Uploads, services

Last night was revival service at church so we had a short evening for a Monday. It was made even shorter by the need to upload some items to the company server. Victoria needed some good internet as well. So, Victoria, Mama and I went to my office to use the internet before church. On the way we stopped at our favorite Thai restaurant and picked up some food to eat while we worked on the electronic projects we needed to finish. One of my bosses was at the office when we let ourselves in but left soon after, I am not sure if she knew Mama and Victoria were in the building with me, but it did not seem to alarm her if she did know. Right now, I am not sure what is acceptable or not. It all worked out as far as I know now. Neither Victoria nor I were able to complete our projects. Mine was an upload to the company server. Hers was a download from the cloud to her computer. Both of us left our computers at the office as we headed to church, planning to return for them afterwards.

We had a great service. Bro Walker preached on prayer. Serious, submissive, specific, and steadfast. That was his outline of the passage in 1 Samuel when Hannah prayed for a son. Most of us are only serious in our prayers when there is an urgent personal need. There is nothing wrong with that, but we can pray urgently about so much more. One of the things that soured me to the charismatic movement was their insistence that God was bound by His word to the point that we could force Him to do our will by claiming His Word in prayer. God is perfect. Holy. He will not do that which opposed His Word or His character. How could we possibly understand His will to the point that we could “bind” Him to do our will?

The un-submissive nature of that approach to God was anathema to me. How could I order about my Creator? No one in that church seemed to understand my concern. And though I loved some of them dearly, I had to leave. As far as praying specific, many of us do not. It is too much trouble to pray specifically when we can often provide for ourselves what we need in one way or another. Rarely do we pray specifically for others. Erring on the side of generality, we ask God to bless, to help, to direct, etc., versus asking for specific help, blessings or direction.  Few of us are steadfast in our prayers – unless the need is urgent and remains unmet. we get distracted, discouraged when the answer to our prayers is delayed (in our way of thinking). It was not a guilt producing sermon. It was simply an outline on how to accomplish what we need to do to pray effectively. Mama and I certainly took it to heart. we have been praying together before bed almost every night. Those times of prayer have gotten more and more specific as we practice what we have learned about prayer.

Once we were out of the service, we went back to the office and checked the computers. Mine had finished what I had set it to do. Victoria’s had not. From what we could figure out, I had gone to sleep fifteen minutes after we had left it. Once we woke the computer, it started the download again. I sent Mama and Victoria to Braum’s to get the ice cream Victoria wanted while I stayed at the office and monitored Victoria’s computer. It was still only half done by the time they got back to the office, so we will have to reset the program tonight at church. They have good enough internet there to finish the download. If we start the download before the service begins, it should be done by the time we are out of the service. This is one of those times that we are disappointed not having internet at the farm, but these times are few and far between. The ongoing expense of installing and maintaining internet at the farm is not an expense I am willing to stretch our budget to cover at this time. When I no longer have the option of working at the office for those times when I need internet, we will have to consider signing a contract with a provider, but not yet.

Everything is on hold at the farm while we spend our evenings at church. It is a good tradeoff.