eyes wide shut

Well, we're back from conference and had a great time. My talk seemed to go well and I got to lead worship one night too. Truth and treating went really well. We got to chat to a few people and one group even got to pray for healing with one guy on his doorstep.

We are currently at the start of a month of prayer in our church. We've kicked the month off with a week of 24/7 prayer and it's going great. The youth have really got into it and are putting the rest of us to shame with their passion!!! I spent a night in the prayer room with a few others over the weekend and though I found it easy to stay awake, found it really hard to actually pray. I really wanted for God to speak to me and had lots I wanted to pray about but just couldn't for some reason. I spent another couple of hours in there last night and that time didn't try to pray or listen, I just focused on being with God. I had an awesome couple of hours!!! I'm starting to see now that God wants me to be still and just be in his presence right now. It's time to just rest in Him and stop trying so hard!

Another thing I've been realising recently is that we're not called to make converts, we are called to make disciples. What does that mean? We're not called to get people to 'pray the prayer'. Though it's important to preach Christ crucified and to challenge people to make a commitment to Him, my focus should be on helping them to become a follower of Jesus. I need to teach people how to pray, how to worship, morality, what God's Kingdom looks like... Discipleship is so important. Recently I've got a little frustrated that I don't get to spend time with many young people right now. But it's quality not quantity that counts! I'd much rather get to spend a lot of time really pouring into a few people - seeing them transformed and then transforming others - than to have shallow connections with loads of people. Jesus had a small group that he spent loads of time with and he taught them to go out and change the world. I want to do the same!