The (sort-of) beginning...

I think that we can start in January and be ok. At the beginning of the semester, in Theology class, we were assigned to study the prayers of Jesus. It was wonderful! I read about how Jesus got up early in the morning to spend time with His Father, how He prayed in solitude, and how it prepard Him so much for ministry. After writing a paper about the way in which Jesus prayed, I could not help but to want to pray in the same manner. So for a couple of weeks I started going to bed earlier, and waking up before the sun in order to pray to my Father while the apartment was still quiet.
God is faithful. And he heard my prayers.

Then, a few weeks later, we had another assignment: This time we were to study Paul's prayers, and do two prayer walks with believers modeling Paul's prayers. I read the prayers that Paul wrote at the beginning of most of his letters, and then set out to find some people to prayer-walk with. I asked my roomates, but they were all busy. Then I walked across the street to another apartment full of EBC students, and they were either busy or disenchanted with the idea.
I must confess, I did wait until the last minute to ask people to pray with me, which shows that I did not have a correct understanding of prayer. But what surprised me the most is that most of the people that I asked were busy with entertaining themselves. Something was not ok, and so I went home prayer-less, and started re-reading Paul's prayers.

I was reading 1 Corinthians when I realized that what Paul did not thank God for the Corinthian's faith, but rather he thanked God for giving enabling grace to the Corinthians. This was huge for me. Rather than getting upset at my brothers and sisters for not wanting to pray, I began to pray that God would give us all the grace to pray together.

The next couple of mornings I asked God to give us the grace to pray, and He did. I asked my brothers and sisters again if we could pray together, and that night a bunch of us gathered in our apartment. We came to God asking Him to teach us how to pray. We realized that we really have no idea what prayer is: If we knew, we would be so inclinded to do it.

The group has gotten pretty small. Most nights there are just three of us. We are still asking God to continue to grant us the grace to pray, realizing that we are unable to do it on our own strength. We are still asking Him to teach us to pray, and daily we are learning more and more about how to approach this King.

He is so faithful. I wish that I could detail all of what He has done, but you would never finish reading if I were to write it all out for you. I will update this blog often, as He continues to do amazing works. I hope that you will give Him praise for the things that you are about to hear...