Last week after the service an Indian couple sitting behind me were talking after the service, and I was eavesdropping.

“I’m going forward for prayer.” said the man.

“For healing?” said the woman with him.

And off he went.

I was impressed with both of their faith in the power of prayer, something I’ve been having my doubts with lately, prayer.

Driving home I thought to myself  ”man, I wish I believed in prayer like those two people.” I see all these bumper stickers “prayer is power”, they believe it, why can’t I?

Fast forward to this week. I’ve been tearing through Tozer’s The Pursuit of God, and have been applying that to my own life, my own pursuit.

One of the chapters talks about laying down your “self”. I’m a pretty proud person and that’s hard. I thought  I could really use some help with that, I could really use some prayer on that.

So this week I vowed to go forward after the service, something I haven’t done since I was probably 8 years old, I know, I suck.

After the service was done people went filing out, talking about football, food, kids, anything but prayer. I gave a glance from the back of the room and couldn’t spot a pastor. “Sweet, I can just leave.”

But then I spotted one, standing alone.

My feet felt like concrete blocks but I went forward. I told the pastor I needed some prayer. “Prayer for what?” “I don’t know, my pursuit of God in 2011.”

The pastor prayed a very beautiful, sincere prayer on my behalf. A bright light didn’t shine on me but I did feel like I did the right thing, the thing I needed, prayer.

I left feeling about the same as I did going in to church. I’m still somewhat skeptic, but the prayer was made.

Now the question is will it make any difference?

I don’t usually tell what sites I’m working on till they launch. But since I’m pretty much the only one that reads this blog I decided a good post would be to talk about my new site, serveproject.com

I’m gonna do this in an interview format. Me interviewing myself.

Mike: Where did this idea come from?
Mike: Well I haven’t read the book The Happiness Project but I have logged some hours on http://happiness-project.com and I like what she’s done. Basically given people various ideas on what will make them happy. I’ve built upon that.

Mike: So you copied her idea?
Mike: *laughs* No no no. I took her idea and put my own spin on it. I don’t want to use the word “christian” spin, but I’ve drawn the idea from what the Bible talks about regarding serving. And I firmly believe that serving others is what leads to happiness…among other things.

Mike: That’s nonsense.
Mike: Think about this. So Saturday is coming up, you could take one of the ideas from The Happiness Project, say, start a collection, and do that. I personally think that’s a good idea. My spin would say start collecting something that you could serve to another. So start collecting canned goods from neighbors to take to a food pantry. See how I did that?

Mike: Yes, I do. So you think folks will buy into this?
Mike: I don’t know, I doubt it, but I think it’s worth trying. I think there’s a big movement among young people that they don’t want to write checks to organizations anymore, they want to get dirty. They want to “do work”. I know in my personal life that’s how I feel. I’d rather spend a Saturday serving than cut a check and say “I served via checkbook”. I don’t think I’m the minority here.

Mike: When will you launch this site?
Mike: *smiles* When people like you leave me alone long enough to get working on it. Geesh *laughs again*

Mike: Thanks for your time and good luck. By the way you are looking mighty fine these days.
Mike: *laughs* Ha…you too…you too

I’m not anti foreign ministry, I’m more pro domestic ministry. I wrote a bit about that here.

I recently sat down with one of the authors I work with at David C Cook, Kimberly L Smith. She shared a very powerful story of one of the ladies she works with in Darfur.