Fire Within

Tonight I began reading Fire Within. It’s about the writings of St Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, and what the gospel says, on prayer. It’s pretty heavy going but there’s some sweet quotes… it’s slightly interesting being I think its written from a Catholic background and all, but that’s family .

“Deep and lasting changes in the Church are being brought about by a faithful few who are burning interiorly as a consequence of the deep prayer given by the Holy Spirit, who renews the face of the earth in ways other than our own.”- I want to be one of these people. Pick me Jesus!

“Life-style and prayer grow or diminish together.”
- heck, yes they do! It’s impossible to be a woman of prayer (or a man, but I’m a woman so I get to use the feminine example) that is deep, and solid, and genuine, and yet not be walking in the fear of the Lord. If someone seems to have a solid prayer life, yet is going off the edges, you have to question what’s really going on. It’s possible to ‘pray’ but not to connect…. which is in essence talking to the ceiling.

Prayer’s got to be about the connection thing. Otherwise talking to the ceiling won’t change your heart. Even if you don’t feel the connection you’ve got to keep going after it… the hiding principle… God wants to know if we actually want Him, so he hides himself so that we go look.

Maybe I’ll try that when I have a guy interested in me… see if he follows me…

It had to happen…

Yeah, somehow I knew it would happen. I got selected as a juror – despite the 3/4 chance I’d get out of it, I was selected. Praise the Lord and Hallelujah that we have cushioned seats. There were about 60 people there, and I was part of 35 selected, then one of 12 selected to sit in the blue seats of the courtroom.

I’m not allowed to say anything about the case right now… not sure if I’m allowed to after. All I know is that this means that my day will now be much longer since to do my prayer room hours and get to the gym I’ll either leave home at 6am or come home at 10pm. Maybe both. Who knows.

I have to be in town from 10-5 each day, with 2 x 15 minute breaks (we stay in the jury room) and a 1hr15min lunch break. Journey in/out takes 20 – 45 minutes depending on if I take bus or train and where I leave from. It’s expected to last three weeks, maybe done in two, and I’m desperately hoping that it’s done sooner.

It’s frustrating. It may be my civic duty, but I’d rather be working and getting paid decently, or able to be at the prayer centre… but God defend New Zealand anyway.

Tied up in knots

We have 31:30 this weekend. It’s girl camp (and just so they aren’t left out, all our guys are going to ‘MAN CAMP. Whenever camp has been promoted at Disrupt and Hope Centre, you hear these manly deep voices yelling ‘MAN CAMP! MAN CAMP!’ in their manly ways.) and we’re all off to El Rancho, the local Christian camp about an hour north, to be girlie.

The idea on the Saturday night is that we have a ball… except there’ll be no men there… so we’re meant to take pretty clothes. Now, I own one dress – a $10 one I picked up in Australia for Angel’s engagement party – which I’m not a huge fan of. So, last night at about 11pm I decided to try my saree – I had the general idea, wrap, pleat, wrap and drape… but nope, couldn’t get it. So I spent lots of time online trying to work it out… 6 metres of material and me. I have a dress and the saree… will see how warm it is…

You may hear from me this afternoon… or next week. Have a good weekend.

That’s some mighty fine dust there…

Today, I spent the later part of the afternoon cleaning.

This involved cleaning the art-corner of the prayer room… now it looks semi organised… and the cupboard. The cupboard is my miracle from the Lord. I knew we hadn’t been in there last year since we moved in, and to prove that no one had been in there this year, I found the vacuum cleaners that we had meant to store there temporarily when we moved out of our flat last December. So I dragged everything out, swept it and put it all back in… threw lots of stuff away… hope no one wanted the old fire posters from the Wai-iti Crescent prayer room… and now there’s just 2 paint tins, a box of lights, a box for one of the guys to look at, and a table attach light..

 Tomorrow, I will be sending out letters… or if that doesn’t come back from its checking, I will be attacking the bookshelf, info centre, and prayer request wall.

Random Thought Wednesday

You never know when to expect random thought days! Thats because… they’re random!

I turned up at the prayer room 10 minutes ago at 8.10 and there was only one other person here, but four cars in the carpark. I think everyone else is over at the gym…

My recruitment company didn’t pay me last night – I just emailed my consultant and hopefully she can sort it out.

I have mainly music today for the second week. I’ll probably end up doing music and sound all by myself today… the babies are cute… I get to spend just over half an hour pressing stop and play on an mp3 player, watching all the babies and their parents dance around. Very cute.

