|
Part 1
We started praying once a fortnight in September 2003, this prayer meeting was really born out of a search in some of our hearts both for
a deeper experience of God ourselves and for longing to be more effective as a Church in reaching our area. We had tried most methods
of evangelism over many years and had seen a little fruit but not nearly enough. We had a church that was very united, real friendships and love among us, many devoted and amazing families but we felt in our hearts a longing for something more.
We decided to meet on Monday nights once every two weeks and were kindly lent the Beacon building on Fleet Road NW3. There one night
in September 2003 we began our search. I suppose we felt that there was only One Person who could help us in our plight and that was God
Himself. From the outset we stripped the meeting of all agendas, sermons, music, plans and preparations. We just came and we waited. Sometimes we prayed out loud, sometimes we sang, sometimes we just read the Bible - always we were conscious that we were searching for Jesus, to find Him in a deeper way.
There were never very many of us - perhaps 5-10 people at the most.
By September 2004, having prayed for a year, we felt we wanted to pray more often so we started to pray weekly. Half way through this second year of praying we found that we were often praying in the meetings for the coming of the Holy Spirit - which was strange as we were 'charismatics' by trade and technically already had Him, we spoke in tongues, we felt that we heard His voice a little and had perhaps some of His gifts but an inner longing for more drove us on.
More and more frequently in the meetings we found ourselves praying for the Holy Spirit to visit us once again and visit our church and the other churches. Along with these prayer meetings we seemed to slowly be developing an interest in the history of revival. We also began to realize that as we were praying for more of God, He was asking for more of us. A favourite quote became “The Holy Spirit will only come where there is a place prepared for Him” (Smith Wigglesworth).
We prayed on through 2005 and 2006, Monday after Monday. We started to feel a sense of spiritual blindness, that we had to accept that we could not see spiritually as if we could we would be doing the works of Jesus and seeing salvation come to our area. We started to pray for sight.
It seemed that the first step was acknowledging that we had a problem. God kept bringing key passages of scripture through the praying individuals. No one preached. People just read out the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit bore witness in our hearts. One of those was Revelation 3:15-18 ‘I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. He began to show us the poverty of our Christian lives and the powerless state of the church.
|
Nick West, 08/01/2009 |
|
|
