…and then God pitched up. [as He does]

so last nite’s youth evening at Fuel ‘Rise Up’ youth week happened in a big way… the leaders had been totally open to changing their whole program around to accommodate the ideas and suggestions of a youth speaker who had been recommended by a friend of theirs but who they had only met on Saturday…

we had two other groups of around 40 each visiting for the first time and so maybe not the best time to be experimenting [or maybe the best?] as they didn’t have any kind of connection with me or anything…

and we took a chance on inviting people to take a risk on God and trust Him to do what for a lot of them might seem like the impossible or at the very least the really, really, really difficult…

we invited response from a group that til then had not been overly responsive in response moments and in such a way that if they didn’t respond the evening would fall a little flat…

in short, we stepped out of the boat [which is a great thing to do when responding to the call of Jesus to do so as we felt He had, but not a good thing to do just for the sake of it]…

…and then God pitched up. [as He does]

possibly the only thing wrong with the whole nite was any moment of suspecting He might not. God is faithful.

i used the analogy of a car with a puncture – that no matter how much work you put into the rest of the car, it will still not drive as it should – yes, it might limp along but until you fix the puncture the car will not drive well. so last nite was all about fixing the puncture.

we had a bunch of cards and pens under the chairs and at the front of the meeting room and invited people to write down the thing or things they wanted God to deal with in their lives [in two categories – things they had done, and things that had been done – or said – to them]

we did that while worship was happening and to some surprise [in my doubting heart anyways] they started writing and coming to the front and dropping them in the box… during worship i had a sense God wanted to challenge the adults [mostly parents and people from the church] at the back of the meeting to deal with their crap and model to the kids a good thing of being humble and admitting they are broken and wounded and in need of help, and they did.

so i got 90 cards and after worship i read out maybe thirty or forty of them to give the group the idea of the kinds of things that were being struggled with in the group [give us a sense of body, of church, when one struggles we all struggle] and there was a huge range of stuff, some really hectic and painfully sad to even read – when i looked at the group as we had for two days you wouldn’t have been able to guess that a tenth of that stuff was happening out there – everyone looks happy and together and like they’re coping and so on… but the cards were evidence of brokenness and pain and abuse and desperate crying out to God.

and then i invited people to stand up and open their hands as a sign of invitation to God and we invited the Holy Spirit to come minister to people and then for people to stand alongside their friends and parents and leaders and put their hand on what God was doing in them – no counselling or specific prayers or advice or scripture quoting – simply invitation to the Holy Spirit to come in and minister – and He did and it was good.

tbV suggested that i invite some of the parents/older folk at the back of the church to come forward and to get the youth to pray for them and we did and they did and it was incredibly powerful as well. God is bigGER!

what a powerful amazing evening. what a faithful God we serve who just loves His people so much and wants to bring healing and forgiveness and restoration. how exciting to be tag teaming with my beautiful wife once more and seeing her hear from God and give suggestion and being able to hear from God and lead things and pray specifically into a few peoples lives. what an incredible stoke to know that there were over thirty people [some with groups they had gathered] praying for that meeting from all over the world – from Japan and Australia to South Africa and Americaland and Canada and beyond… a bunch of friends [and some strangers, even, who just heard of the need] who responded to the call to pray and were faithful in it.

God is good. And when we get it right, which does happen every now and then, His church is good too.

thank you Jesus! all glory be to God!

tonite, we will step out of the boat…

in about 2 and a half hours a youth week meeting is going to be starting in the Florida Keys and i am really excited [and somewhat nervous] to see what God has in store for tonite…

i was chatting to the leaders this morning as we sought to hear God on some stuff and just vibed about how things could look tonite and i was reminded as i was speaking to them that while one of the great things about some of the amazing stories in the Bible is how they turned out when God pitched up, one of the worst things can be that we start to read those stories from the perspective of knowing how the story finishes and it can lose some of its power…

take for example Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego facing King Nebuchadnezzar and boldly refusing to bow down to his statue when the band played even though they were threatened with being thrown in the furnace [Daniel 3] – they are confident God can save them but leave a little proviso that “even if He doesn’t, we still refuse to worship your idol” and so there seems to be an element of “man, i really hope He shows up” and i imagine to them that God showing up would look like them not being thrown in the furnace… but it didn’t – they got thrown in but didn’t burn up [and i imagine when they got home the first thing they did was change out of their urine-stained robes!]

we see David, the little shepherd boy, standing in front of a giant who is terrorising the whole Israelite army and we know how the story ends so we read it knowing he will defeat Goliath with a little stone slung from his sling… but David doesn’t know how it ends when he accepts the challenge and walks out to meet him… we can’t hear the beeps that the censors had to put in to cover what he was really mumbling as he strode forward…

Elijah climbing on top of a dead kid [he lays on him three times and the kid comes back to life – imagine if he hadn’t…], Jesus inviting the disciples to feed the crowd of 5000 men [and women and children – what is interesting about this story is that the food does not get multiplied before they start feeding – they start handing it out and as they do so it doesn’t run out – it required an action of faith] and Peter climbing out of the boat because Jesus had called him to walk on water…

we know how it ends, but they don’t.
as each of them stepped into a action of faith, i imagine each one of them is quietly screaming out to God “please show up, please show up, please show up!”

and tonite, some committed youth leaders who have lead this youth week for years, and who only met me on Saturday, have given the yes to a nite of stepping out in action linked to a similar kind of faith and if God does not show up tonite then i [and probaly them] will be embarrassed – we have discerned what we believe God is calling us to and trusting that He is going to show up and do the stuff He needs to do.

[and i need to write this now because it is a much easier blog to not write later if things don’t go well]

for a chance of a great miracle, there has to be the chance of a great flop or embarrassment… and i am okay with that, because i know the God i serve is faithful – i don’t always understand the ways He works or chooses not to sometimes and as He says in His word, His ways are definitely not my ways…

i have invited 30 plus people [as an echoing of David’s Mighty Men] to be praying around the world for tonite and some of them have grabbed groups of people together and there are people in this church who are and will be praying and together we will all anticipate God showing up and blowing us away by How gracious and loving and mighty and powerful and healing-filled He is… reminded that He loves every single person coming tonite way more than any of us can and ever will.

so we will step out of the boat… and if He shows up then we will celebrate and watch Him work mightily…
but even if He doesn’t [or doesn’t in the way we are expecting or hoping] we will still proclaim that our God is a mighty God
our God is a God who saves…

to read what happened next, click here