Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Where the Fountains Never Run Dry

Jeremiah speaks of people digging cisterns for themselves that will no hold water.  A cistern is just a reservoir that held water, most of the time carved out in rock.  When the rains came a cistern would hold the water and a cover would be put on them to keep debris out so that when drought came there was extra water.

We try and fill ourselves from many worldly cisterns.  We try to get filled from power, popularity, or finding love in the wrong ways.  These all are cisterns that don't hold water.  They can not be depended on.  They don't have anything in them that nourishes us.

Jeremiah goes on to say that God is the fountain of living water.  He is a cistern that will never run dry.  We can continually go to Him and find what we need.

Monday Night Prayer is becoming known as a cistern.  It is a place where living water is found and filling peoples hearts.   People are coming on Monday nights hungry and anticipating what God will do and how He will meet us and fill us.  They are leaving with more than they came with.

We read out of Acts 4:31 to begin prayer this week.  We prayed we would be filled with Gods Spirit so that we might preach the word of God with boldness.  Worship kicked off with "You Won't Relent" a powerful anthem written by Misty Edwards and redone recently by Jesus Culture.
The song goes:   Come be the fire inside of me      Come be the flame upon my heart      Come be the fire inside of me      Until You and I are one   and that became our prayer last night.

We celebrated what God is doing as He answers many of our prayers.  In our weekend services around 200 people signed up for our baptism celebration this coming week.  We shared stories of people praying to commit their lives to Christ this weekend as they came to the baptism interview and realized they had never asked Christ into their lives.  Another young women prayed that prayer and went back and got a friend.  The friend signed up to be baptized.  Another lady was watching the service online.  She was challenged by the message and came up to the building and signed up to be baptized.  Another family was on their way home from the service and were convicted.   They turned around and signed up to be baptized next week.  As we interviewed those who signed up many had tears in their eyes as they shared how they had committed their lives to Christ and desired to be baptized as Gods word says they should.

We let a new missionary friend from Moldova share.  Vova told us about teaming up with SportQuest in Moldova and how they reach out to the kids in his country.  I think the highlight of the evening may have been when he prayed a blessing over us in Russian.

We prayed for teams going to China, our team on the ground in Chiapas Mexico and for Vova and his ministry.

We then went on and prayed for our upcoming baptism celebration.  We are praying for many friends and family who will come to hear the gospel clearly and make a commitment to Christ themselves.  We also prayed for God to show up powerfully as many people take their next step of obedience with the Lord and are baptized.

We ended our time praying for our lifehouse leaders and life transformation group leaders.  We had them stand and had people gather around them and pray.  We prayed for the marketplace tonight.  We prayed for all those in the housing industry or that serviced houses.

We had our prayer teams come up and be available for prayer from anyone needing that.

Chris Galanos, our lead pastor, closed the meeting as he prayed over all of us.

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Elements that worked:

Opening with the reading of a verse and praying is working well.  I like the band already playing in the background when that happens.

Having a prayer team coordinator present during our prayer teams ministry works well.  These coordinators can help see who is done praying and can take someone else, help let people who are in line.

Creating more free space up front (no chairs, carpets out on floor) for the youth and others to come up and stand, kneel and sit during worship.

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