Update Tuesday - My Favorite Story of Late

Kim and Mike

Kim: "Lord, I lift Mike up to You.  I pray that You might grant him relief from the chronic pain that he experiences after his accident.  Lord, help to heal his ribs and help to heal his mind.  I also pray Lord, that You might take away his urge for alcohol.  I pray that you might take away a taste for the alcohol and release him from..."

Mike: "Whoa, whoa, whoa...I actually like drinking."

When Kim told me her experience it made me laugh out loud.  Kim shared that she did not know what to think, but at the very least it seemed to indicate that Mike believed that prayer might work.  All in all, we served over 70 sandwiches, 7 pots of coffee, had many conversations and prayed for many people right on the streets this past Sunday.  Based on our conversations, and the prayer that we were able to share, it seemed so obvious that God was stirring. 

We have been spending quite a bit of time on the streets of late and have been trying to be much more direct about prayer.    Rather than just asking for prayer requests from people and saying we will pray for them, we are pausing right there to pray.  In fact, after over a year and a half at our Beer Store street ministry, serving coffee and sandwiches every Monday morning, and inviting them to join one of our fellowships, we realized maybe there is a different approach.  We are a group who already gathers together each week, who shares fellowship over coffee and a meal and with whom I pray and have spiritual conversations.  This week, rather than just praying for them as individuals, I gathered them all together around the coffee urn, asked for prayer requests and then had us all pray together on the sidewalk.  We have changed our thinking and have come to view this as our third fellowship.  Small steps like praying together are leading us towards a deeper spiritual component of our time together with the goal of, slowly but surely, developing a full fledged spiritual community.

We will also be taking our prayers to the streets, parks, and neighbourhoods with our other fellowships as well in the coming weeks as we seek to see a movement of God happen in our city.  The weather is getting warmer and it is the perfect time to get out of our houses and meeting places and into the streets.  We will be asking what does it really look like to live our lives and to exist as fellowships who live in the 3/4 rhythm of Up, In and Out...Up, In and Out.  Up is our relationship with the Lord, In is our love for one another and Out is our joining God in His mission to the world.

We ask that you might continue to lift our ministry up in prayer, asking for direction in how to best be in rhythm (Up, In, Out, Up, In, Out) as we engage the city around us.