Divine Appointment: What is a prayer burden?

When I lived in Panama, I took Spanish classes to help me grow in language acquisition.

In preparation for a teaching mission in Nicaragua, I was reviewing the teaching material with my professor.

I was teaching material on prayer, and working through translating my notes from English to Spanish.

I’ve spent 4 hours going over the material with my professor, reviewing it for punctuation, grammar, gender agreement (Spanish uses gender forms in their language like Latin and Greek do).

I had the opportunity to explain the concept of Christian prayer to my teacher who isn’t Christian, nor has the vocabulary we Christians loosely throw around in church.

• Prayer is the vital key to experiencing our relationship with God through Christ.
• Prayer is a love relationship with God.
• Prayer can shape the future (we’ll let the theologians figure out how that works with God’s sovereignty).

Christianesse gets in the way

I faced a few challenges, for example

1. Christianese:  What is a “prayer burden?”
2. Spanish translation: The Spanish word I chose for burden gave my professor the image of me carrying a 20lb sack of potatoes on my shoulder.

So not only was prayer burden a foreign concept, so was the mental image my word choice gave my listener.

In trying to explain such terms, I had the opportunity to tell stories of God’s activity in my life.

In attempting to explain a prayer burden, I got to describe a prayer experience I received while mowing the yard.

I was mindlessly mowing the grass when I felt a sudden and strong impulse to pray for a particular missionary team in China, and then explain how I saw God’s hand in that.

Talk about your relationship with Christ

As we talked more, I went on to explain my relationship with Christ.

I had a chance to share the gospel because I explained prayer to someone who doesn’t know how to pray or what a prayer burden is.

In reviewing my material with my professor, I’ve had many opportunities to share stories of God’s activity in my life.

I am asked all sorts of questions while we work on translating the material.  I try to explain the concepts I am teaching about.

All of this gives material for God’s Spirit to draw my professor into a relationship with Him.  She is on a journey to faith, and I get to plant seeds along the way.

Let me ask you this?

When you share your faith, what kind of Christianese do you use?