Keepers of a gentle flame

I have just been to a wonderful event at HTB in London. For those of you who don't know HTB is the birthplace of Alpha a course for those wishing to explore christianity. So far nearly 20 million people worldwide have been on this course. At the birthplace of alpha they have just launched a permanent 24-7-365 prayer room. The Bishop of London opened it, and I was blessed to be a part of the morning.

I have been thinking about some stuff recently and felt it was time to start putting my thoughts back out there. My blogging has become a little tame and a bit sporadic. Probably due to recovering from what was the most challenging year we have ever lived through.

Anyway I keep thinking about the church on it's knees...

Why does the church need to spend more time on it's knees?

Because we can't do it on our own, we can't organise, plan and administer the growth of Gods kingdom, we can only call out with faith and fall to our knees in acknowledgement of our absolute and utter dependancy on him. 

Yes we have plans, initiatives and resources but if these are not fuelled by prayer they will be shallow expressions of a deeper reality. 

All the fires we seek to light must start with a spark of prayer, must be sustained by the fuel of prayer and when they spread they must ignite more prayer. 

The spirit of God is unpredictable wildfire yet I wonder if have we become keepers of a gentle flame?

As the church in the UK I believe we have got good at we do, we know how to connect, we know how to run an alpha course, to run good youth work, to engage with our communities, to be agents for social change and regeneration, we are in faith for more money, we apply for grants and create budgets, we ask the church for more. 

We make our stuff sexier, more attractive, slicker and if I'm honest it all kind of works, which is good and definitely an answer to our prayers. 

I can't help but feel there is another dimension that we need to access, another place. 

For me that place would be the edge! 

The edge of what? 

The edge between what we can physically do and what we can't, the edge for me is faith. The point where we have to take ourselves and our communities, the place where if it all goes wrong we'll look stupid and our elders will tell us they saw it coming. The place where we will be embarrassed if it doesn't work. We have to start scaring ourselves again. 

This is the place of prayer, it takes us to the edge, it leads us out in faith. This is Noah building a boat, Abraham on the mountain, Moses crossing the sea, Peter walking on water, or Stephen before the Sanhedrin. For me this is the edge.

I want to get on my knees because, although what we are doing is great and blessed, it is not enough.

What do we have faith for? What do we need faith for?

Just thoughts......

I want to get out on the scary edge again.

Prayer for Peace in Belfast

On the 15th December 2012, at 8.30am, a call to prayer for peace will ring out at Belfast City Hall.

People from every background and community in Northern Ireland will circle the City Hall building in a response to the trouble and the distressing scenes witnessed across our land over the past weeks.

This call to prayer is free from any political, social, organisational or denominational agenda. It is free from any motivation other than the fact that we believe in the power of God and the power of prayer to change our circumstances. We believe that God is alive and able to heal our land if we humble ourselves and pray.

It is not a protest. It is not a protest against protests. In a spirit of unity, this is an expression of prayer and blessing for our city, our politicians, our police, our society, our shopkeepers and hard pressed businesses.

We want to hold on to the Northern Ireland Tourist Board slogan that this is 'Our Place, Our Time' and pray simply and boldly for the peace and prosperity of Belfast and Northern Ireland in this season of goodwill and thanksgiving.

- We want to pray for peace to reign
- We want to pray for the return of hope

This is an open invitation to prayer and so, at this time, we have no idea as to the number of people who will turn up but we expect representatives from all branches of Christianity across Northern Ireland to take part. We have been in contact and have complied with the advice of the police by gathering at a time that will cause least disruption to local businesses and thereby cause no negative impact on this city which we love. Furthermore, we will be encouraging all those who gather to tangibly bless the city centre traders who have lost so much business over the last 10 days.

This time of prayer will be short, private, silent and reflective. It is avowedly non-political.

Please try and arrive between 8.15 and 8.20 on all sides of the city hall where stewards will help organise people into a line. At 8.30 you will hear a whistle to commence the prayer and 8.35 a whistle to end it.

Prayer in the high street

I guess upon my return the biggest question that I have is "How do we take what we learnt in Ibiza and transfer some of the principles to the UK?"

