Power of Prayer

This week I've been thinking a lot about the people who have prayed for me at strategic times in this writing journey. A couple stand out:

• Brandilyn Collins praying for me at the commissioning service at my very first ACFW conference in Nashville in 2005. Wow! The words she prayed still encourage and challenge me -- and it probably didn't last more than two minutes. But the impact...it's lasted a long time.

• Grabbing a group of women to pray for me at the 2007 conference when I was convinced I was losing our baby who became our precious Rebecca. Little is scarier than being alone hundreds of miles from home and to start bleeding early in a pregnancy after I'd lost a baby earlier that year. But those women banded around me and held up my hands when I was scared to death.

• There are countless other people who have spoken words of wisdom and prayer into my life. But this past weekend I had an unexpected blessing while participating in the Masters Seminar on Marketing. I'll talk more about it next week. But for now, I'll say that in the midst about talking about me and my brand/future in publishing, this precious small group stopped everything, ignored the agenda and prayed for me.

This is what I love about Christian publishing. We all know it's a ministry. And if I succeed or help someone else succeed, then we all celebrate because that means God is honored. And if one of us needs wisdom or direction, we'll stop to pray for each other. Precious!

The members of our seminar: Conlon Brown, Jim Rubart (presenter), me, Nicole O'Dell, Cindy Thomson, Kit Wilkinson and Chip MacGregor (presenter).