When God Sets the Schedule

The first evening in Spain found me sitting alone in the small living room in our cabin talking to God.  I asked God if he would please guide and direct me in the following days to lead our team in what he wanted done.  I told him I wasn’t sure what towns he wanted us to pray in or just how he wanted our prayer walking to go.  I even asked him about the long prayer walk to Aunon.  I wanted to be sure that trip was what the Lord wanted. I knew that it wouldn’t be an easy journey.  I knew that our field host really wanted us to make that journey.  I knew the team had mixed emotions about it, but I knew that it could be a very powerful time of prayer.  I’ve found that when I am truly seeking God’s way (and not just asking him to confirm that my way is already good) that he always answers.  This time was no exception. 

The next day we headed out with the beginnings of an agenda of the towns where we would go to pray.  The first change came before we left the camp!  Our field leader stopped us as we were leaving and suggested we begin with a certain town first so we headed in that direction.  The next town we planned to visit early that day changed when it became impossible for our van to make the turns on the small roads and we had to abandon the idea of going there.  This led us to not one, but two more towns we didn’t have on the list at all that were suddenly right before us!  So, each time, we stopped and went to pray.  In one of those towns, we arrived just as a church service was beginning and we went in for the beginning of it. 

When a bathroom was needed, we suddenly drove past a bar in the middle of nowhere and I asked Jeff, my husband, to turn the van around so we could stop there.  I had learned from our field host on an earlier trip to Spain that if you are out in the small towns and you need a bathroom, you go to a bar.  They will allow you access to the bathroom if you purchase a Coke.  In this case, each one in the group got a coke and the bar owner gave us all some free tappas (Spanish snacks) to have with our cokes outside!  There wasn’t another place with a bathroom for miles!  Obviously, God was not only leading us, but also providing for us!

After a wrong turn out of one of these towns, we found ourselves on a different road and there before us was the entrance to the town we simply could not get to earlier that morning!  We stopped and prayed in the town.  There were people in the City Circle that would not have been there while we were praying had we arrived there on our schedule.

The one town we wanted to be sure and pray in, we were not able to go to before we had to return to the camp.  However, that evening we set out once again and this time had no difficulty at all making it to that town to pray.  God set the schedule, and I’m quite sure we were right on time.

As to the prayer journey to Aunon, everyone made the long journey there.  It was a wonderful time of prayer walking together.  As to the journey back from Aunon to the camp, God led me to make a few changes.  Half of the group spent some fellowship time in Aunon and then returned in a van.  Our other half, experienced a meaningful time of prayer together on the returning road.  Our map told us to head one direction at the end of that road, but Jeff remembered taking a different route at that turn off.  Following the Lord’s leading, I suggested we take the alternate way Jeff remembered and once again, following the Lord’s leading our timing to return was perfect.  God’s timing always is!

God has reminded me many times these past nine days that if I will simply seek Him and follow His direction all will work out better than I could’ve planned and his timing will always be perfect!  Thank you, Lord, for this blessed lesson for your intercessor!

By Jacqui - One of God's Intercessors