SOAR - 2

More brain dump on SOAR:

The foot-washing: VERY powerful! And ya know it's harder to ACCEPT your feet being washed than to wash someone else's feet. 'Course Peter taught us that one but some times head knowledge and REAL knowledge are two different things - the French "know" that - savoir vs. connaitre.

24/7 prayer: What a concept - constant prayer! I took a couple of hours in the prayer room and it's amazing what that can do - for you and for those for whom you pray! I will be presenting 24/7 prayer to the church here at "le rentree" (when everyone gets back from summer vacation).

Speaking to God (forgive me Dan :-)): So, the first time I met Dan the DJ was the Tuesday night before the hoards arrived. We were praying for the campaign and I was in my usual pious-looking pose (nothing WRONG with hands together, head bowed - if that's what you MEAN, but I'm sure now that I did that for cultural/habitual reasons). So I look up (how UNHOLY) and there's Dan praying, with a ball in his hand, moving it around in, well, DJ gestures (sorry, can't describe it better than that). So I'm thinking (this is where forgiveness is required, Dan) "Oh WHAT a poser!!"! Anyway, during the next few days I actually get to know him a bit better and find out he's not a poser but a very enthusiastic godly man. Later in the campaign, the band is practicing and Dan is in the room too. He's talking to one of the youth and I see her head is bowed - weird, is he disciplining her? Well, no, I finally see they're praying, only Dan is doing the hand gestures thing again - and it suddenly occurs to me that he does the hand gestures thing whenever he is conversing - and THEN it suddenly hits me "this man is REALLY conversing with God!!!" - that morning he told his "you're such a chicken" anecdote (if you know it, great, if not, I won't spoil it!) but I told him afterwards that, great though the story is, it was his conversing with God which REALLY touched me that day!!

Hearing God: Playing the worship song "Hungry" towards the end of the campaign, we got to the chorus - "I'm falling on my knees" - bass in hand, remember - and God told me "I want you to do that" and I responded "what?", "kneel", "yeah RIGHT!", "Yes indeed!". Well we'd got past that line so I replied "OK, next time we get to it" to which he answered "OK, but I'd really like it more if you learned to obey in a timely fashion". After the worship time another band member, who had not seen any of this (I'm the bass player - in the back - hidden from view), told us "You know, I felt that God wanted me to kneel but I couldn't figure out what to do with the microphone"! I'm reasonably sure that was THE first time in my life that I had heard God's voice and immediately recognized it as God's voice - of course it wasn't the first time I'd disobeyed God's voice!

My wife tells a story about us trying to decide whether to move churches in the English town in which we lived in 1996. She was washing the dishes and talking to God about it - he responded clearly "don't worry about it - you won't even be here"! That afternoon I heard that we would be moving to France within two weeks (job move) - an eventuality we had no warning of until then! NOW I know what she means by "talking to God" and "hearing God"!

SOAR - 1

I am STILL shattered from SOAR Montreal - and it's becoming less and less feasible to blame it on jet lag, having now been home for a week. Sleep continues to be filled with dreams that directly relate to various highlights (the park worship evenings, the morning worship sessions, the visits to Starbucks, the intense prayer sessions, et al) punctuated by periods where I simply lie awake pondering the whole experience - NOT conducive to effective software design and development, which I am back spending my days doing.

I am changed - I FEEL the Holy Spirit more consistently within me now. Certain sinful habits are much easier to combat now that I KNOW I can trust God to lead the fight. Of course we are all "sinners who fall short of the glory of God" (forgive the paraphrase) - but the first night's message from Phillip Serez was the start of a killer journey - I'm learning to "Trust God instead of trying to please God".

I got to share one of the many anecdotes I have at church on Sunday - turns out the sermon was about fear - particularly fear of sharing! Well God worked on that one in Montreal with the park worship sessions!! (The question I have for God now is "why do I always get the Moslems??". It seemed that almost everyone I engaged in conversation was a Moslem. Given my Turkey trips in the past, I was at least somewhat prepared for this eventuality - but am I being called to work more with Moslems??).

Anyway I told the congregation about a pantheist I met on the first park date (Tuesday 18th). It seemed to take ages to get from "what's that you're eating?", "er, chips!!" through the history of Quebec and what relief pitchers are (I didn't know there were short relief pitchers and long relief pitchers!) to something a bit more spiritual, but eventually we did and he explained his philosophy of ..., well, effectively "unconscious pantheism" (I am NOT a philosopher!). He listened to my "alternative" explanation of God and salvation through Jesus (the concepts of sin and going astray from a perfect plan were central to his philosophy, thankfully - so I didn't have to start by explaining those) and he was mightily interested - interested enough to accept a new testament and promise to read it, and to allow me to pray for him there and then. Oh, and we did the whole thing mainly in French but with English where my French broke down - which tackled another fear/excuse from my past - sharing in French!

Oh, the software calls! More later.