PRAY: Guatemala Lessons–Live Your Teaching
I had an extra privilege during the SUSIE Magazine missions trip to Guatemala. On Sunday, July 4, our teams did not travel to do ministry. Instead, we spent much of the day in worship and rest. In the afternoon and evening, various students and leaders offered hour-long E.I.E.I.O.K. (“Everything I Ever Intended On Knowing”) seminars. Participants could choose from classes in balloon animal-making to resume-writing to prayer to spiritual gifts. The only complaint I heard was that there were too many intriguing possibilities!
I taught a seminar on Dangerous Prayer, a class I’ve also taught at iGO, the annual missions conference of Awe Star Ministries. Thanks to the promotional work of the Holy Spirit and one vocal Leader in Training (thanks, Jed!), my two identical sessions were well-attended. I had to visit the Business Center and print more handouts than the fifty I’d brought along.
One of my new friends (a professional speaker) attended the seminar. She blessed me by saying how much she enjoyed it and gave me some tips for improvement, too. But in a later conversation, this friend had some questions about prayer. As my roommate during our training time, she’d noticed that when my husband called at night, he and I prayed together. She asked me about this and mentioned how it had blessed her. The two of us had a great conversation about what God’s shown me praying for my family and how she could become more active and effective in praying for hers.
What amazed me was that my friend, although she learned from the seminar, didn’t ask about the specific points of my lesson. Instead, she wanted to know more about something she’d seen in my life and how she could apply it to hers. This experience reminded me that, in the same way I’d learned to “live the story” (see 7/20 blog posting), I could “live the teaching,” too.
Tomorrow, my husband and I celebrate twenty-seven years of marriage (woo hoo!). I’ll share more about our prayer habit in another blog. But as I prepare to teach at the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Conference next week, I’m asking God to help me live my teaching. The words I say will have little power unless my life (along with my writing) shows their truth.
Our words matter. Our lives matter more.
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