Sharing Stories November 22, 2007

Do you ever feel as if you are having the same conversation over and over again? As if you have somehow slipped into a parallel universe where every time you talk it comes around to the same topic or theme?

I feel like I have lived in a permanent sense of deja vu over the past three or four weeks. It started when I was up in Liverpool – ‘How can we live differently?’, ‘What does it mean to be people of prayer and mission in the SA now?’, ‘What are the new things God has for us? and has for us to do?’

Then last week, in meetings and over countless coffees… I saw and heard people’s dreams for a picture that God seems to be painting with us. We are different people, in different locations, but the heartbeat is the same.

I heard it again on Saturday as I gathered with the prayer leaders in Birmingham. And I felt the murmurings of the dream on Sunday as I attended our own Boiler Room church meeting.

This week I have been holed away in meetings with the guys from the Wandsworth, Liverpool and (soon to be) Shetlands Boiler Rooms. We talked again about next year, about new plans and new initiatives that are underfoot, and about existing people and places where God seems to be breathing new life and passion into their midst. Yesterday we gathered with Phil and Andy, who work with 24-7Prayer. I again felt the same stirring feeling, the sense that we were all like small children drawing in the sand, but from an aerial view the things we were drawing connected together and made perfect sense.

Yesterday afternoon I sat on my friend’s sofa in Wandsworth and found myself discussing the same things – the intensity of the last few weeks, the seeming acceleration in what God is up to in Wandsworth, the challenge and thrill of the days ahead.

Back in 2001, Debra Green had a prophecy for the SA, she said:

“You have been asking the Lord, ‘how long’, ‘how long before we see the barren land drenched?’ The Lord says, ‘Give me a year, a year to pray’…The more prayers the more rain! The land around you is getting soaked, its becoming fertile and ready for growth, hard ground is being softened. This is the beginning of something new. Things will never be the same again

Back then, there was a song we used to sing often:

 How Long

We have sung our songs of victory
We have prayed to you for rain
We have cried your compassion
To renew the land again
Now we’re standing in your presence
More hungry than before
Now we’re on your steps of mercy and we’re knocking at your door

How long
Before you drench the barren land
how long
Before we see Your righteous hand
How long
Before your name is lifted high
How long
Before the weeping turns to songs of joy

Lord, we know your heart is broken
By the evil that you see
And you’ve stayed your hand of judgment
For your plan to set men free
But the land is still in darkness
And we’ve fled from what is right
And we’ve failed the silent children
Who will never see the light

But I know a day is coming
When the deaf will hear his voice
When the blind will see the saviour
And the lame will leap for joy
When a widow finds a husband
Who will always love his bride
And the orphan finds a father
Who will never leave her side

How long
Before your glory lights the skies
How long
Before your radiance lifts our eyes
How long
Before your fragrance fills the air
How long
Before the earth resounds with songs of joy

Reading through those lyrics, and hearing stories like I’ve heard over the past few weeks, fills me with hope and expectancy. I love it that we’re a few years down the line now, we’re seeing the effects of some of that softening, that more and more people are talking about the ‘revolution’ God calls us to.

And in the same breath I love it that, though we may not be at the beginning, we’re not at the end yet either, there is still much more to do, much deeper to go, much more that God wants to show us. And I can’t wait to see what that means!!