Last summer, my daughter and I spent several weeks in Hyderabad, India serving at Back2Back’s India campus. While we were in India, we stayed with 100 hundred girls at a children’s home that Back2Back serves. Every morning, without fail, the bell would ring for prayer at 5:30, and then with the same consistency the electricity would go off at 6:00! I would lie in bed and listen to their voices blend together, first with songs then with prayers. The older girls would be on their knees on the hard concrete. Every day I was reminded to pray.
Throughout the years I have developed a fairly consistent Bible devotion time with God, but my prayer life can be somewhat hurried. I am always thinking of what I need to do next or who I forgot to pray for. It is consistent, but not generally a time that I spend seeking God’s will for that day.
I would listen to the kid’s songs and prayers and they would play through my mind all day. “I love Him, hay hay hay, I love Him hay hay hay, I love Him, hay hay hay hayyyyyy I love my Jesus,” they sange. Even when I left India, it took a couple of weeks to quit playing that song in my head. I miss it now.
It is amazing that I went halfway across the world to a society that is 80% Hindu, 18% Muslim, and only 2% Christian to be reminded of how important prayer is. Prayer is one of our daily connections to God. It should resonate through my soul all day. It should be what is constantly playing in my head. I think I witnessed what God meant when He said in Hebrews 8:10, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord; I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be My people.”
Those kids allowed time for God to write those things on their heart. I need to do the same. I need to give Him my attention and not just go through the motions. When I think back on those girls, I see them on their knees. What a great testimony to the power of God in a somewhat Godless society.