Sunday night at the Maisen’s house.
What a great time in the presence of the Lord! I say that, but I don’t mean it like most people would think. We didn’t have some kind of mountain top experience of energy and excitement. There wasn’t even any singing or typical “worship service” type stuff involved. But there was deep worship.
One of the major concepts God is teaching us right now is that the end goal should inform the journey to get there, and the end goal of everything is for the created to be intimate with the Creator, Jesus. And since intimacy cannot be achieved unless we share our own hearts with the one(s) we want to be intimate with, we started off the evening sharing our emotions with each other and the Lord using SASHET (Sad, Angry, Scared, Happy, Excited, Tender). We did this while sharing the Lord’s Supper and a meal that everyone contributed to. This was the first time we really incorporated the meal time as an integral part of experiencing God together. It was sweet.
As usual we came without a set plan for the evening, except that almost everybody had something ready to share from what God had been teaching them. And as usual, when everybody is centered on Christ and encouraged to share their gifts as the Lord leads, the meeting flowed more freely and deeply than any plan could have achieved.
The theme for the evening was excitement about a revival coming to Arkadelphia and Henderson State University but that we have to devote ourselves to prayer and intimacy with Christ. And out of this place of rest (not out of our hard work and achievement) revival will come.
Talk about some much needed R&R…
The beauty of this R&R is that out of prayer and intimacy with Christ comes an explosion of ministry. I say it is effortless. What I really mean is that when we are focused on Christ, the building up of the church (the body) comes from Jesus Christ himself, the head of the body. I believe strongly that Christ was serious when he said, “I will build my church.” Also, Christ tells us that, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” This is true because God is a big god. He can handle everything that he starts. What then is our job? To be in close communion with our head. The head tells the body what to do and if the body is functioning properly, the body obeys.
Rest to Revival-nice man