Over the last years I feel that I have been on an intensive prayer and mission training school. Trying to live a life that is both intimately involved with God and actively involved with the world. We have tried hard to breath God in and breath God out, to have out hearts aligned with His and from this form a place of prayer that connects with the world.

Prayer rooms in the right places are a big one for me, I believe we need to see an increase of spaces where people can connect with God on a regular basis. For me that would mean seeing an increasing amount of permanent prayer spaces in situations were the general public can feel able to drop in and reflect on their maker! Shop front prayer rooms would be a great start with this. Creative spaces that give people the chance to pop in be it for a few minutes or a few hours and connect in a tranquil environment with God.

The UK's high streets are littered with empty shops, I would love to see a move within the church of hiring these shops and making them connecting points with the community.

"we need to position ourselves amongst need"

If shopping is the new religion we need to be there in the midst of it all, blessing the community by giving them the opportunity to sample a different way of being and have a connection point with God.

I have just spent an hour in the a prayer room in the town where I live, in that time had the opportunity to pray with a depressed guy who is living in a hostel and chat and pray with another guy who is working through some issues. It was life giving not just for them but also for me. The place of the church in the high street will inevitably lend itself to connection with broken and damaged humanity. We need more of this.

I want to develop a network of prayer rooms and spaces that are present in the high street and accessible to all.

I am curious as to whether this could work?

Praying at Wembley

This Saturday will see a prayer gathering at wembley stadium, for a National Day of Prayer and Worship they are expecting about 40,000 people to turn up and pray.

It should be fascinating I was at wembley a couple of weeks ago for the England Ukraine match and there were about 64,000 people and it looked a little empty. Also running an event without being able to go on the pitch should be difficult but all said and done, despite the difficulties, I think it is a wonderful thing.

I love this from Hudson Taylor: "The prayer power has never been tried to its full capacity. If we want to see mighty wonders of divine power and grace wrought in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let us answer God's standing challenge, "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not!'"

The more opportunities we have to gather and pray the better, I want to witness mighty wonders of divine power and grace in the UK.

24-7 prayer UK

Well I have been in my new job now for 24-7 Prayer about 3 weeks and I am enjoying it.

Still adjusting to UK life, still looking for a car, still trying to find a way of feeling at home in Diss. But all of this leads to the thought "Be still,  Be still and know that I am God." I am often not very still and I sometimes try to be God.....

As this job takes begins to take shape my fears are that I don't end up spending all my time with christians and also that I don't end up feeling like a I work for a PR company whose sole client is prayer!

It has to be about prayer and mission. You can't divorce the two, the minute you do you end up in all sorts of muddles! Right now I am trying to see the woods through the trees, trying to get a sense of what we need to do in the UK to effectively catalyse prayer and mission. Although right now I am just watching, tuning into God, trying to get his heart for this nation! I hope that doesn't sound to grand.

A puritan non conformist scholar and pastor called Joseph Alleine, who was imprisoned on a number of occasions in the 1600’s for his faith said this:

“though I am apt to be unsettled and quickly set of the hinges, yet, methinks, I am like a bird out of the nest., I am never quiet till I am in my old way of communion with God; like the needle in the compass, that is restless till it be turned towards the pole. I can say, through grace, with the church, ‘with my soul have I desired thee in the night, and with my spirit within me have I sought thee early’ My heart is early and late with God; ‘tis the business and delight of my life to seek Him.”

So right now I am making it the business and delight of my life to seek Him. Hoping that God will lead us forward, give us a clear sense of who we are meant to be.

A new day, a new dawn and I'm feeling good.

Ok

A little break has just happened, I didn't intend for such a long absence but I had loads of travel and lots of other bit and bobs to get sorted so ran out of writing steam.

Well here we are 11 weeks from leaving and at the very beginning of our 8th season in ibiza, our centre opens Wednesday and we are out on the streets Wednesday night.

We have just had a one week prayer team out and spent a fantastic time praying around the island.

It's a new day, a new dawn as Abigail and Charles take over, Poppy has arrived from America and this week we get 2 more team members, Kate and Kezi, they are not a double act!