Lisa and Drew are off to the other side of the ditch today… they’ll be in Aussie for 9 days? So it’s me, and whichever friends come round for a slumber party. I have to do my own cooking too… could be a challenge.

31:30 is on this weekend! It’s our girls camp

 I just heard back from my consultant. She doesn’t know. She’s going to try to find out.

I really miss the stolen ipod. Now we’re back to CDs… we only have one live music prayer meeting currently… although with my current plans that may all change…

I sleep under two duvets at night. I have a fluffy single, and a lighter double duvet. Two weeks ago, to be radical, I swapped them over, and slept with the double underneath and fluffy on top. Last night I switched them back over… much more comfortable and warmer

The prayer room office is very messy….

Language of heaven

I’m in the middle of reading through and praying about applications for the upcoming internship next year. One thing I’m really noticing is that we’re starting to develop a language of our own, and I can read this in the applications that come from local people. By a ‘language’ I’m refering to our ‘jargon’, our way of referring to things, our core values. It’s not a bad thing if we all start to sound kind of similar in the way we talk about things, because before now there hasn’t been a need to deal with stuff because we’re doing something new, we’re not copying what someone else did.

I still want to speak a language more impacting though. Every institution will have its own language and values structure – I want to learn to speak the language of heaven. Jesus said that man speaks out of the overflow of his heart, and I want my heart to be rooted and grounded in something deeper and far more substantial than a prayer ministry or youth church… I want to have Eternity’s perspective on all the stuff which makes up my life and the world around me… I want my values to reflect the heart of the Father… I want to be someone who can be trusted with the things that God holds precious… I want to carry the word of the Lord. It’s this kind of stuff which will enable me to speak the language of heaven… and I get that from being in the prayer room, from living a life thats open to the Lord and to His plans and purposes.

Not quite thiefproof…

I suppose its slightly ironic that after my last ‘thiefproof’ post on August 14th, our ipod got stolen. Sometime on Friday afternoon (yesterday) between when I left for work and the Disrupt prayer meeting started, our ipod has gone for a walk. Still hoping we’ll get it back (convict the person Lord… and get them saved) but I guess from now on we might have to work a little harder on prayer room security, cos it wasn’t secured or anything. I’m not sure what ever happened to getting a case for it to be attached to something so this couldn’t happen.

Tomorrow is a fairly significant day in terms of the prayer room… right now we’re in between name changes and I’m not even sure if we’re definitely switching. Currently we’re the ‘Onething Prayer Centre’, and our youth ministry has been called Onething… but we’re changing names to Disrupt… and so I think the prayer room is going to switch to being the ‘Hope Centre House of Prayer.’ It’s just a name, but names can be important. But, the name change isn’t the important thing, but tomorrow we’re launching ‘The Stand’ in our evening service. It’s our call to commit to prayer – we’re inviting people from our church (and other churches) to commit to being in the prayer room for 5 or 10 hours a week.

The prayer room tends to make a lot more sense when we have an internship running – or in the case of next year, we’re launching our ‘nocturnal internship’ and will have two internships. As much as I wish that this was nocturnal in the true sense of the word, its simply our adult internship designed for people over 30, and those who work fulltime and can’t do the young adults internship which happens in the mornings. It’ll run from 7-11pm three nights a week and the fourth day will be Sunday afternoons. So, the stand is an invitation to people to commit to prayer, to be accountable in being in the prayer room, and out of this we’re going to begin to develop a lot more around here… we’re hitting this off tomorrow in the evening revival service, so it’ll be interesting to see who signs up.

The picture up above is what our metallic wallet cards are going to look like – they were meant to arrive by courier today but they didn’t make it so we’ll have to post them out to people – they’re business card sized and you get to carry one round with you as a reminder.

space occupier.

Tonight it merely feels like I’m occupying square meterage in the prayer room.

Which is odd, considering its just me and the 170-odd square metre room.

I want to go to America.

Chicken Bacon.

So, last night, we’re eating pasta with meat and I’m like, what meat is this, it looks like ham but isn’t ham, and Lisa’s like ‘chicken bacon. Bacon flavoured chicken.’

I don’t get it. One question – WHY?

Thiefproof.

Here’s an idea: leave your church unlocked and never have anyone steal anything.

How? Pray 24-7. If someone’s always on the drums they can’t be stolen .

Lower Hutt needs a nightwatch.