Prayer and Changes of Plans

Andrew Murray wrote, "All the powers of evil seek to hinder our prayer life because prayer, by nature, involves conflict with opposing forces. May God give us grace to strive in prayer until we prevail."

I have noticed that there are some days that nothing works out as planned and they turn out great. Then there are other days that nothing turns out as planned and they are just really bad.

This last Thursday was one of the ones that turned out pretty good. I thought that I would go to a mom's prayer meeting for the school but I found out that they were meeting at the elementary school (shortly after dropping off our neighbour's kids there)--the problem was that I didn't have time to go back because Dave had to get to his class. So, I went on with him and we were both surprised to find out that the bible school was having a special prayer meeting for the persecuted church. It was not the prayer meeting that I thought I was going to be apart of but it felt like I might have been in the right place anyway. I was also able to get 2 hours of uninterrupted time in on my school work (I had brought it thinking that I would have an hour to wait for Dave's class to end).

Unfortunately, I find that there are a lot more of the other kind of days here in Niger where nothing seems to go right. I like to beat myself up and say that they usually happen on days that I haven't spent enough time in prayer and devotions. (Saying things like "I should have gotten up earlier to pray today"). Thinking that I would have a better attitude to face the situations if I had, but I sometimes wonder if it isn't the impact of the spiritual dynamic that is playing itself out around us. More prayer is always needed, but beating ourselves up instead praying is just another distraction technique the enemy likes to use to bring us down.

Please pray for visitors that are coming in a couple or weeks. The weather is still really hot (high 30's) and our mechanic has yet to find a replacement compressor for the air conditioner in our vehicle. I also ran into another snag this morning when I went to fill my crock pot with supper. The box it was in had fallen and the ceramic pot had broken. This wouldn't be a big deal in Canada where you can find them all over the place, but they are really hard to find here (ours came from our first trip to Ghana) and ones from Canada don't work as well here because the transformer splits the power level regardless of whether it is the full 220V or only 180V. (North American appliances require 110V). Oh well, I guess I will have to re-think my cooking strategies for dealing with the heat.

Also, please pray for Dave's accountability partner, Steve. He's just flew home because of vision problems. His insurance company was unresponsive to his concerns, and he has lost vision in one eye from a detached retina. He is having surgery tomorrow in Nebraska in an attempt to repair it but has been told the optimal period for restoring his sight has passed.