Encounter culture

Tonight we moved into the sacred space after our meal.

Keeping in touch with the community

We began with greetings from all those not with us for various reasons. Some have life changes that mean that can't we with us on Wednesdays for now.

We had a good news story from one absent friend - pastors from a local church visited her church wanting to work together. She believed this is fruit of our month of prayer for the churches.

Encounters in the House of Prayer

To begin our time of prayer we spent 5 minutes in silent prayer - gazing on the Lord and feeling his gaze back at us. The foundation we do for everything here is the love of the Father. We are busy people and we need to come back to Him many times.

We shared our stories of encountering God in the House of Prayer. It is interesting that many of us are finding we are aware of God's presence in the prayer room and are having a 1 to 1 with Him that we need. Stories:

• first the encounter, THEN comes the intercession! 

• We are learning to pray from a place of rest. It is like coming to a well. 

• After the Good Friday reflections, I was in the prayer room at 9am the next day and just went straight into the presence of God (the temple veil torn in two) .

• I have met with God for my personal situation, for guidance.

• I get excited when I look ahead to being here.

• I was down the steps in the smaller room and I thought I heard someone in the main room. I came in and felt the fear of the Lord. It was wonderful.

• I was in the prayer room with my mum. We had several calls from relatives in other countries, asking us to pray for them. We were in the right place to pray for them!!

These experiences confirm what we have discerned from Our Father on the journey so far: He has set aside this place to meet with us; he has promised to transform us as we come here; He is saying "hush, I want to draw near to you"; this is Jesus' living room and he wants us to sit on the sofa with him and rest.

Blessings for Churches

We have some prayers and blessings for churches that were discerned in our month of prayer for churches. We took time to pray for specific churches and write down a blessing. The leaders are going to offer these to the churches concerned. We have several to work through and will do more next time. 

Praying for Tara

Tara shared how back in January she was so excited about the launch of SoHOP and felt called to offer her time to help. She prayed and asked God for a laptop to work for SoHOP and within a week had two random gifts of money that gave her enough to get a laptop. We have co-opted her onto the leadership team since then. Tara is hoping to get her hours reduced at work so that she can serve the house of prayer one day each week. So far this is not working out. So we all prayed and asked God to open the way. We particularly felt reminded of Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea. And God said to lift up his staff.

News

Finally we shared various items of news and administration, and gave out the names of our prayer partners within the community for the next two weeks. 

The theme this month is SALVATION - keep digging into this one, and pray as the Holy Spirit leads you.