Saturday, October 23, 2010

The Power of Two

I spend my Saturday mornings at Gateway House of Prayer. I had taken several weeks off ... had been off since my hospital stay earlier this summer until a few weeks ago. (I felt strongly that I needed to find some space on my schedule to not "be" anywhere in particular).

Today I was at Gateway for 4 hours because I was there for my normal 2 hour time block and then stood in for a friend. I have to admit leaving home this morning I wondered how I was going to do with 4 hours pretty much alone with God and my thoughts in an empty room. Though there are several times a week that there are worship teams and other people in the room ... usually Saturday mornings there are only a couple of us at most... many times I'm there alone or singing while my friend plays keyboard.

As expected, I got some CDs set up and headed straight for the wall map with my Bible and journal and began to pray. I knelt down and prayed and wept, was thankful and was pleading... tears, snot and all. After a while... I heard someone come in the room and come over to me. This guy asked if he could join me to agree together in prayer. I said of course and he asked me if I could verbalize what I was praying about ... so I told him I was praying for the nations, especially Ethiopia and Haiti because my heart has been broken for these countries. He admitted that his heart was inclined to pray for families this morning but that he'd follow my lead for a while then take a turn to lead the direction of our prayers. It was awesome. Praying out loud with Joe enabled me to verbalize and express more to God and also to convey what was on my heart to another human being. It was awesome to hear him pray with intensity and catch some passion to pray for Haiti and Ethiopia too. We prayed together at least an hour and a half. When he left, both of our hearts were expanded and we were energized. Not that this was anywhere near the first time for this for me... but this was a morning that I really saw how God used praying together to move us beyond our own agendas and open our eyes to other needs. It also helped fuel my prayers and time with God for the next couple of hours.

Matthew 18: 18-20 “I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”

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