Pray Local

I’m not sure about you, but my brain wasn’t designed to handle too much at once. There was a period in my life where I felt like wonder woman because technology essentially allowed me to balance more in one day than my body was designed to complete over the course of a month. There was this preconceived notion that presented itself before me daily that I could do it all, and I expected myself to accomplish whatever those tasks were. I had to be a living example of Christ. By his stripes I was healed, and through his strength I needed to accomplish everything with perfection. 

For whatever reason, be it the fault of my love of pretty things or Pinterest, my heart didn’t just desire to complete each task, but to complete each task with class so others could smile and bask in the beauty of all God has created. Fellowship and family is where my heart is. Having grown up in a home that was filled with church friends, neighbors, blood relatives, and foster siblings, the definition of family had a lot of ambiguity. We never had enough room and we surely didn’t have enough time, but we managed to pull everything we set to accomplish with a smile on our faces.

My desire for perfection derived from these moments of fellowship and family. What’s funny is that absolutely nothing was “perfect” in the eyes of man looking from the outside in, but in the eyes of those who needed it, nothing else could compare. I have tried to recreate that atmosphere in my own home as an adult, using the beauty and perfection my mind has recalled from the past, only to be met with an overflow of disappointment. 

A few days ago, I was in prayer and I asked God why is it that things seem so much more difficult to accomplish now than they did in the past? Why do those moments of joy, laughter, homemade food, endless smiling faces and late night stragglers seem so far away? My heart has been riddled with a desire to bring back a revival in my own home where the fire was still burning out back surrounded by a few lawn chairs filled with the final stragglers of the night holding a cup of Joe and laughing about absolutely nothing in particular late into the night. 

In the process of prayer over this never ending desire for my home to be a living vessel of God’s love, which is always open and ready for the local crusade, the thoughts of past happenings of my own attempts begin to creep in. Within seconds, my spirit is crushed and the feeling of becoming overwhelmed sets in pretty much simultaneously. It doesn’t take long to convince myself that the happenings of the past will be the guarantee of the future. 

When I was younger I never wondered about the little things, like do we have enough space or what will people think. It wasn’t until I got older and people started to critique everything I did with areas of opportunity down to who I should and should not invite. I used to take a lot of these things to heart because I wanted bring a smile and a dash of life into every situation. The result was just things becoming way more complicated than they ever needed to be. 

If you pair the unnecessary complication of fellowship with the constant reminder surrounding me daily through every public outlet that I am overwhelmed, depressed, anxious, tired, and barely have time for God let alone my community, the seeds that were designed to be planted never even make it into the soil. 

If that isn’t enough to bare, don’t forget you now have the responsibility of the whole world on your shoulders. What used to be your country and its leaders, plus your local community, has turned into every country, every state, every leader, every town, every community, every ministry and every person in it. Three minutes on social media or on the news and I have enough prayer requests to occupy me for the next 2 hours, enough Go Fund Me requests to clear out my bank account within seconds and enough misery and sadness to take in that I feel guilty even having joy in my life. 

The more and more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn’t the homemade potato salad, vacuuming the floors and a few hours on a Saturday afternoon that was overwhelming me. It was the constant overflow of the commentary from the peanut gallery, along with things of this world that was being presented before my eyes like a revolving door that I felt I had responsibility over. The fact is, the peanut gallery can find somewhere else to go and the weight of this world belongs to God, not me. God didn’t put me here on this earth to be responsible to pray over every country, every state, every leader, every town, every community, every ministry and every person in it by name. You can throw in your, “God I pray for everything” prayer, but the fact is God placed us exactly where we need to be for our local community. 

We’re not God, we’re his children and we’re here to spread the gospel so that others may find freedom in Jesus through what he did at the cross. So that is what God has been pouring all over my heart. I’m not overwhelmed and I do not have too much on my plate. Just keep it local girl. We joke about shopping local, but reality should keep everything in our lives local. 

Be there for your immediate family and community. Pray for them, serve them, love them and let God use the believers in other communities and locations to be there for those close to them. Missionaries don’t mission from afar, they pick up and take their whole lives and their families to serve a specific place. We might not be making the life changing sacrifice they are, but we are missionaries in our own community. 

Shop local, live local, pray local and serve local. Don’t take on the weight of the world when God gave a task before you that is not too hard to accomplish if you remove all the fluff surrounding it. I’m not saying God won’t place things on your heart to give grace over, just like I might find a few neat things online while shopping. I’m just saying that we weren’t designed to fix the world, we were designed to love and serve our local communities through the love of God.