CTI- Prayer

For most of my life, I found praying to be extremely difficult. Living in a world with so much noise and distractions everywhere, it was hard enough to hear what my friends were telling me sometimes, let a lone God. So talking or praying to God was just something I did because I knew it was the right thing to do. It was funny because so many times the answer I would get to why God feels so far away was, "oh, pray about it." That was super weird and super unsettling for me. I felt that my prayers were not really heard, that it was just wishful thinking. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that prayer is very much needed and a powerful tool that we have, it was just hard to remember sometimes with so much interference from the world. Granted, what I thought prayer was before this trop is not what I know prayer is to me now. 

So it was super important that praying became a very essential part of our lives when we were doing missions work overseas. Our team from the very beginning, mutually agreed that prayer was something that we needed to incorporate in everything that we did. For many of you, that might be a "duh!" or a no brainer moment. I agree, it is a no brainer, but when I say that our team constantly pushed for prayer, I mean that in the sense that a group of 13 young adults, without their leaders enforcing prayer, had the desire to pray and more so, understood the power of prayer. The difference between the sunday school answer and what our team did was that we prayed knowing and pleading for God to work, understanding that nothing that we could do would amount to anything that God was capable of. We prayed not for a good concert but that God will use us as his tools to spread his name. We prayed not for the audience to pay any attention to us but for the mindset that we were playing for an audience of one. We prayed for the Spirit to take over and give us energy that even the kids will know, did not come from us. We understood that without Him, we could do nothing. 

From our very first concert to our very last concert to the many concerts in between, God was reminding us that nothing about what we were doing overseas was about us. In fact, our team might have only left a small imprint on a master piece that was started before us and will continue after us. Our job overseas was not to be rock stars or to change people's lives. Our job was just to plant seeds, to show them that there is a hope and there is something out there that is more important and more urgent than what we have distracting us right now. Our job was to be a servant and an example of Christ- his love and his grace. In order to do so, it was vital that we understood what it was that we were preaching, truly put into practice what we preached, and in everything we do, bring all glory back to Him. How can we share in a relationship that we don't have?  How can we truly be servants to a master that we don't know? In praying, we are talking to that master and building that relationship. In prayer, we are submitting ourselves and asking the Spirit to move in us. In praying, we are looking to the one who has control of all things because we know we cannot do it on our own. 

During our last concert, our last time playing as a team, we were met with technical difficulties. For some unknown reason our bass did not work. We had two minutes to sound check and soon two minutes became five minutes. We were live-streaming and our team was just on stage waiting for something to happen or for someone to fix the problem. We had every sound tech and music trainer on stage and still nothing happened. So as a team, we gathered, on stage, the same way we did in country, and we prayed. Before we even finished or said our last amen, we heard the sound of our bassist and we knew it was God reminding us of how far we came and where our hearts need to be. Until the very end, our trip was a testimony of how powerful prayer truly is. The stories I share are only glimpses of how awesome God's provision was. We had prayers met the moment we asked and then we had prayers answered in ways that we didn't even know was possible. It was so evident that God had his hand over our team every step of the way, even when we forgot, and even when it felt like He was so far away. 

I pray that this be a reminder and a challenge to all of you. Praying is best tool we have. Do not underestimate the power of prayer. 

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Phillippians 4:4-7

-Charlie