Category: evangelism

aborigines, evangelism, revival ,

Pentecost in Arnhem Land, by Djiniyini Gondarra

by Geoff 27 February 2016 5 Comments

Pentecost in Arnhem Land, Australia

Djiniyini Gondarra

See Australian Aboriginal Revival from 1979

Great Revival StoriesPentecost in Arnhem Land is a chapter in Great Revival Stories 

Great Revival Stories – PDF

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Article in Renewal Journal 1: Revival
Renewal Journal 1: Revival – PDF

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Djiniyini Gondarra

The Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra is a Uniting Church minister and former Moderator of the Northern Synod of the Uniting Church in Australia.

_______________________________________

mission is to include every aspect of the work

which the church is sent into the world to do

_______________________________________

This is a very brief outline of the revival which took place in Arnhem Land in the Uniting Church parishes, beginning in Galiwin’ku on Elcho Island, 400 miles east of Darwin, with a population of 1500 to 1600.

In the early years, Galiwin’ku Community was the mission station established by the Methodist Overseas Mission back in 1942 under the leadership of Rev. Harold Shepherdson. He was accepted by the Methodist Mission Board in 1927 as a lay missionary, engineer and saw-miller. Because of his long outstanding Christian leadership and humility he was ordained at Galiwin’ku, Elcho Island, on 19th October, 1954. He and his wife Ella Shepherdson would have been the last pioneer missionaries to leave their beloved home and people in Arnhem Land.

The missionary movement in Arnhem Land has taken as its mandate the great commission in Matthew 28:19-20 which says: ‘Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age.’

I understand that mission is to include every aspect of the work which the church is sent into the world to do, and I understand evangelism in a different sense which is called holistic evangelism. It is a means of communication of the good news about Jesus Christ as it affects the whole of life.

You will remember very well the story in Acts 1:68 when Jesus and his disciples met together before the ascension took place. The disciples asked whether God’s reign was now come in full. Jesus told them it was not their business to worry about that, but they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them and they would be his witnesses beginning in Jerusalem and going outwards into Judea, Samaria and on to the ends of the earth.

There is something quite unpredictable, unexpected and mysterious about the way that God’s rule is realized in communities and in the lives of individuals. So the disciples were told to wait for the Holy Spirit and then they would be witnesses when Pentecost came. Something quite unplanned and unexpected happened. They began to babble in other strange languages and people asked what is this that is happening? What is going on?

Difficult times

Galiwin’ku, Elcho Island, experienced the revival on 14th March, 1979. That year was a very hard year because the churches in Arnhem Land were going through very difficult times. There was suffering, hardship and even persecution.

Many people left the church and the Christian gospel no longer had interest and value in their lives. Many began to speak against Christianity or even wanted to get rid of the church.

This attitude was affected by the changes that were happening. Money and other things were coming into the community from the government. The people became more rich and were handling lots of things such as motor cars, T.V., motorboats, and good houses. The responsibilities were in the hands of the Aboriginal people and no longer in the missionaries’ hands.

The earthly values became the centre of Aboriginal life. There was more liquor coming into the communities every day, and more fighting was going on. There were more families hurt, and more deaths and incidents happening which were caused by drinking.

Whole communities in Arnhem Land were in great chaos. The people were in confusion and without direction. The Aboriginal people were listening to many voices. The government was saying you are free people and you must have everything you want, just like the other Australians. And there were promises from one to another.

To me, the Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land were like the Israelites in Egypt being slaves in bondage because of all the changes that were brought into the community. They were like the vacuum suction which was sucking in everything that comes without knowing that many of the things that came into communities were really unpleasant and only destroyed the harmony and the good relationship with the people and the communities.

I thank God that I was being called back to serve my own people in Arnhem Land, especially to Galiwin’ku. In 1975 I had just completed my theological training in Papua New Guinea in Raronga Theological College and was appointed to Galiwin’ku parish. My ordination took place in 1976 in Galiwin’ku parish, and I was ordained by the Arnhem Land Presbytery. I was appointed then to Galiwin’ku parish as parish minister.

This celebration took place when there were lots of changes happening and when the church was challenged by the power of evil which clothes itself in greed, selfishness, drunkenness, and in wealth. As I went on my daily pastoral visitation around the camp I would hear the drunks swearing and bashing up their wives and throwing stones on the houses, and glass being broken in the houses. And sometimes the drunks would go into the church and smoke cigarettes in the holy house of God. This was really terrible. The whole of Arnhem Land was being held by the hands of satan.

I remember one day I woke up early in the morning and went for a walk down the beach and started talking to myself. I said, ‘Lord, why have you called me to the ministry? Why have you called me back to my own people? Why not to somewhere else, because there is so much suffering and hardship?’

I then returned to the manse where Gelung, my wife, and the children were. This was our last day before we left for our holidays to the south, visiting old missionary friends and also taking part in the lovely wedding held in Sydney for Barry and Barbara Bullick, one of our missionary workers still remaining in Galiwin’ku Community.

It was almost 6.30 am and it was my turn to lead the morning devotions. The bell had already rung and I had rushed into the church. When I got there, there were only four people inside the church. We used to have our morning devotions every day early in the morning because this system had been formed by the missionaries in the early years.

God had given me the Word to read and share with those four people who were present in the church with me. The reading I selected was from the Old Testament, Ezekiel 37:1-14, the valley of dry bones. Most of you know the story very well, how God Yahweh commanded the prophet Ezekiel to prophecy to the dry bones, and how that the dry bones represent the whole house of Israel, how they were just like bones dried up and their hope had perished. They were completely cut off.

