I always know when something I'm working on is really good.

Not by my own marketing merits — but when the work being done is just truly Christ-centered.

How?

Because the spiritual attacks are THROUGH THE ROOF.

Everything goes inexplicably wrong right before a youth group meeting? Yep, that must mean it's going to be an INCREDIBLE meeting where hearts are going to be drawn to Jesus.

Working on a project for a client and met with roadblock after roadblock? I praise God for the incredible work they must be doing.

This particular Catholic school website I'm working on right now has just met with one tech peculiarity after another.

And let me tell you, I can tell from the complete other side of the country the impact this school is having and how awesome it is.

So the constant stream of tech problems are honestly expected at this point.

But something you may not know about my process is that I write a prayer for each of my clients that I pray each time before doing their work.

It's specific to their goals and intentions and helps remind me of the eternal focus of what I'm doing even in the mundane.

Well the other day, I just had to go in and make a super quick update. It would take me longer to say the prayer than to do the update, so I reasoned, "I'll just do the full prayer later on when I'm going to work for longer."

Well wouldn't you know, I get onto the site and get an error message. It can't be reached.

I tried troubleshooting a few things, refreshing, logging in and out.

Error. Error. Error.

I looked up to the corner of my screen where I have Perpetual Adoration streaming from YouTube continuously while I work.

"Well," I thought. "I can try that."

So I stopped, opened up the prayer document, and prayed the full prayer that I had decided I was too busy for since it was "just a quick update."

Once I finished, I tried logging back in...

The site instantly loaded.

Zero issues.

Friends, don't forget that this work we're doing is part of a spiritual battle. Trying to enter into it without prayer, even if the work itself doesn't seem to have immediate spiritual impacts, will never succeed.

And now listen, I don't want to overspiritualize everything. Sometimes, the tech issues and lack of results we see are because of us, not the evil one. We can't just pray and expect everything to fix itself without effort on our part.

But other times, it truly is an attack, and I think we should see it as a good thing: A reminder that the work we're doing is eternal, loved by God and hated by the enemy — and that prayer is essential, not an afterthought, to this work.

So, will you join me this week in praying before we work? Not just because it might solve our tech woes...but because without Him, we can do nothing.

For His greater glory,

Emily

P.S. Just to add to this story...later that same day, I had to close out of the prayer document on my computer because Zoom was being laggy, so I had to close my 347 tabs and windows.

When I went to pray it again later...the document was gone from my computer. It literally did not exist anymore. Thankfully, I had a version saved online...but it just reinforces that the evil one does not want us to pray over our work. So get praying!