Encountering the Father's Heart

It was a Kingdom come kind of day. 25 people gathered - mainstream white, Latino gangsters and Lummi Nation who are becoming sons and daughters, ex-offenders from prison, rappers and worship leaders - all seeking to connect more deeply to the Father heart of God.

People talked about their relationships with their own dads and how that has affected their relating to God as Father, then forgave their dads. We talked about how our experience of the reconciling work of Jesus begins in the places where we need to be reconciled with one another - when we forgive as our heavenly Father forgives we are becoming children of God. As we walk in this, we see our need to be reconciled with our heavenly Father.

At the end of our time one young man spoke up about feeling deeply and painfully alone. As he shared his pain, these gangsters and others admitted their own aloneness and came around him to pray with and for him. "No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us." (1 John 4:12) What seemed, initially, to take us back a step from all we had been talking about actually moved us out of our individual attempts to experience a deeper connection with the Father to experiencing a deeper sense of our adoption by connecting to our family through one expressing their need.

It was a beautiful moment. One said, "Healing is cool thing to see and other signs of the Kingdom breaking in, but this is the greatest sign when the children are loving one another."

Treasure Hunt

I was listening to Bill Johnson's podcast yesterday and was challenged that the Spirit of the Lord is upon me - for a purpose. As I was sitting in the parking lot outside the Bellingham REI I asked the Holy Spirit to give me a clue for someone the Father wanted to bless through me. I immediately had the impression of a red and black plaid shirt, so I went looking (somewhat fearfully, I admit) and was relieved not to see such shirt at REI.

I went home and was doing laundry in the common house, having put this whole thing out of my mind, when I looked out the window and saw Ed, one of our community members, walking by in a red and black plaid shirt. Jesus reminded me that He had things for me to do here and it was time to do one of them. I saw Ed disappear into the wood shop and made my way over there. Glad to find him by himself we got to talking about this and that. Then I said, "This might sound strange to you, Ed, but I was praying this morning and asking God who He wanted to bless and I got a picture in my mind of a red and black plaid shirt. I think God wants to bless you today. Would it be okay if I prayed a blessing for you?" He didn't hesitate and said yes; he straightened up from the workbench and closed his eyes. I put my hand on his shoulder and prayed a short prayer asking the Father to show His delight to Ed. When I finished he thanked me and we moved on to talk of other things.

Bless him again today, Father.

prophetic praying

We were praying with a friend the other day. As we did God gave one of us a couple pictures from this friend's life when he was a boy in Mexico. They were traumatic events. As he shared them we could see that he was touched deeply.

I asked him later how he felt about hearing of these images in his prayer time. He said he felt very hopeful and full of joy because it meant that God was real and that God knew about him, and that he was never alone.

There are times when we pray and our approach is to help people make the direct connection to hear from Jesus for themselves. This is important, especially so that they aren't dependent upon anyone else for their connection with Jesus. But this reminds me how important prophetic words are - the secrets of our hearts are revealed and we will worship God and declare that God is really among us (1 Corinthians 14:25).