Dear readers,
I was given an amazing opportunity last night. One I almost turned down in fact. Yet God had other plans in mind.
Let’s get right into the story, shall we?
I am a part of a local bible study out here in little ol’ Mt. Pleasant Iowa, called The Well. Every week we come together to pray, open The Word together, and just be there for each other as we walk through this life.
Every week we always have our ears to the ground for different ways to serve, love, and be in each other’s lives as much as possible just as The Church ought to be.
At the beginning of last week, one of our friends sent this to our group message.
Hey guys, I go to Life Church up here in Coralville, and they’re having their Prayer and Worship night this Friday at 7 pm! I’m going to go, and I was thinking that’d it’d be cool to see some or all of you guys there too! It’s a really awesome church, and I know it’ll be a really good time. Just wanted to throw that out there.”
Now, something I do want to make very clear is this.
If I am ever invited to go and worship and pray with a group of people unless I have a very very good reason not to go I will go.
What was my reason to not go?
Sadly enough it was this message.
“Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that even though the spike in cases is happening up here and down where you all are at, my church is still planning on having their worship and prayer night! Again, masks are required, but I just wanted to say that you all are free to show up or not! I’m excited to see any of you that decide to travel up here, but I understand if you’re not comfortable with that as well.”
That was my reason to not go. I didn’t want to go and pray and worship with a piece of fabric covering my face. How selfish, how immature is that??
I started to make myself so upset that I couldn’t worship freely that I almost didn’t go at all.
Satan almost won that round.
I asked my cousin if he wanted to go to the night of worship and he sent back very quickly “No. I’m sorry.”
Yet about an hour later he sent back, “Wait, I want to go.”
At this point, I took a step back, “God what are you doing?”
All 7 of us crammed into a little red minivan and we started the hour-long drive to the worship night.
We began listening to music, we warmed up our vocals a bit to some songs, and just as the song “The King of My Heart” came on, our driver shut it off and turned to face us saying,
“I don’t want you guys to ruin your singing voices, why don’t you hold on until we get there.”
In the back seat sat one of my friends, she got so upset that the song got shut off, my heart honestly started to hurt a bit. I started to pray “God, would you allow The King of My Heart to be played tonight for her?”
We ended up getting there late. (Our driver missed a turn.) So we walked into the room and found some seats.
I hadn’t heard the first 2 songs they were singing, so I turned to prayer instead, I began interceding for my family, friends, World Race Squadmates I was absolutely all over the place, and then I asked this.
“God, would you allow them to play Good Grace?”
I kid you not.
As soon as I opened my eyes my prayer was answered.
I lost it. I was so overwhelmed with joy, I was screaming at the top of my lungs worshiping the Lord of All Things, who answered my song request.
Isn’t that kinda interesting, God can do anything, and he allowed a certain song to be played just to show me a small glimpse of His love for me.
Later on that night “The King of My Heart” was also sung throughout the building.
Guys, prayer is such a powerful thing. I can’t say that enough. Talking to God about every little thing on your heart and the thoughts swirling around in your brain.
He wants to talk to you about that thing you just thought about as you read that paragraph above.
Don’t ignore Him.
So many amazing things happened that night. Things in my life, things happened to the people in my row, things happened that God wanted to have happened.
This was a bit of a longer story, I pray you’ve read through it all. I pray that you bring your requests to God, big and small. Vulnerable and harsh. Be real with Him, he doesn’t want it any other way.
Until next time,
-Mitchell
