11.18.10

Remembering God’s Promises

Posted in ministry, photography, Uncategorized at 7:07 am

I was having a particularly rough day. I was on the way to meet with someone, and wasn’t really looking forward to the things that I needed to say. I was sitting in the back section of a double-long bus, and the bounces as we headed down the road were causing my stomach to do nasty things. There was an overall trashy smell coming from somewhere. It had been raining all day, and my feet were wet.

I was sort of lost in my thoughts, trying to play out the coming conversation in my head as a sort of warm-up for the real thing. I was shooting up random prayers, asking God to grant me supernatural wisdom, the gift of tongues, and the patience of Job – and I really needed all of those things before I had to ring the bell for my stop.

The road we were on travels along the Adriatic coast, but most of the way the view is partially-obscured by train tracks and power lines and row after row of apartments. At one point, I looked to my right out the bus window and saw this:

I remember looking around at everyone on the bus with me. The woman behind me was lost in thought. Two teenage girls were listening to music, one earbud for each girl, while they simultaneously chatted. Others were dozing off. And I was worshiping. God’s promises and faithfulness all came flooding back to me and I couldn’t believe that others weren’t seeing what I was seeing. I honestly wanted to shout, “Look! God has kept that promise for thousands of years! And He will keep His promise to be with me forever!”

But the worship time was apparently meant just for me. The bus started moving and I soon got off at my stop.

With some much-needed confidence in God’s promises.

11.17.10

All by Ourselves

Posted in 24-7 Prayer, church at 7:56 am

There were an awful lot of blank lines on the sign up sheet for our 24 hour prayer room this weekend.

I don’t know if we picked a bad weekend, or if the word didn’t get out somehow, but many of our usuals weren’t on the list. For some reason it was as if God was saying to us, “I’d like to schedule some extra time just with the church this weekend.”

Kyle did his usual 2 AM – 6 AM shift. I could picture him trying to keep himself awake when I saw the psalm that he had written on the wall. Cristina made a beautiful picture of the word “Gesù” and put her handprints all around it. People wrote in the diary.

In other words, a completely normal prayer room, except the church was doing more, and longer, stretches of prayer.

Which can only be a good thing.