SEEK WEEK! A Personal Request for Prayer

It’s been a fun few weeks here. After exhaustedly publishing a book in the spring and otherwise going crazy this summer (a couple of good crazies), it’s been awesome rekindling a blogging fire with my recent Strengths Finder series. I’ve also just redesigned my blog, and personally, I’m more enthusiastic about this blogging space than I’ve ever been.

Naturally, then, this represents an ideal stopping point to briefly break from blogging.

Allow my sarcastic self to explain.

Truthfully, I have a million ideas for blogs right now. And while it may not make logistical sense to take this week “off,” spiritually and mentally it actually makes all the sense in the world.

Every fall my church, ROCKHARBOR, commits an entire week to fasting and seeking. Together. It’s called “Seek Week,” and despite attending this church for 2 years now, I’ve never actually participated in Seek Week. I was just joining ROCKHARBOR when Seek Week happened in 2011, and because of camp I wasn’t even back in California during 2012’s Seek Week.

This year, this week, however, I’m finally participating in Seek Week.

You can watch a video and read all about Seek Week here, but in essence, here’s what’s happening with me this week:

• Social media fast. No Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or blogging for 5 whole days. This will be excruciating, and yet it’s probably for that very reason that this fast has needed to happen sooner rather than later.
• Dessert fast. It’s, like, perpetually 100 degrees in southern California right now. I can’t tell you how much I’m going to miss my nightly ice cream excursions.
• Daily devotionals. ROCKHARBOR has developed a unique devotion for Seek Week which I’ll be reading through each morning.
• Daily journaling. I’ve actually performed quite poorly when it comes to personal journaling these last few months. That will change this week.
• Nightly gatherings. Each night this week, the 5 campuses of ROCKHARBOR are convening at our central campus in Costa Mesa for gatherings of worship, messages, and prayer. I’m beyond stoked.

Even though I’ve been reassuming my blogging rhythm lately, it’s fitting that I take a week off to refocus and refuel. I need it as I enter this new season. A new year.

Could I ask you guys to pray for me? I have a specific list of items I could especially use prayer for this week:

• Finances. After finally climbing out of 12-month debt, my car recently fell apart and I’m now back in the red. Pray for financial peace, first and foremost, and then secondly for financial provision in the form of fulfilling work.
• Direction. I don’t want to divulge too many details just yet, but I’ve been experiencing some crazy visions for the future. Visions that may or may not make any “logical” sense. Pray that I might discern whether said visions indeed represent the next exciting/terrifying steps for my life.
• Relationships. Regardless where my road winds, I want to be fully present in this moment God has written for me. Pray that I continue investing in relationships here and abroad despite repeated temptations to abandon such notions.
• Writing. As already stated, I’ve recently begun returning to a once dormant blogging groove. Pray that I emerge this week with a renewed fervor for writing that extends even beyond this blog — whether in the form of submissions for other blogs/magazines or miscellaneous creative projects (book #2?).

I’m excited for my first Seek Week, and I can’t wait to tell y’all about it soon. In the meantime, I’d truly treasure your prayers.

And oh yeah, I hope you dig my blog’s new look! Feel free to wander about and see what you find.

Travel well,

Tom