Every morning at 9:15am, an alarm goes off on my phone. This is true for each of our staff. It reminds us to pray John 15:5. This is Jesus’ teaching that we are the branches and he is the vine. Apart from him we can do nothing. He tells us in that passage that if we remain in him, we can ask whatever we wish. The biggest lesson, though, is that we are to abide deeply in him.
From the moment we’ve started this journey, prayer has been the foundation. James 1:5 tells us that if we lack wisdom, we can ask God because he gives it generously. James will go on later (James 4) to tell us that we often don’t have because either we don’t ask or we ask with wrong motives. For our staff, this has been a season of learning to ask. We have asked God for direction, for vision, and for help. We have seen SO many answers to prayer in the last 2 years. But perhaps that’s because we’ve been learning … to ask.
A couple of weeks ago, we brought our students into our partially finished building and asked them to pray and consecrate the space to the Lord. We asked them to write prayers on the unfinished floors. We asked them to imagine their peers finding Jesus in this new space. We wanted them to catch the vision of how the Lord might want to use this new place.
It was such a beautiful night.
Lord, will you take these new walls and floors and breathe your life into them? May they be filled for many years with students who discover the beauty of your love, truth, and forgiveness. May your presence, Christ, be known, felt, and experienced in this place. Give us what we need today, Lord, and help us trust you for what we need tomorrow. Help us to abide in you and only you. Amen.
