kim, "makes me feel like I'm way behind". I have a library book that is now a month overdue. Yipe! But I'm STILL not finished with it yet. I hope they don't send the library police after me. My brother-in-law got married last Saturday and my little girl and I were both a part of the ceremony. Johnmark's birthday is 12 days away. And so you see that so much has happened I can't really capture in a post. I will just have to move on. Two things on my mind today...let's see if I can get to them both. First, I wanted to share about one of my favorite times of prayer that I look forward to each week with total expectancy. At 9:00 on each Sunday morning (one hour before the service starts) a handful of us arrive to pray over the service. It is amazing how God moves during that time WITHOUT fail each week. Would that our entire church came to just one of these times to see and be blessed by the power of God. If you have something like this available to you on Sundays, please take advantage. There's no fuel for faith like the heartfelt, desperate prayers of some hungry believers on a Sunday morning. Ok ok, so what does this time look like, you ask? Well, a gentleman in our church sort of "leads" the time. I say this loosely because truly the Spirit of God leads it. Andy brings a passage of Scripture that the Lord has laid on him, or he may mention specific needs the pastor has requested us to pray about (e.g. faith for boldness, sensitivity, physical strength if he hasn't slept well) or sometimes we just pray. We bow our heads and cry out to God for his activity in our midst. We ask for vision, power, anointing of the leaders, sincerity in the worship, open hearts to the message, we pray for the congregation, both generally and naming specific names if the Spirit leads. We pray for visitors to come, we pray for Spiritual gifts to be used freely and without fear of man. Whatever the Lord lays on our hearts, we pray. And here's the AMAZING thing. God answers us. I know it sounds so simple, but when you cry out for 7 visitors to come and exactly that many do, or if you ask for Johnny So-and-so to receive ministry, and he goes forward at the end, or if you pray that God would touch single people and speak encouragement specifically to them, and the pastor stops the service just to pray for single people (having no prior knowledge of your prayer) it is astounding, it is faith-building, and man it makes you want to pray some more. And it makes me want to pray outside of that setting, like when my child has made the same mess for the fourth time in five minutes, I remember God's faithfulness and ask him to bless me with just a little more patience. Or when I am about to care for someone in a difficult place and have no idea what to do, I pray for God to speak through me and the Spirit to use me to bless this person. Oh, it's so powerful what God can use prayer to accomplish. And I don't think I have time to post on this other thing, at least not today. :-) Keep prayin!