Saturday, December 06, 2003

Wow...

What a night we had tonight! We met for our Friday night "ekklesia" at a house other than the one where we usually meet. The evening began at 6pm with a great dinner and good conversation. Then our hostess did something really wacky and brought out a bunch of paper masks she had bought. We were laughing so hard, trying them on and goofing around. I'll try to post some pictures! Next we sat in the living room and took turns sharing what was going on in our lives. In a few cases, this turned into prayer and ministry to some of our members who are going through particularly difficult times.

It was as we were gathered around one of our members that I saw a glimpse of Jesus. We were loving this person and sharing with her what God was giving us to share at that moment; taking turns praying, someone giving encouragement, someone reading a scripture, someone else giving a prophetic word, etc., I suddenly realized that Jesus really was in our midst and that I was seeing His body at work. I was overcome with joy and gratitude. What an awesome and gracious God we serve!

One of our members brought out a box which contained stones that she had purchased, each of which had an encouraging word or phrase on it (mine said "Protection"). She had each of us close our eyes and reach into the box and select a stone. We had fun sharing what each of our stones said. Next came a wonderful time of musical worship, where we traded off the worship leading role between three of the musician/singers and switched around on instruments a bit too.
Others played along on djembes. Towards the end, some of us shared worship songs that we had written, to the edification of all.

By the time worship ended, we were all feeling the warm glow of fellowship with one-another and with the Lord. It was then that we actually looked at a clock and realized it was midnight! We had been at it for 6 hours, yet the time had seemed to fly by! It took another hour for everyone to finally wind down enough to head to their homes. It was so good we decided to get together again this Sunday.

What a blessed night!