Colossians 4:2-6 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. ³ And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. ⁴ Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. ⁵Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. ⁶ Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

For me, in my outreach history, this is a time to work as hard as possible, preach as much as possible, teach, evangelize, and do as many crazy things as possible to see God’s kingdom extended across the globe.  Now, I am still just as passionate for those things, but the Lord has re-centered my focus onto His face.  The Lord called our team to take each morning this past week and devote ourselves to prayer for three hours.  This was motivated in part by this passage.

Take a moment to consider this.  Paul, one of the greatest evangelists to walk the earth challenged the readers of this letter to devote themselves to prayer.  He challenges us elsewhere about evangelism, but here he takes the time to challenge us to be devoted to prayer.  Devotion to prayer requires the willingness to be inconvenienced.  We must be willing to lay down our plans, agendas, and striving to take up what is on His heart.  In Philippians Paul calls us to press in for the prize of knowing Jesus our Lord.  Here, he challenges us to press into prayer to see the doors open up for the Gospel.  We are to pray that the Gospel message is declared clearly and with wisdom.  From this place of being devoted to prayer he challenges us further to have our conversations seasoned with salt.

The devotion to prayer is what allows our seasoning to be appropriately directed.  If we don’t have the foundation of prayer then our saltiness can be wasted at the wrong time and in the wrong amounts.  My hope and prayer is that every time I take the saltshaker out and spread the salt in my conversations it would be tossed on top of a foundation of prayer.

I will no longer scoff at outreaches filled with prayer walks and prayer watches.  I want to live my life like this passage challenges me to live.  Devoted to prayer and seasoned with salt!  This is a powerful combination.  Our team begins a 24 hour prayer watch tomorrow night at 6:00 p.m.  Maybe you want to join us.  Pray for doors to open for the Gospel message to go forth.  Pray that the Word would be preached with clarity and wisdom and that we would always be seasoned with salt to share the love of Christ with all He calls us to minister to here in Brazil and across the nations!

Through all of this and more we have fallen in love with this nation. Two weeks has hardly been enough to satisfy my longing to spend more time in this beautiful country. Today as I looked ahead to the Call2All DTS in April of 2011 I started thinking of spending a few months here for outreach. I believe God is preparing this land for a great harvest and I for one would love to be a part of it. I certainly think that having a ministry on the largest university in the world is fairly strategic!

My prayer is that we have been a blessing to the ministry here with YWAM Thailand. I know they have been an incredible blessing to us. I believe the fruit we have seen over our short time is being passed on to very capable hands and I believe the seeds we’ve sown will be watered and harvested. I believe the water we’ve poured on the soil is soon to produce a great harvest that the team here is so ready for! I would encourage as many as possible to come join this family here in Thailand to work the field in this nation. I believe you will love every minute! I definitely have!