Lead Me Where

Dinner at Casa Hogar tonight ended with several minutes of silent prayer. This does not happen every night, but Hermano Manuel made the right choice when he asked the children to kneel beside their chairs and bow their heads. Dinner was a rather solemn ordeal as Heremana Tere and Hermano Manuel trained, disciplined, corrected, and forgave issues that had arisen in their large family.

Before we knelt to pray, Hermano Manuel reminded us all that there is a constant battle going on for our very souls. The movies we watch, things we hear and say, how much we pay attention in church and how much we apply that to our lives all affect whether God or the Devil hold sway over our hearts.

I was already aware of this battle, which I believe is called, “spiritual warfare”, but Hermano Manuel’s words were just the kind of push God knew I needed. It has become increasingly apparent to me that my prayer life is not what it should be. But praying more often than when I got up and went to sleep seemed like a lot of work, and I could not think of any tangible benefits I would receive from such work. If I prayed that God would get the glory for something, then He would and I wouldn’t get anything. If I prayed that God would help suchandsuch with thisorthat then He would and I would probably never even know the difference. The only time I could think of that I consistently see prayer working in my life is when God gives me fluency, clarity, and understanding in speaking Spanish, which He does frequently and which I do not take for granted.

A couple days ago, I passively set this throughout-the-day-even-the-little-things-prayer aside; I suppose waiting to see if God would do anything about my laziness. And tonight, He did. Twenty-six hearts, some of them my closest friends, and all of them precious to God, live at the Casa Hogar. There is an actual battle between God and Satan going on all the time for their minds, the hearts, and their lives. And this battle is not limited to the children living in the U-shaped building on a dusty road in Mexico, it’s going on everywhere, for all of us.

That’s quasi-terrifying, to say the least. And it also provides the perfect reason for me to pray, although I shouldn’t have demanded a reason in the first place. Prayers that I pray, and prayer that you pray, for the lives and hearts of the little ones here and the ones around you can affect their lives and your life in serious ways; eternal ways.

So… let’s pray?

~Natalia