I don’t know what exactly has changed but something has. What do I mean? For a long time I have had a difficult time praying. But that has been changing as of late and I am not sure why. There have been numerous times where the compulsion to pray is intense. A couple of years ago it was normal for that to happen but like I said it, has been a couple of years. They are not the prayers that you sit down and say, “Dear God I need help in this” or “Help this person in this.” No, it has been what I call praying in the Spirit. I do not pray in tongues, that is not one of the gifts my Father gave me. HE chose other ones; actually HE gave me the ones I asked for. It is prayer in which I go before the throne of my Father and wait for His leading. It is hard to explain. I pray for people that I would not normally pray for and for things that I would not normally pray for. These are people and things that I believe are brought to mind by the Spirit. It is energizing and draining at the same time. I know that does not make sense. One commonality is that there are often tears involved as I intercede on behalf of someone. Sometimes I do not even understand what I am praying for. I just know to keep praying and when nothing else seems to come I just wait and sit before the throne and spend some time enjoying fellowship with the Father. Subsequently, I have been under some intense spiritual attacks from the enemy. And yes, they are tied together. It is just the way it is. The closer you get to the One, the other wants to pull you away, distract and discourage you. I believe some of it is connected to us being a part of our small group fellowship and what is going on there. I believe and see that God is doing something special. Any time you have a group of people who desire and are passionate about learning, have begun to grow closer together as they grow closer to the Lord…we have an enemy that is not going to like that and will do whatever he can to disrupt it. We (Kel & I) certainly have not and do not feel overly spiritual, especially right now. We look at ourselves and we say “why is he attacking us? We are not a threat.” So the question we want to ask is, what does he know that we don’t? In that there is some comfort, a reassurance that we may not be as far gone as we thought. The Lord is at work, moving us towards “something” that we do not yet see. But that the enemy of God desires to derail (us/it) before it does become clear.