Enjoying Prayer Meetings??

I was greatly encouraged by our prayer meeting this last week. We joined with some members of the Anglican church and our purpose was to pray for our village. I think this is something God has asked us to do and so it’s not really a surprise when He works through it, but it’s certainly still exciting.

We spent the first 20mins in silence, listening for what God had to say and flicking through our bibles for verses that stood out to us. One of ladies later said she had been on a course recently where they had stressed the importance of being silent before God and that it had been much on her mind, so we were pleased to have done it.

After 20mins we started to share the things that had been on our minds whilst listening to God. It was amazing how many people had been led to write down or think about similar things.

One person had a picture of two hands clasped together, while another had been thinking about the disciples being sent out in twos and how God was sending the two churches out together – two messages of unity.

A couple had been thinking about the plight of the lonely in our village and how that might be addressed. One had come already with a ministry in mind for the needy in the village, which God had laid on someone’s heart recently in a dream. One mentioned how she felt God longed to spend time with each individual in the village and be involved in their lives.

Two people mentioned fruit, and two people mentioned rivers, which led us to consider some verses in Psalm 1 and Revelation 20 about being well nourished with God’s word and spirit and how that leads to regular ‘fruit’.

And three people had been thinking of the song “God is working His purpose out”! Especially the verse:

All we can do is nothing worth
unless God blessed the deed;
vainly we hope for the harvest-tide
till God gives life to the seed;

Which related to Matt 9: 37-8, a verse which had been on my mind recently and came up again in our scheduled bible reading this Sunday. If you look at my last blog you will see its relevance:

³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. ³⁸ Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

After all these words from God we spent some time in open prayer, praying for the village and all these things that God had put on our hearts. A truly encouraging experience of God speaking clearly to us. We hadn’t communicated these things to each other or co-ordinated them, we simply sat in the quiet and listened and God confirmed His messages through 2 or 3 people hearing the same things.

This has happened at our last few prayer meetings too, it’s not a rare occurrence. If you listen to God He will speak to you. As Liz said to me the other day “I actually look forward to our prayer meetings!” and so do I – it’s exciting to hear from God and to know He is ‘working His purposes out’ with us!

_______________________________________________________________________

Interested in more?

Check out some of our Sunday sermons at: http://www.buresbaptistchurch.org/sermon_catchup.php