Day 18

Today, I have had the privilege of being challenged in my leadership and my spiritual walk.  I am always open to being stretched and  growing in this journey of following my call with Christ.  Prayers of thanks today.  Prayers of gratitude for grace in my spiritual walk and prayers of gratitude for what God is doing in the life of our church.  I keep trying to have some times like this.  I can sometimes pray so much only in request mode and wanted to be intentional about making it a time of praising God, thanking God, and acknowledging that I can't do life without Him.

I have asked a few people to give their perspective on prayer as well.  I didn't give any specific guide lines, but lots of freedom to just give us a glimpse into their prayer life in whatever way they want to.  Our guest blogger today is Kent Yost.  Kent is a part of the HCN family and a great part of the Fort Wayne Area Youth For Christ team.   His perspective will speak to the need for prayer in a marriage.  Good thoughts, good stuff.

We have always been a couple who valued prayer, especially during the tough times.  We had taught our children the value of prayer through bedtime prayers, meal times, and praying together when it seemed like God needed to show up in some big way.  That all changed 7 years ago.  As we counseled a young couple before they got married, I was very challenged by a pastor who acknowledged his failure in praying with his own wife.  He prayed with thousands of people annually, just not with his wife.  My world got rocked.  Since that day, we have become partners in prayer.  It’s not that we pray every day together.  We have just become a lot more focused in praying together on a much more frequent basis.  We pray for each other, with each other, and with others.  We are now much more intentional about our prayer life, realizing that as we pursue HIM, He does a continued work in our lives, helping us to become more like Him.  We still have way too many issues to work on in our marriage.  We just know that He is so much more involved in our lives because we spend much more time in His world.  I really believe because we have learned to pursue Him more often in prayer, that He has opened doors for us to be more involved in the lives of others, because we are going to Him.  We are on a journey of praying together.  It’s still not easy.  I still choose to not lead as I should.  But, we have learned to trust Him more along the journey.  Looking forward to what He has in store. 

Thanks Kent for opening up your life and heart to let us learn from what God is doing in you.



Keith