Emotionally Tracy and I are all over the place!!! We love it so much here yet we are so ready to return to the UK. There is a line in a Mumford and son song thats says something like where you invest your love is where you invest your life. We feel like we have really invested our love and our lives into this place which makes leaving feel very painful.

I guess we are constantly conflicted, caught between the best of both worlds, not wanting to make this place bad so as to make the new place better!

We want to go and we want to stay! We are excited about leaving yet sad about leaving, we are apprehensive about fitting back into the Uk yet excited about the UK, we know it will be good for our boys, yet we have moments where wonder if it will be bad for our boys!

We need money for the move as we don't have enough so get stressed but then we get stressed that we are worrying too much and not trusting God enough.

We tell everyone you need to finish well then get so caught up in the detail that we are in danger of finishing badly, well maybe not badly but definitely with high levels of distraction. This could all sound messy, and yes it is, we are not feeling sorry for ourselves.

Generally we are very happy and normally very content, we are leaning back into God for strength but sometimes we lurch into our own understanding!!

This move is right, but it also feels a little painful, we are dealing with the pain by concentrating on the practicalities.

Strangely I find it all a little exciting, it might be hard but you sure do feel alive and it's good to be alive.

I'm feeling good!!!

7 Years Ago

Today 7 years ago was when we arrived as a family on the island of Ibiza, 27th March 2005.

On one level time has flown by on another level I feel like we have been here a long time, I guess thats a general condition of life, the fast and the slow seem to blend!

If I was asked to describe the last 7 years in a blog post, I wouldn't be able to thats why we are writing a book. But if there was one word that I could use it would be this.

Gratitude

I was asked recently to talk about the sacrifice of moving to Ibiza and doing what we do, weirdly I started to cry! It wasn't because I was sad or wearied it was just that when I accessed my feelings I could only feel a deep sense of gratefulness that God had brought us on this journey. Yes at times it has been challenging and tough but we have learnt so much, been given so much, grown so much that in terms of sacrifice what we got back from coming here far outweighs anything we gave up.

I find myself grateful, grateful for the variety of people I have met here, grateful for what they have taught me. Grateful to all those who have supported us in prayers, visits, giving, living here, serving on teams, phone calls, blog comments, making curries, kind emails it's been phenomenal and we feel our appreciation of church, the body of Christ, has grown so much. If you are reading this right now you are one of those people, so thank you.

Grateful for what has happened with 24-7prayer in Ibiza, the way God has breathed on this work, the way it has grown and will continue to grow.

As a family we have grown, in togetherness, in joint experience and age!!!

Words can't describe fully my gratitude, I often find myself saying "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good and His love endures forever"


Yes there are challenges ahead, as we think of leaving here we just concentrate on the practical because if we go there with the emotional we would be wrecks. Ibiza has been our lives for 7 years. I love that line from a Mumford & Sons song Awake my Soul "where you invest your love, you invest your life" I feel we have done that which makes the emotional challenge of leaving tremendously hard.

So the Journey home begins, over the next 4 months until the 20th July, we have to work hard at keeping our heads in the game here and stay focussed as we hand over to Charlie and Abby, whats really important is finishing well.

There are significant financial challenges to getting home, if you would like to help with that please get in touch with me and I can send you a little document explaining the costs and challenges.

Primarily I just want to "give thanks to Lord for He is good" and say "His Love endures forever"

2. A commitment to life long learning and discipleship

A healthy community will display a commitment to life long learning and discipleship. I want to live a life worthy of my calling. Paul exhorted Timothy to watch his life and his doctrine. Jesus said go make disciples.

To make disciples we need a commitment to being disciples!

Here's what I find challenging, "If we create a church culture that is about entertainment and promote a devotional life that involves getting pumped up to whatever the latest christian worship song is we will inevitably start to flag in our growth as christians"


I heard Bill Johnson say something like "I can pray that God imparts what he has given me to you, but I can't impart my history"


Your history as a disciple is something that has been refined over the years, once again the challenge in an immediate culture is to stick at it!

