Week Five: Prayer, Faith, and the Promises of God

To be honest, when this week began, I had no idea what in the world we were going to be talking about. "Prayer, Faith, and the Promises of God" to me sounds like the most generic and vague description for a topic to discuss. Looking back at the past week, I now fully understand why the week was given this name. Prayer is a way we communicate with God. It is powerful and has been known to move even God Himself. What do we pray for? We pray for God's promises to be fulfilled (or, as I heard it called this week, "claim His promises"). But in order to do that, we must have faith that God does and will fulfill His promises.

Now that I've given you a short explanation behind why these three topics were meshed together for one week, let me tell you how it went.

Monday we heard from Mark Smith, who has been in charge of our evangelism training on Saturdays. We talked about the Lord's Prayer and about prayer in general. He reminded us of some very important things about prayer. For one, sometimes when we enter prayer, we go in with a "everything's going well and I'm feeling holy" or a "nothing's going right and I just hope God will even hear me attitude." These take away from prayer because the focus of prayer is on God. Instead of treating God like a vending machine like we often do, we need to treat God as our Heavenly Father who loves us and wants to hold a conversation with us. The last big takeaway I had from the message is that what we pray for is still ultimately up to God's will. In the Lord's Prayer, we say "Thy will be done," and we need to remember that if things don't happen the way we prayed them, God is still God, and He answers according to what is best.

Tuesday was mostly an uneventful day other than the fact that I found a large nature trail after going on a run. I figure that it could be a great place for some alone time anytime for the rest of the program.

On Wednesday, we heard from Kyle Nelson, who is in charge of the program. He talked a large amount about the promises of God and how we can be encouraged by them and claim them. An interesting point that he brought up was that Paul wrote in the New Testament (where exactly I can't remember at the moment) that God's promises are the way that He reveals Himself to us. It shows us His power and also encourages our faith in Him. That night we received a prayer schedule and were challenged to pray for whatever group of people were listed for that day (e.g. family, believing friends, non-believers, personal ministry, etc.).

On Thursday, we reviewed most of what we had learned the past couple of days, but with one more important piece. We brought up how it is vital for us to believe that God is answering when we pray. In the book of James, James talks about how the person who does not have faith when he prays will not recieve what he asked for. We are coming to God with our issues and our lives. If we expect anything to happen, we need to believe that God will do something.

On Friday, we had our third group date in the form of a Cookie Cooking Competition. Two teams competed to create the most original, artistic, and tasty cookie within the time alotted. Our team created a "big rock candy mountain" out of M&M and Reese's cookies with Trix ice cream, Hershey's cookies and cream bars, Butterfingers, frosting, and green icing on top. Needless to say, after the competition, I didn't want to see another cookie for at least 24 hours.

Yesterday we had our Sports Day. We had a volleyball tournament, putt putt golf, water dodgeball, and a game called "tank wars." I managed to participate in all of them, but not necessarily with the best results. Our volleyball and dodgeball teams, both named "The Mammals," went an abysmal 0-4, and my excellent round of putt putt was ruined by a 10-stroke 16th hole. Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun, and topped it all of that night with a "thrift store prom" (where you buy your clothes from a thrift store and dance).

Today we went to our last "ultra contemporary" service and went to Adventure Landing as guests instead of employees. The rest of the night will involve a one-on-one time with my team leader, some rest, and probably another trip through that nature walk.