Motivation- Burdens of the Heart 1

As I was walking through and slowly starting to come out of post-partum depression I kept feeling an un-named urgency in my heart. A need to get back into a study where I can delve into God's Word. A need to go a next step further where I could study something and know the Word well enough that I could explain it to another. Not just to explain the gospel, but to explain what I have learned in a way that others could understand.

I turn around and I can smell the depression and breathe it, but I am just beyond it. Yet, this urgency keeps returning. I was thinking about this urgent cry of my heart and realized that I get this after certain events in my life. So, I am going to go back to the beginning and blog about it and perhaps learn a few new things along the way.

I am a very Type A, motivated, organized person. While I was in college God really used many godly women, people from all over the world, and circumstances to help direct this motivation.

When I was a junior in college I was invited by 5 other women to pray on a weekly basis in a group. Our emphasis was praying for the world and that others would have God's world on their hearts. We took the list of names of people that had been involved in our campus ministry and prayed for each person by name. We specifically prayed that God would either: a. send these people overseas even if for only a summer and/or b. put the world on their hearts to pray for God's world. Also, each girl prayed specifically for one man to go overseas that summer, by name.

I was skeptical, but watching God answer that prayer was the most exciting thing I had seen to that date. Here is what happened:
1. Every person that we prayed to go overseas that summer went. Not only that, but a lot of them (I'm not really sure how many) went overseas through the Journeyman program for 2-3 years.
2. We noticed an influx of people joining summer missions
3. More and more people started to meet to pray for unreached people groups.
4. Our prayer group grew until about 10 of us were meeting at 6:30am to pray for the world.
5. My heart was changed and softened towards God's world and His Word.

This prayer group set a desire for God's Word aflame in my heart. Many of the girls' prayers centered around God's Word. They simply prayed God's Word back to Him. The beautiful prayers amazed me and taught me so much about God. Through this prayer group God taught me so much about Him. He taught me that He indeed does answer prayer and more fully than I could ever imagine. He also taught me that He sees the desire of my heart and will take the small seed of wanting to know Him and nurture and grow it so that the desire is even deeper and more centered on Him. This was the first step in my hunger and search for more of God's Word.

The next step, well. That is another story now isn't it?