Oct 18 - Prayer Month

October must be prayer month.  I get Charles Stanley’s monthly magazine/devotional and this month the theme is prayer.  That in itself is not very amazing, there’s a theme every month and the theme of prayer for a monthly christian publication is not jaw dropping.  But then there’s this other devotional I have.  It’s called “Experiencing God Day by Day” and is a yearly devotional, i.e. contains a daily devotion for each day of the year.  It’s more like my weekly devotional because that’s how often I seem to find the time to pick it up.  So last week when I picked it up and turned to that day’s devotional the theme was prayer.  Pretty ironic, given the theme of my other devotional.  

Then two weeks ago Pastor James’ message included a discussion about the need for personal quiet time and prayer.  Hmm, starting to sense a common theme?  On top of that, we local churches are praying for our city this month.  So after all these little cues it’s hard to miss that God is trying to get my attention and is asking me to come spend some quiet time with Him.  

As I recently blogged, quiet time is the one thing which always eludes me.  If I ever get any it seems to get eaten up by chores or some other busy-ness of life.  So what do you do when God drops all these little hints in your lap?  “Hey God, I’m trying, maybe a little divine intervention to grease the skids, maybe?”  

I was pleasantly surprised this past Saturday when the 15 minute prayer slot I’d signed up for went by so quickly.  I even helped Aaron & Caitlynn with their 15 minute slots.  So I prayed for nearly 45 minutes on Saturday!!  It’s not all that hard when you have a list of topics in front of you.  I’m pretty comfortable talking to God; it’s the listening part that I need to work on (which will be the topic of an upcoming blog).