If you are serious about being a disciple you should read the bible every year. Thats not even rushing through it, 4 chapters a day 10 minutes, even if you go ultra slow with a highlighter and take notes 30 minutes, thats all it will take.

If I want to be committed to lifelong growth and learning I must "hide his word in my heart" or "Meditate on His word day and night"


Without wanting to sound harsh or smother myself in a cloak of religiosity I have had to tell myself "Brian if you are serious about being a disciple you need to read the bible" I see on lots of blogs people doing book munches and reading 52 books in a year etc, I've tried it but in the end if it gets in the way of me reading the bible I put the other books down.

Sorry there is so much more to discipleship than bible reading but it's the one area I think our generation has to get hold of.

I'm off to the UK for a few days, I'll do a more comprehensive piece on on learning communities when I get back.

1. A prayerful community is a healthy community

I was at a meeting earlier this year where the leader of a big church said that they were moving towards there people never being more 24 hours away from the opportunity to participate in an organised prayer event of some shape or form, I thought this was excellent.

He was building prayer into the life of the church. I know there is a responsibility for us to have our own personal, disciplined, responsible prayer lives, but when you are part of a community that places high value on prayer it cannot help but affect you. The Macro affects the Micro and vice versa.

That is the reason I think 24-7prayer has been so successful it has given the body of Christ a tool which they can take, individualise and adapt to fit their local setting which in turn facilitates and encourages prayer. 24-7 prayer helps the church to pray.

Of course it is not the only way and really our heart is not on selling a model it is that people and communities pray. I don't care if you never have a 24-7 prayer room, I care that you pray.

A healthy community will have a healthy corporate prayer life but will also be full of people who have healthy personal prayer lives.

A few brief simple thoughts on prayer they are not meant to patronise you and this is not a comprehensive list:

Do you set regular time aside on a daily basis to pray? Pete Greig says that a remote control and an alarm clock would be your greatest tools in this. I would also hasten to add the ability to turn your computer/ipad/smart phone off.

Do you fast? Jesus did, start small, but at some point you should be looking to do 3 days without food!

Do you practice petition and perseverance? Write it down, keep a notebook, don't give up! Don't let the instant culture we live in shape us.

Get to prayer events, attend prayer meetings, read about prayer, educate yourself, learn about prayer, this will all help you.

One last thing: I have noticed over the years that participating in a prayer room is a wonderful time, but it can be a very individual and quiet time, often spending an hour, contemplating, painting, writing, talking or ranting on your own. We have to be careful this doesn't cause us to lose the ability to pray out loud with others, there is power in the prayer of agreement, I can't agree with you if I can't hear you!

Healthy communities and churches will have healthy prayer lives.

We still pray

We have had Scott Bower and Chris Stone out with us for a couple of days filming for the Lent prayer spaces podcasts. It's been great fun but very tiring as we also did a series of podcasts on prayer and mission which will be released in June.

In the middle of all this Charlie and Abby have finally arrived which is so cool.

On Thursday we were in the street filming when we got into a conversation with a guy. He was english speaking and going through a bit of stress, and worried about a member of his family. He is also probably an alcoholic, it was weird because we were out filming about prayer and mission, breathing in and breathing out and how that prayer can't stay in the prayer room.

So we had a wonderful opportunity to pray with him, it reminded me of the summer and how we get to pray with so many people. I also had a pang of sadness as I realised I wouldn't be doing this in Ibiza much longer, but the good news is I can still do it in the UK. Prayer is prayer and we can do it anywhere.

Anyway you should check out the lent series of daily podcasts here on 24-7 prayers You Tube channel.

Standing between the living and the dead

Intimacy and involvement is a much used phrase within 24-7 prayer, it's the phrase that gives real life to our movement. I believe this is a really exciting time. God is still looking for a people who are both intimate with him and involved with the world. 

There is a call upon each one of our lives to be an intimate prayerful people, who touch the Father’s heart and experience the transforming power of his presence. There is also a call upon each of our lives to be an involved people, who prayerfully take the Fathers heart to the world and introduce others to Jesus and allow them to experience the transforming power of His presence in their lives. Thats what I love. 


