Pentecost has always been that religious holiday I’ve seemed to overlook. I’ve never really taken time those five weeks after Easter to celebrate the day the Holy Spirit was unleashed in hearts and languages given that began the birth and movement of the Church. This year was definitely different. I got to celebrate Pentecost in a stadium with thousands of Christians representing about a hundred different nations for the Global Day of Prayer.
The Global Day of Prayer movement began 10 years ago with a bunch of people in Cape Town who were desperate to intercede for their country and world. Since then, the movement has spread to all 220 nations, who set up prayer meetings and assemblies to pray on May 23rd making it the biggest prayer meeting ever in the history of the world! I watched as the stadium filled up with people from all the continents speaking all kinds of languages, ready to call out to God.
Our ministry team was part of a procession that carried all the countries’ flags out around the stadium in order to pray for the nations. I couldn’t take part because I sprained my toe the day before playing soccer with a Brazilian ministry team and was limping around pretty badly. As I was sitting to the side, a woman came and asked if I would pray in the event. I was humbled and privileged to be able to pray for the young people; that God would raise up a new generation of Christ followers who are filled with the Holy Spirit and willing to boldly share God’s love to the world. It was as experience I will never forget!
It was so cool to look out and watch all the people worship and pray, each in their own language and cultural way. Seeing everyone made me realize how amazingly big God is to have created such a diverse world full of beautifully different people. I kept thinking of that day of Pentecost when God gave us His Spirit. I always pictured everyone in that small room jumping around and many different languages filling the air in a crazy epic worship service to God. Two thousand years later, it still happens, except tens of thousands of times bigger because God was desperate to share His love with everyone, to the farthest places of the world. I saw the result of this today and was truly overwhelmed.
Praying with people from the nations was just the start of the global Church ministry God has blessed me with this summer. The next two weeks I will be serving alongside a ministry team from Australia followed by a week with Brazilians, then two weeks with some Americans, and a week with Indonesians. Our home has been opened up to groups from Namibia and Zimbabwe. God is truly moving His church around and I’m excited to see what He makes of it!
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Guys Camp/Prince Albert
Short update for you'all: more to come soooon!
Two weekends ago, the guys on our team had a men’s camp with a bunch of ex-gang leaders from Sir Lowry’s. They played paintball in the mountains and rugby on the beach. Our team laid out the gospel, along with the warning that following Christ is tough and requires sacrifice. Three guys in the camp accepted Christ, including Night, (who we now call Neals) the biggest leader of the bunch. I’ve been so blessed to see God crash into Sir Lowry’s with His love, and I’m even more excited to see what happens these next few months. God loves to take rebel enemy leaders and turn them in to passionate preachers of God’s word. All of the guys on the camp committed to meeting with us every Wednesday to get discipled (which is the really important part). I’ve been learning about what can happen when Christ followers get that His gospel is powerful and lay it out for people with boldness, letting God do the rest.
This last week, a group of six of us went up to a place called Prince Albert to meet with the young people and train them to do sports ministry for world cup. Prince Albert is a small mostly colored town five hours north of Cape Town. We spoke in classrooms, churches, and school assemblies. We spent the nights in a boarding school with the students, which was super fun. We never had any definite plans each day, but God was really faithful to provide us opportunities to serve. One of the highlights of the week was watching Keith, one of our teammates who is from Prince Albert, speak and serve in his hometown. One of the needs and, therefore, the themes of our messages to the churches was unity both among churches and within churches, in order to work for God’s mission. We will be returning to Prince Albert next month during world cup to do a community wide outreach, partnering with the churches we trained with during this outreach.
That’s all I want to write now. I’ll send a longer post soon. Thanks for your prayers!
Two weekends ago, the guys on our team had a men’s camp with a bunch of ex-gang leaders from Sir Lowry’s. They played paintball in the mountains and rugby on the beach. Our team laid out the gospel, along with the warning that following Christ is tough and requires sacrifice. Three guys in the camp accepted Christ, including Night, (who we now call Neals) the biggest leader of the bunch. I’ve been so blessed to see God crash into Sir Lowry’s with His love, and I’m even more excited to see what happens these next few months. God loves to take rebel enemy leaders and turn them in to passionate preachers of God’s word. All of the guys on the camp committed to meeting with us every Wednesday to get discipled (which is the really important part). I’ve been learning about what can happen when Christ followers get that His gospel is powerful and lay it out for people with boldness, letting God do the rest.
This last week, a group of six of us went up to a place called Prince Albert to meet with the young people and train them to do sports ministry for world cup. Prince Albert is a small mostly colored town five hours north of Cape Town. We spoke in classrooms, churches, and school assemblies. We spent the nights in a boarding school with the students, which was super fun. We never had any definite plans each day, but God was really faithful to provide us opportunities to serve. One of the highlights of the week was watching Keith, one of our teammates who is from Prince Albert, speak and serve in his hometown. One of the needs and, therefore, the themes of our messages to the churches was unity both among churches and within churches, in order to work for God’s mission. We will be returning to Prince Albert next month during world cup to do a community wide outreach, partnering with the churches we trained with during this outreach.
That’s all I want to write now. I’ll send a longer post soon. Thanks for your prayers!
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