Discipleship When Life Is Busy: Day 1

Last weekend, at a prayer retreat, the president of Team Expansion approached me to ask if I would consider taking on a 30 day Disciple Making challenge and blogging about my experience.  I smiled and politely told him that I would consider it, but really in my head I was thinking: “You want me to do what!? Do you know how much is already on my plate? Like I need another thing…”  You see, my husband and I are foster parents and currently have a 1 year old and a 4 month old living in our home.  We both work full time and are heavily involved in our church.  On top of all of that (I know, there’s more…), our 1 year old foster son has medical and developmental delays that require weekly OT, weekly PT, and weekly speech therapy.  We see some sort of doctor as little as every other week and as much as 3 times a week, and our youngest foster son has weekly visits with his biological parent.  That doesn’t include the monthly foster support team meetings, every other month court hearings, monthly case worker visits, quarterly licensing worker visits, etc.

Well, I really did consider his invitation.  I looked through the website and prayed about it a lot.  I really felt that it was something that God would be able to use.  I am so excited to begin this journey (busy as I may be) and to see what the Holy Spirit is able to do through the situations put in front of me.

So, that brings us to Day 1: Finding a prayer partner.  I have to admit that I feel as if I sort of cheated on the “challenge” part of this day.  You see, when I was considering the invitation to complete this challenge I looked through a few days just to see what it involved.  So, I already knew what the challenge for Day 1 was.  I had already been praying about who God wanted me to ask as my prayer partner.  God showed me a wonderful lady from my church, Olivia.  If I hadn’t considered who God wanted me to ask, Olivia might not have been my first choice.  You see, Olivia and I are in different small groups, we sometimes attend the same service (but not always), so really there isn’t a lot of reason for our paths to cross much so I might not have thought of her immediately.  But Olivia IS someone who I know to be a prayer warrior.  She is also someone who has a heart for the nations and for discipleship.  I am excited to have her fighting spiritual warfare with me through this journey and encouraging me along the way!