Be Careful What You Pray For!

[Jesus] said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.”
Jesus called his twelve disciples together and gave them authority to cast out evil spirits and to heal every kind of disease and illness. 

Jesus sent out the twelve apostles with these instructions:“[Go] to the people of Israel—God’s lost sheep. Go and announce to them that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cure those with leprosy, and cast out demons. Give as freely as you have received! (Matt 9:37-38, 10:1, 5-8)

A while back, Jon was praying for a number of things. One was that our church would have a greater influence on the campus, another was that he could have something productive to do on the nights he struggled with insomnia, and a third thing was that he could have a new ministry of some kind, because he was getting tired of how little contact he had with people at his desk job. 


In the passage above from Matthew, Jesus asks the disciples to pray for more workers to be sent into the harvest, and then in the very next verses he sends them. What they prayed for was answered... through them. That seems to be how God works pretty often.


It was my birthday last month, Jon's old boss from when he worked as an RA called him up to come meet with her. He came home from that meeting with the following (which has become one of the classic Reinagel family quotes now): "Happy Birthday, Carla! Um, do you want to move to TJ?" 


(For those of you who don't know, TJ, or Thomas Jefferson Residence Hall, is a large dorm with about 850 residents on the university campus where we attended and where I still work. Jon lived there 2 years of his undergrad studies). 


Wow, was THAT out of the blue or what! Apparently a fairly important worker was leaving her job halfway through the semester, and they desperately needed someone to fill in the spot. Would Jon take it? I agreed to pray about it with him over the weekend. It seemed a little strange to me to live in a dorm with a family, but as I prayed I felt a distinct peace about the prospect. It strangely enough DID answer a lot of Jon's prayers, and seemed like God's hand was all over it. I said yes.


A couple days later Jon was scheduled to have his first official interview for the position, and on that same day he lost his job as a web designer, as the company he worked for was struggling and all its workers were laid off that day. Also on that same day, I commented to my boss that Jon had been laid off and she offered me a raise. Talk about provision! 


Two weeks later we moved into TJ, we have a cozy little apartment inside the dorm and Jon works in an office down the hall. So far Kyran has loved it here, he gets lots of attention and can ride his new little trike down the long halls. I'm enjoying having lots of babysitters and a dishwasher (nice little convenience we didn't have at the last place!). Jon enjoys his job and the interaction he gets with tons of college students every day, and the fact that he gets to work from home again like we did in Mozambique. So... our church now has a new presence on campus, he'll have something to do on the nights he can't sleep, and he has far more ministry opportunities than before. Overall it has been a great answer to prayer, just maybe not exactly the way we expected those prayers to be answered!