Auto Pilot

Yesterday I spent the afternoon with my brother's missions team and their families.  We met together to talk logistics about communications, give pointers to the team, and to encourage and pray for the team.  During the meeting one of the dads, a career missionary, said the following about missions and one's walk with God, "Auto pilot doesn't work here and it doesn't work over there." 

My first few trips to Northern Ireland our team didn't have a set devotional time.  We had a couple of guys who would lead a Bible study in the afternoon right before tea, but if we were running behind the Bible study got pushed aside.  I could feel my spirit hurting for those team devotions.  While I had my own personal devotions, I longed to study scripture in a group and pray together with my fellow workers.  On a side note, I am advising a student whose senior thesis is on the importance of community and how it is through community that we can better know God.  I've been doing a bit of reading since school let out so I can advise her.  Some of titles include Bonhoeffer's Life Together, Bridges' True Community, and Colson's The Body.  I know it's no coincidence, but what I just wrote above is absolutely in line with what these men say (and I didn't even know that five years ago).

It's important for individual team members to have their personal devotions, but it is also important for the team as a whole to have devotions.  I personally like having daily team devotions.  It's encouraging to go into a busy day after having studied the word and prayed with my fellow workers.  After all, if we aren't studying scripture and fellowshipping (i.e. bearing with one another through prayer and sharing what God has shown us in our study) with one another, how else will we be able to "make known among the nations what He has done, and proclaim that His name is exalted"?