24-7prayer then by default is not a tabernacle model of prayer, it's an incarnational model.
We must be careful that we don’t try to spread the gospel without the back up of prayer, the power of the Holy Spirit and the transforming power of having been in His presence. Likewise we must be very careful that we don’t pray, experience the Holy Spirit and become transformed by His presence without ever being compelled to fulfil the biblical mandate of spreading the gospel.

We need to be a people who do both, it would be completely wrong to say “I pray, others reach out” or “I reach out, others pray” a Christians life needs both intimacy and involvement. I think even the phrase prayer missionary leaves a little bit to be desired.

My faith is two pronged and I don’t think we can choose to go for just one prong! Read Matthew 22: 37 -40 we are called to do both,"love the Lord your God with all your heart and Love your neighbours as yourself." 

We can’t just be presence seekers; we also need to be presence bringers. We need to be striving to do both together at all times.

I heard a guy called Bill Wilson speak once he talked from Exodus 16: 42 – 50. in which a deadly plague is spreading throughout the children of Israel, they are literally dropping like flies in front of Moses and Aaron, Aaron runs to the Altar, the place that represents the presence of God, he gets some incense and fire from the Altar and runs into the middle of the people and stands with the incense and the plague stops. It says that he took the fire and “stood between the living and the dead”.


We must be a people who get fire from the presence of God and then stand in the middle of a dying world and bring life. We are called to stand between the living and the dead but we can only do this if we have got the fire from His presence.Aaron carried something that he had got from the presence of God into the middle of a very dark and desperate situation and the plague stopped. One man ran into the presence and then ran into the dying world around him and made a difference. The fact that he ran suggests urgency, lives depended on his speed, on his commitment and his awareness of how dreadful the situation was.

My prayer is that I become like Aaron, that I am filled with a desire to run to the presence of God and that I am also filled with enough compassion for the lost and dying to run with His presence into the world.

Intimacy and involvement. Prayer and action. Faith and deeds. They kind of all go together.

Intercession

Is intercession a specific ministry? I sometimes here people say "I am an intercessor" aren't we all called to be intercessors. A friend of mine had someone preaching at his church at the end of the preachers talk he asked for the intercessors to come forward, no one moved!! This was because the whole church had been taught that they were all intercessors and that intercession was not a specific specialist ministry.

Is there a biblical theological argument to support intercession as a gift or ministry?

The word intercessor can only be found in Job 16 and it is not a specific reference to something that is given to one individual.

Aren't we all called to be intercessors, to bring our petitions, to pray continually. The minute you make intercessory ministry a job for specialists you create levels. You make it difficult for other people and prayer becomes exclusive.

Now I understand that there are people who can pray with ease for hours, there are prayer warriors and there are those who can wait on the Lord with ease. This is more a discipline than a gift. Yes and I do believe in intercession groups and meetings, there's nothing better than gathering together and interceding for something. What we do in San Antonio is intercession, we gather regularly to pray for our area and the people who live in it, we intercede, we become intercessors for that period of time.

I wanted to go a bit more biblical with this but until summer is over I don't have the time. When Paul talks of gifts in the New Testament he never mentions prayer or intercession as gift.

Thats why I love 24-7 prayer it encourages prayer for everyone, you don't need a great musician, you don't need to have a specially dedicated full time building. You can have a prayer room anywhere and pray anywhere it is not for specialists, it's inclusive.

Check out All About Prayer for a little more on intercession.

Feminized Prayer

Sometimes I get worried that people think prayer is for girls! With our summer teams that join us here there are we have many more men than women. my accountant wife tells me 80% of our teams are women! I know this is always true of mission teams in general but it did get me thinking about the feminization of prayer.

There's an organisation called Lydia Fellowship  it's about women praying based on quite a weak link to a bible reference in Acts Chapter 16, their prayer meetings are exclusively for women, I know that prayer is good, that all types of people praying all types of prayers are necessary but I can't help wondering if the Lydia thing is a reflection of something that is wrong in Europe!

