Did a prayer walk the other day...

So the group that I attend "church" with is going to be starting a ministry with the families on "Motel Drive" here in Fresno.  Motel Drive is the name of a street in Fresno which has a row of low cost hotels on it. (Of course they are just "low cost" for hotels, with the cheapest starting at $25 a night...) It has come to be known as the place for the poor, the downtrodden, the drug addict, the prostitute and the pedophile to end up. There are a lot of hurting people there, including many children. While it remains to be seen how many in our little "group" will participate, and to what degree, it is already apparent that there are a few that will, and are saying, "It is not OK that this is going on. I have to do something about it." So we started with a prayer walk, my first time on Motel Drive. My first time seeing the broken, the needy, the children, the families...

Getting back to prayer though, it struck me during the prayers the type of walks that people have with the Lord, or at least the impressions of such that different people's prayers left me with. We walked with a woman that is a former prostitute that lived on Motel Drive many years ago in a one bedroom hotel room with her 3 small children. She has since been delivered from the life and afflictions of her time there and is now the founding director of the ministry that we will soon be partnering with, Levi Grace Ministries. It was her prayer that really stuck with me. Her prayer flowed with such conviction and confidence and strength. It was a prayer founded in both faith and a knowledge of the One to which the prayer was directed. Finally it had a flow that could only have come from hours of practice. In short, it was a prayer that I would aspire to in my better moments. The other prayers had varying effects on me, but it continued to strike me that the prayers coming out of people, or at least the type of prayers, the mood, cadence, content, etc. seemed to... well... they seemed to be just what I  would expect from the person offering them based on what I knew of that person and my interactions with them. 

I realize that this post could be misinterpreted fairly easily so I should clarify what I am saying... I do not consider myself a seasoned prayer warrior. I can pray, and I will pray, but I know that I have a long way to go... I hope there is not a judging tone in what I wrote. It is a simple observation of prayer. I know that we serve a God that is not as worried about our eloquence as He is about our hearts. But it did seem that prayer can be an indication of not our hearts, but perhaps of how we interact/relate to God and think about who He is. Some will fear, some will stand in awe, some will fall on their faces, some will run into His arms, some will cast themselves on His mercy. Some will request for Him to change, some will pray for themselves to change. Some will be confident, some will tremble. I just found it interesting and it made me think about prayer and how I interact with my God, something that I don't think is a bad thing to consider.