Prayer & fasting

Today I tried fasting and praying for the first time. I'd prayed before, but never fasted. It wasn't a marathon or anything; only about an hour and a half. But given the spiritual shenanagins going on, I thought it was time to give it a try.

It was definitely an experience. I was focused, and the Holy Spirit showed up in a powerful way.

As part of that experience, the Spirit led me to read Ephesians. Yes, the whole thing. It's really not that long. It was just what I needed to read.

I think vigilance will be required in the weeks ahead, but I also think I did more for this ministry in that hour and a half than the whole rest of this month put together. I'm not going to run out and do it again tomorrow. I think the reason it was so powerful is that God was calling me to do it. But now I know what it's like, and how great it can be, and I look forward to doing it again.

Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink

That’s a quote from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Wikipedia entry has a summary, and is here. It’s a poem from back in the day when poems went beyond the short and pithy (Coleridge is actually one of those who took poetry from long stories into the modern 'short and pithy' format). In the poem, sailors are stuck in a calm and dying of thirst. To find out why, you’ll have to read the poem. What matters here is the irony of dying of thirst while being on an ocean full of water. “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

Well, The River isn’t dying of thirst. But lots of others are. Spiritually, they are thirsty, and they can't find water. Jesus is the water they seek, as he described in John 4, and that's what we're trying to share. Living water, so that on one will be spiritually thirsty again. There were two specific things planned last week to share that living water, and both ended up getting undone by way too much actual water.

The first was a bottled water handout during football practice at Wills Park. It’s hot, and there are a whole lot of parents sitting in the sun baking while their kids practice. So both the football association and park gave their blessing, and I spent a lot of time getting the water, a table, and volunteer help. Then we showed up and found out there was a nice lady selling drinks at the request of the VP of the football association. It was her job, she was going to be there every night while it was hot, and she had a no-compete. No one else could sell or give out anything when she worked. So we left, and that effort went out the window. So we have all this bottled water, yet the folks we are trying to reach are still thirsty.

Sunday was the other thing- an ice cream fund raiser for The Drake House. And the bottom line there is that we were about 30 minutes into this two hour event when it got rained out. Actually, that’s an understatement. It was ‘monsoon-ed’ out. I haven’t been that wet in a long time. We managed to meet a few folks and give out of our spiffy new brochures, but we lost a whole lot more to the storm than we gave out. Once again, plenty of water, yet the folks we are trying to reach remained thirsty for living water.

The irony is obvious- actual water is getting in the way of sharing living water. Only I don't think it's the water doing it. I think something is at work trying to stop what we are doing, and in a cruel twist they chose actual water to do it. There are forces at work in this world that are not from God. I can't explain them, I don't know what they are, but I know they are out there. They are real, and I think they are working to oppose us. And just to be cute, they chose actual water to oppose our attempts to share living water.

Maybe you don't believe in stuff like that whole 'spiritual forces' bit. Maybe you think I'm nuts, that it just rained and that we just got unlucky. Maybe, but enough other stuff happened last week to make me think it's too much for a coincidence. I think something is going on, and I think they got too cute for their own good. Now I know. Now you know. The word is out. We know they're there, and what they are doing. I ask you to join me in praying that God will dropkick them out of the way so the floodgates of living water can open, and the Holy Spirit can pour out on those who need it, so that all may drink of living water and never be thirsty again.

A trip to the beach and a nice whack on the head

We've been in a bit of rut lately. And it's not just that there have not been a lot of new faces in The River, but that I have found myself increasingly spending time doing 'office' work and not out meeting people. I've been in kind of a funk, because it's not just that I haven't been out meeting people. I haven't been motivated to go out and meet new people. That's what I loved at first about The River- that I was supposed to be out meeting people instead of sitting in some office. But it's so different, and the adjustment took a larger toll than I thought. It got kinda tiring. So I lapsed into what I knew, and here I was doing office work. Doing that which I had taken this job to avoid simply because it felt normal and comfortable when I was tired.

Well, I'm not so tired any more. I spent a week at the beach doing nothing, and I got a solid recharge. It was great. A week of doing nothing. Just watching the ocean, thinking about how it doesn't change, thinking about how God doesn't change. Then I got this sent this article here, and it was a whack on the head that I didn't need to change what I had been doing either.

Please read the article. If you do, you will glimpse how The River got started. It got started through relationships and conversations about faith. Not a program, not an attraction, but by relationships and conversations. And as I read the article, I realized I had done a lot of that stuff. Turns out I'm good at getting to know people. It's one of my gifts. So is having conversations about faith. And I need to use that gift. So I'm gonna take some of those suggestions and go out and meet some new folks or get to know some other folks better. I'm going to go back to what got us here, and The River will grow.

Meantime, I need to figure out how to help the other folks in The River do this sort of thing. Because WOW, if we could all do that, what a miracle that would be! God's kingdom would grow by leaps and bounds. It was would be amazing. A real, true miracle of God's grace. One that got restarted by a trip to the beach and a whack on the head.