Over the last century prayer has been feminized, maybe because as the growth of christianity has happened men have worked and women have stayed at home and had more time to go to prayer groups during the day!! Maybe church leadership has not put enough emphasis on prayer, therefore making it a daytime activity available only to those without jobs. It could just be that with increased wealth and leisure women have chosen prayer and men haven't.


Perhaps it's down to the rise of one or two strong women prayer preachers and intercessor movements led by women. 


I know that times have changed but I even look at the  24-7 prayer international prayer team and I see that 6 are women and there is only one man, and this is quite a modern movement!!!!!!! In the end movements do reflect their leadership it concerns me that if the prayer side of 24-7prayer is all ladies bar one, then maybe we will only encourage ladies to pray.

Believe me praying women are better than no one praying at all. this isn't a chauvinistic post more a frustrated post. I don't want women to stop praying I just wish more men would get involved.

How does that happen?

Praying with people on the street

It's so hot and humid here I had to get up at 6am and go and lie outside! Tracy had been out on the street tonight and has just got in.

We have 19 adults here including Tracy and myself serving the work of 24-7 prayer here in ibiza, 8 of those are our first two week team and they are doing a great job.

People in our world still really want prayer, even if they wouldn't call themselves christians. Even though this is our 7th season I still find myself amazed and humbled by the amount of opportunities we get to chat, listen to and pray with people on the street.

Here's a little bit about how it goes when we pray for others on the streets.

Number one prayer request we get is always "others" people generally always want you to pray for someone else. At first I think they feel it's selfish to ask for individual prayer, often saying things like "I don't deserve your prayers but could you pray for my Granny" or a sick loved one, or friend who is having a hard time.

People often ask us to pray for dead people, we do pray for them but generally turn the prayer to pray for the bereaved family and friends. Often it's like they want us to get a message to their friend or family member, or they just miss them dearly and want us to pray that they will be ok in heaven.

Once we have prayed for others we tend to ask "Is there anything we can pray for you about?" mostly we get prayers about future, meeting the right partner, getting enough money, good employment that kind of thing.

Often as we talk and listen to people it goes to a deeper level, 5 areas that people talk to us a lot about are: guilt, regret, fear, pain, failure. I think this tends to happen because we just take the time, we pray before we go out, we ask to be led, allow the Holy Spirit to prompt and guide us and we don't rush. People are also on holiday so they tend to be more relaxed and also in less of a hurry. This is where you really have to believe God will show up, he does. We get a lot of emotional response as we pray for people and it's always beautiful to watch God show up and start to interact with people who maybe hadn't given Him a lot of thought.

We will also pray for people to be healed, you'll be surprised by how many people won't want you to do that, but we are never frightened to ask! We have prayed for a number of people who have got better.

We work hard at not using religious language. I use certain phrases that I really mean for our generation. I pray for God to smile on people, to bless their families, to help them in work, to provide all they need. I often also pray for peace, people need peace. We do of course ask the Holy Spirit to lead our praying but it does help to have given some fore thought to what you are going to say.

If people don't want us to pray for them there and then on the street we ask if they would like to fill out a prayer request form that we will take back to our prayer room and pray about for them. A couple of tips: get them to write it if they don't want to write it you write it but get them to sign it. You then end up praying their prayer more accurately.

Of course over the years we have had comedy prayer requests like guys asking for longer willy's or some asking if Leicester could win the FA cup. We still pin them on our wall and pray for the person but not the request!!!

These last 4 days alone we have prayed with over 30 people on the streets here in Ibiza.

Be the prayer, the new vomit van

Well here is the new vomit van, the only disturbing thing about it is the slightly effeminate ankle sticking out from under the door!

I love that line in Exodus, where God says to Moses "what have you got in your hand?" when we first started to spot drunks we prayed and I feel that is what God said to us. All we had was our normal cars, so we used them to pick people up.

We noticed the mess and then became the answer to our own prayer. Be careful how you pray.

Then of course someone else became the answer to our prayers by donating money for the first van and then when it broke down someone else stepped up to the mark and donated money that we could keep going. It's funny but they in many ways became the prayer.  I love that the church is so wide and that someone sitting at home in another country can become the prayer and by doing so they buy us a van that enables lives to be saved on the streets. In the last 2 weeks we have already got about 6 people home and we know that this will increase.

