Week Four: To Know God...

Hello Friends. I feel as though I would be amiss to not let you know the intensity this week has had. Everyday we have a morning of lecture followed by an evening of work, outreach or free time. This week the lectures we given by a an awesome lady named Anne Sloan. She is a counselor of sorts and taught about Personality. I'm an ISTP if anyone cares. It was great because she taught about how we work together in the body of Christ, all different but with the same goal, namely evangelism. But these lectures were only a bit of the week that conspired.



On Thursday night one of our students, named Msizi, passed out and was unconscious and not responding. His roommate was the only one there and they called up to the house where the rest of us live. We immidatily began to pray. We also called our friends who were out that night at a prayer meeting called Belfast House of Prayer (BHOP) They also began praying. There are many cool parts to this story but I'll try to keep it succinct. The folks at house of prayer prayed for three things:

1. That the student would gain consciousness and be sitting up.

2. That he would be energized and ready to go and

3. That the doctors would find no reason his collapse.



Withing a half hour they receive a text from one of our staff..."Msizi is doing well. He's gained consciousness and is SITTING UP in the waiting room. He feels FINE but the doctors insist on keeping him here for observation because they ran some tests and CAN'T FIND ANYTHING WRONG with him."



If ever you wondered, yes the Lord hears and answers our prayers .

But it does not end there. I titled this post to Know God because I feel like I'm reaching a deeper relationship with God by hearing his voice. The next part of this post will be peculiar but powerful.



As we were praying for Msizi the Spirit seemed to come over the handful of us at the house. There were about 7 of us including Anne who had been staying there the week. We started praying for several of the students there at the house. Then someone felt we should pray for the house. That is meaningful because I felt the same. Here is why. The neighbourhood where we work lies on either side of a strip of road about a mile long called the Shankill Road (search belfast history on wikipedia). By some strange plan of God, our house is as the top of the road (literally the last in the row before the road ends) and the flat (where Msizi and other students live) is at the bottom. So, I explained to the other students that how over the past few weeks I had a sort of vision of a giant golden staff stuck in the ground up at the house and a second one by the flat, sort of like how a contractor will stake out the land before he builds a house. I told them how I felt that Lord had marked this road as his and he was about to begin work. We prayed through the house which is three stories.


Now there are three rooms that happen to be on the very corner of the house overlooking the end of the Shankill. In each room I felt the Lord giving me a prayer and each prayer also lined up with the overall mission. In our lounge we prayed for COMMUNITY, that people would be able to seek the Lord together and have fun and good times filled with joy and peace. The third floor was a room where many of the girls lives and someone had commented about how child-like it was...perfect! We prayed that the peace found in that room might topple over into the street and that the CHILDREN of the neighbourhood might break free from the depression and oppression of their past and lead fun, joy-filled lives in their youth. The Second floor was the hardest.

None of us felt comfortable in that room, it was painted dark to begin with and was cold but there was still something really wrong with it. We prayed for many minutes and nobody was feeling anything in particular. I asked Anne (who was living in that room) what she felt and she had no answers so we all stood there in the dreariness of the room. Then I felt something come to mind, it was a little awkward so I said "Do you mind if I pray something weird?" everyone said "You might as well, the whole night has been weird." And so I prayed as I felt. I began to pray against the spirit of adultery and immediately as I prayed, everyone else felt it to and began to follow along and almost instantly the room began to feel cleaner and lighter. I can't know how to give an explanation. I have always lived quite conservatively in my faith, but as time passes here, and I press into the Lord, I'm finding that there may be depths of him I have yet to know.

I pray for peace and wisdom as I seek him more. There may be heaps more that I discover about the Lord as I read his word and pray and work out this salvation of mine.

Thanks! More to come next week... The lectures are about the Holy Spirit! So who knows...?!