Prayer is powerful.
Many of you may know I am from South Carolina and still own a house just outside of Columbia. My mom and sister live in that house! I bought it fourteen years ago ... one of the first "adult" things I did out of college and I LOVE my house. When the flooding happened last week in SC, the dam of the lake in the neighborhood just through the woods from my house was breached, sending water flowing toward my house. The pictures my mom sent me were shocking and not knowing if the water would continue to rise, I prayed.
We were extremely fortunate; the house did not flood. But the neighborhood I grew up in (in Columbia) did and a church I served in downtown Columbia took on water in both its buildings, friends from high school and churches I served lost lots. Over the past week, I was consumed and overwhelmed with all that was happening, watching status updates and pictures from people in Columbia I know, reading every news article I could find, and watching live news streaming from Columbia online. I was consumed.
Currently in our Sunday night youth ministry programs, we are tackling a topic in a two week series that our youth leadership team wanted to discuss: Faith and Science. For devotion on Sunday we kept with that theme and talked about the floods (science) and prayer (faith).
Water is mentioned over 700 times in the Bible. At EYC on Sunday night, our youth brainstormed many of those times! We talked about a news report out of Hurricane Katrina where people prayed over and upstream of a very polluted and contaminated Lake Ponchatrain. All of the toxic water in the city was pumped out and into the lake polluting it and killing things in the lake. People were no longer allowed to swim in it and scientists predicated it would take years and years to become decontaminated. Amazingly, the lake was healed much more quickly and scientists could not explain why. Prayer is powerful.
We also remembered some of the times that prayer is mentioned! Ephesians 6:18 says: "Never stop praying, especially for others. Always pray by the power of the Spirit. Stay alert and keep praying for God’s people." So that is exactly what SJE youth did on Sunday night! We prayed for South Carolina ... creatively.
We took water bottles and drew prayers on them! There were prayers of thanksgiving for relief workers, petitions for safety of South Carolinians in the aftermath of the flood, prayers of encouragement for those who lost so much, and more! Youth drew pictures, wrote words, and listened to the words of "How Great Thou Art" while putting together their prayers. The water in the bottles was colored with food coloring! This way when we face south (towards SC) and tossed the water out of the bottles, the youth could really see their prayers being released to God.
There are two lessons we hoped the youth would walk away form this devotion knowing. First, is that there are situations in our lives and the lives of others over which we have no control, bad or good. They can completely consume and overwhelm us if we allow them to do so. If we don't intentionally offer (i.e. seeing the colored water flow out of the bottles) and give petitions about those situations to God they will only continue to eat away and take over our daily lives. Secondly, prayer works and God ALWAYS answers. It might not always be the answer that we want or expect and it might not always happen in the timing we expect, but God does answer. Praying for others is important. Intentionally releasing our petitions is key.
Do you prayer as a family? For yourselves? For your family? For others?
What are you teaching your teens about prayer?
Do you talk about prayers you offered that were answered or not answered?
Are you modeling prayer for your teens?