One last thought on being the prayer: Don't pray if you don't expect it to change your life, don't pray for your community if you are not willing to be led out of your comfort zone into your community, it can sound harsh but I am convinced that if you take your prayer life seriously you cannot help but become the prayer.

Persistence and Perseverance

We live in an instant world. 

I want to change the channel on my TV I hit the button it happens, I want to book a flight I do it, I want to buy a book I can find it in seconds, I wait for more than 3 minutes for my coffee at Starbucks and I am stressing, if a web page takes more than 1 minute to load I am tapping my fingers and thinking about going elsewhere, I can take a photo and everyone can see it in minutes, we receive live news updates and events streaming from anywhere in the world almost as instantly as stuff happens.

We live in a culture of immediacy. 

Freddy Mercury once sang "I want it all, I want it all and I want it now". Has this culture of immediacy permeated the church? I am pretty sure it has. Sometimes in subtle ways other times in blatantly overt ways.

I believe immediacy affects discipleship, it affects our worship, it affects our acts of service and at a very deep level it affects our prayer lives.

The persevering prayer and the persistent prayer are one of the hardest prayers to keep going. Year after year here in Ibiza, even night after night I pray repetitive prayers, sometimes I find it very hard. Yet I understand that I need to keep going. I sometimes struggle when you get people on a two week team here in Ibiza and after the 1st week they will say "I don't know what to pray anymore" I understand where they are coming from but normally just encourage them to pray the same prayer again. There is power in repetition.

We did not have a single connection with a prostitute here for 4 years, but we kept praying. We have been wanting to develop a Spanish speaking community mixed with an international community for 7 years, it only started this year and it's only been happening for 7 weeks, but we kept praying.

If we don't learn to grow in long persistent and persevering prayer we will not grow in certain areas of our lives. We will be conformed to the pattern of this world and live with only the immediate in mind.

Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, there is a race marked out for you you need to run it with perseverance. There is a race in prayer that is marked out for you, sometimes that race will be a sprint but often it will be a marathon. We need to persevere in prayer, we need to not give up, to keep knocking.

I believe that being part of a community is one of the greatest helps to persevering persistent prayer, we need people to stand with us and encourage us not to give up, to keep running, to keep knocking.

So please don't give up, keep running, keep knocking.

History and Haunting

A number of years ago we had the privilege of listening to the wisdom of wonderful man called Ken McCreavy, Ken passed away last year which was very sad.

However one of the statements that Ken made really sticks in mind and helps us as we look at prayer and mission. Ken said "For every history that is seen there is always a secret history, a history that is unseen" I really liked that. He said that for every revival that breaks out there is always a church or leader who goes down in history as the centre to travel to or the leader of the moment. Behind all of these there were probably people who prayed for years for break through in their town, or some ladies who prayed faithfully that God would bless and anoint their leader. For every history that is seen there is a secret unseen history.

We have it here, I got to baptise a guy, 24-7 prayer got to befriend him, someone got to pray the prayer of repentance with him, but his mother had prayed for him all his life! For every story that is told there is another story that we don't see.

I love the fact that as we walk the streets and pray with people we get to be involved in their secret history.

A friend of mine in the 80's was in Amsterdam smoking weed with his girlfriend, they stopped to listen to a band play, whilst they listened a guy approached them told  and them the band was a christian band and offered to pray for them. They were very reticent and at first they refused, he persisted and they eventually let him pray for them. He prayed and they left. 6 months later through a whole set of circumstances they gave their lives to Jesus and still follow him to this day. The guy who prayed for them knows nothing of this, yet he is involved in their secret history.

We live in a results driven world, if we don't see results we can feel that we have failed. Yet so often prayer is the long haul, or prayer is the secret place. When we pray with people on the streets we get the opportunity to become involved in their secret history.

We get their name, we take it back to the prayer room we start to pray for them we get involved in their secret history. This is also where haunting comes into it!!!!

In Ephesians 4:27 Paul says "do not give the devil a foothold" 


I believe that every time someone agrees to let you pray for them they give God a foothold. 


