Over the years I had always been heavily involved in church work, in a number of different capacities. With this, I found myself in many public settings and meeting rooms. I never gave any thought to room temperatures, until God sent a rare auto-immune blood disease my way, called cold agglutinin. In temperatures below 78 degrees, anti-bodies in my blood attack and destroy my red blood cells, thereby reducing my hemoglobin count to potentially dangerous levels, and turning my extremities blue.

For the last 16 years the daily question I deal with is, how cold is it going to be in this place, or that place?  This has greatly curtailed my ability to be involved in church work in recent years. I loved serving the Lord in church, but he had something different in mind.

One day a few years back, I was having coffee with my associate pastor. I wasn’t  feeling very positive, so I said to him, “I have been reduced to prayer.” He smiled at me and said, “No, John, you have been promoted to prayer.” It was a very meaningful moment for me.

While acknowledging the importance of doing the actual hands-on work, God has helped me to see more clearly that it is prayer that connects us to the power source. My daily time with the Lord, and my various prayer lists, are precious to me. And perhaps I am more effective in his kingdom work than ever before, because he is the one who has to build the church through his power, not mine. “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1).

John Heie is a member of the CLB Prayer Team.

By CLB Prayer Team

The CLB Prayer Team. On-call to pray for requests from our family of churches. Send prayer requests by email to pray@prayclb.org.

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