Everyday Encounter

We do not pray because God replies.

We pray because we are helpless and sinful.

Prayer doesn’t change God. It changes us.

Even if it seems like God isn’t replying.

He is always listening.

This weekend (having just returned from the Leaders Training and Vision Weekend), I am just so aware of God at work – He is moving, and living, and powerful, and prayer answering. Mostly I have been reminded of how God is a God of fresh starts, of second and third and fourth chances. What’s more, it’s hard to express the freedom that you feel when you are reminded of this, and when God stirs your heart to thankfulness for it. There is so much freedom, and burden lifting from your shoulders when you are given a fresh start and another chance to get it right, over and over again.

It is amazing how, though we get things wrong at Encounter (and in our lives) God is faithful through it all, He is still at work, He is redeeming our short-comings and using it all – every part, for His glory, which is what it’s all about anyway. Praise God that He works despite our faults, and in many ways uses our faults to grow us, to be used for His purposes and to draw us into closer and more intimate dependence on Him.

It is also a powerful thing to witness ‘church life and community’ being done as God intended – with openness, honesty, integrity, a lot of laughter and sometimes tears – united in purpose and held together in love. There is an amazing sense of God in your midst when you come to realise that when all is said and done, it is His will that matters, His purpose to be achieved, and His glory to be the desire of our hearts. It is difficult to express the sense of God at work and the freedom that comes when this is realised, and happening before you.

I really feel we are just beginning to see parts of the bigger picture of what God is doing in and through Encounter, and that the difficult times and the good times are all part of God’s plan, which He is using to create the shade and light that are bringing depth and reality to the picture He is painting.

And the picture is SO much bigger than we can begin to imagine.

Okay guys, from Monday through to Thursday of this week we have been/will be going out to various nursing homes around the area of the church (building) to do a bit of carol singing, give out some shortbread and just generally chat to the residents and staff in each of the locations. So pray that God would use it to spread something of a reflection of His love to each of the people in those homes and that they might get to know something of Him this Christmas time.

 If you can’t make it out to help with the singing, chatting and hanging out then do definitely get behind it in prayer, as Andy mentioned on Friday night, as it’s such an important part of it.