Once we have prayed with someone we get really on it, we pray that God would haunt them, that they would meet people who are christians, that friends would find faith, that people at work would talk to them about the Lord, that they would have dreams about Jesus, that they would start to ask questions about their eternal security, that they would find a strange interest in the bible, that they would start to see God in nature, that they would want to visit as church, basically that God would haunt them. They have given him a foothold, their was a chink in their armour of resistance the minute they agreed for you to pray with them. We pray that chink would widen and they would invite Him in. 


We get involved in their secret history and ask God to haunt them. 

Connect and Communicate

This is starting to take shape as a little prayer and mission series, which is good.

As we walk the streets at night our prayer before we leave is that we connect and communicate. Here's a thought: all the suddenly stuff, the supernatural stuff dare I even say the treasure hunting has a place in our lives but, and I use this "but" carefully, could it bypass the need to develop connections with people and build relationships with them?

Do we hide behind the supernatural as a pose to putting in the ground work of building relationship? I give you a prophetic word or word of knowledge therefore I get to speak intimately into your life without really knowing you! Can prophecy be a bypass to intimacy?

I believe that supernatural revelation is a God given gift that does make evangelism more effective, I don't doubt that for one moment.

I want to connect and communicate with people and sometimes that is a long haul relational deal, in fact I believe that most times it is long haul relational over instant supernatural. We go out we meet people we try to build relationships with them. We connect and communicate.

My prayer is often that we make a connection, that we communicate the love of God to whomever we meet. If they are only around for the short term probably the supernatural works as an instant hit. If it's long term, sure the supernatural can unlock a door, but the reality is that we need to build relationships with people. Relationships don't happen quickly.

One of the guys who got saved out here, was loved into the kingdom over 5 years by a variety of people who built relationships with him. He was also prayed into the kingdom by his mother and family, the end result was supernatural transformation of his life but it came through the effective connection and communication of the love of God over a long period of time.

Connect and communicate.

What if and what else?

The leader of 24-7prayer in Ireland Adrian Eagleson has just written this little update of the first 4 months of our year of prayer. Adrian is not really this small....

Pop over to the 24-7 Ireland site and check the full article out. Here's a little clip:

"In the year of What if I would not be surprised that we end up with more Holy Spirit collisions and unexpected opportunities that we have not even thought about. We have at this point a plan for prayer rooms up and down the nation, however this might just be the beginning, the donkeys part of the story what God wishes to do in Ireland at this time. More and more we are finding others who we have not been connected with who have a similar commitment to build the kingdom. 24-7 it seems, is simply another way of joining the dots together.

And in all of this we have been amazed by the 80 prayer rooms that have already taken part in our first four months. At our monthly gatherings in Carnmoney, Lurgan, Dublin and Belfast we have heard stories of people encountering God in a new and personal way in the place of prayer. One of my favourites is of a prayer room in a rural part of County Armagh where a woman who has been a Christian for over 30 years felt comfortable enough to pray out loud for the first time in a prayer gathering. This speaks to me of the freedom that can come to our nation through the place of prayer, we can apply it at an individual, community and national level.

We are excited about the opportunity that exists as we travel the length and breath of the island, provoking, stirring and encouraging the fullness of God’s Kingdom.

Yet in and through it all, we will remain vigilant continuing to be committed to what God has called us to, and asking the questions what if and also what else?"

Like

I don't know if you use facebook, I do, I like it although I can find it a little addictive.

I was talking to someone at the weekend who feels that in the end the amount of friends people have on facebook will drop to a more concise and true representation of your friendship circle and that twitter will be for a wider audience.

What I like about facebook is photo's, the chat and groups.

If you haven't already I would really love you to join this group 24-7Ireland facebook group

I really want to push all that is going on in Ireland and the more people who join the better, it just keeps you informed and helps you stay up to date on all that happens in N.Ireland. You don't have to live there to a be member we would just really love to spread the word.

Also check out this latest article about an Inter-Chapliancy Prayer Room  in Queens University Belfast.

I am really feeling Ireland on my Heart at the moment.

"We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English." Winston Churchill