After the morning prayers, Gelung, the children and I were ready to leave for Gove and then go on to Cairns in North Queensland. We were away for four weeks and returned on 14th March, 1979.

20th century Pentecost

To me and all the Galiwin’ku Community, both the Aboriginal Christians and the white Christians, these dates and the month were very important because this is the mark of the birth of the Pentecost experience in the Arnhem Land churches or the birth of the Arnhem Land churches. To us it was like Pentecost in this 20th Century.

It happened when Gelung, the children and I arrived very late in the afternoon from our holidays through Gove on the late Missionary Aviation Fellowship aircraft to Galiwin’ku. When we landed at Galiwin’ku airport we were welcomed and met by many crowds of people.

They all seemed to be saying to us, ‘We would like you to start the Bible Class fellowship once again.’ It seemed to me that God, after our leaving, had been walking on and preparing many people’s lives to wait upon the outpouring of his Holy Spirit that would soon come upon them. Gelung and I were so tired from the long trip from Cairns to Gove and then from Gove to Galiwin’ku that we expected to rest and sort out some of the things and unpack. But we just committed ourselves to the needs of our brothers and sisters who had welcomed and met us at the airport that afternoon.

After the evening dinner, we called our friends to come and join us in the Bible Class meeting. We just sang some hymns and choruses translated into Gupapuynu and into Djambarrpuynu. There were only seven or eight people who were involved or came to the Bible Class meeting, and many of our friends didn’t turn up. We didn’t get worried about it.

I began to talk to them that this was God’s will for us to get together this evening because God had planned this meeting through them so that we will see something of his great love which will be poured out on each one of them. I said a word of thanks to those few faithful Christians who had been praying for renewal in our church, and I shared with them that I too had been praying for the revival or the renewal for this church and for the whole of Arnhem Land churches, because to our heavenly Father everything is possible. He can do mighty things in our churches throughout our great land.

These were some of the words of challenge I gave to those of my beloved brothers and sisters. Gelung, my wife, also shared something of her experience of the power and miracles that she felt deep down in her heart when she was about to die in Darwin Hospital delivering our fourth child. It was God’s power that brought the healing and the wholeness in her body.

I then asked the group to hold each other’s hands and I began to pray for the people and for the church, that God would pour out his Holy Spirit to bring healing and renewal to the hearts of men and women, and to the children.

Suddenly we began to feel God’s Spirit moving in our hearts and the whole form of our prayer suddenly changed and everybody began to pray in the Spirit and in harmony. And there was a great noise going on in the room and we began to ask one another what was going on.

Some of us said that God had now visited us and once again established his kingdom among his people who have been bound for so long by the power of evil. Now the Lord is setting his church free and bringing us into the freedom of happiness and into reconciliation and to restoration.

In that same evening the word just spread like the flames of fire and reached the whole community in Galiwin’ku. Gelung and I couldn’t sleep at all that night because people were just coming for the ministry, bringing the sick to be prayed for, for healing. Others came to bring their problems. Even a husband and wife came to bring their marriage problem, so the Lord touched them and healed their marriage.

Next morning the Galiwin’ku Community once again became the new community. The love of Jesus was being shared and many expressions of forgiveness were taking place in the families and in the tribes. Wherever I went I could hear people singing and humming Christian choruses and hymns! Before then I would have expected to hear only fighting and swearing and many other troublesome things that would hurt your feelings and make you feel sad.

Many unplanned and unexpected things happened every time we went from camp to camp to meet with the people. The fellowship was held every night and more and more people gave their lives to Christ, and it went on and on until sometimes the fellowship meeting would end around about midnight. There was more singing, testimony, and ministry going on. People did not feel tired in the morning, but still went to work.

Many Christians were beginning to discover what their ministry was, and a few others had a strong sense of call to be trained to become Ministers of the Word. Now today these ministers who have done their training through Nungilinya College have been ordained. These are some of the results of the revival in Arnhem Land. Many others have been trained to take up a special ministry in the parish.

The spirit of revival has not only affected the Uniting Church communities and the parishes, but Anglican churches in Arnhem Land as well, such as in Angurugu, Umbakumba, Roper River, Numbulwar and Oenpelli. These all have experienced the revival, and have been touched by the joy and the happiness and the love of Christ.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Arnhem Land has swept further to the Centre in Pitjantjatjara and across the west into many Aboriginal settlements and communities. I remember when Rev. Rronang Garrawurra, Gelung and I were invited by the Warburton Ranges people and how we saw God’s Spirit move in the lives of many people. Five hundred people came to the Lord and were baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

There was a great revival that swept further west. I would describe these experiences like a wild bush fire burning from one side of Australia to the other side of our great land. The experience of revival in Arnhem Land is still active in many of our Aboriginal parishes and the churches.

We would like to share these experiences in many white churches where doors are closed to the power of the Holy Spirit. It has always been my humble prayer that the whole of Australian Christians, both black and white, will one day be touched by this great and mighty power of the living God.

_________________________________

(c) Djiniyini Gondarra’s, Let my people go. Published by Bethel Presbytery of the Northern Synod of the Uniting Church in Australia. Used with permission. 

Some photos from Australian Aboriginal Revival from 1979:

 


Prayer meeting in the church


Meetings outside the crowded church


Mission meetings

Renewal Journal 1: Revival(c) Renewal Journal 1: Revival (1993, 2011), pages 29-36
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright intact with the text.

Now available in updated book form (republished 2011)
Renewal Journal 1: Revival

Praying the Price, by Stuart Robinson

Prayer and Revival, by J Edwin Orr

Pentecost in Arnhem Land, by Djiniyini Gondarra

Power from on High: The Moravian Revival, by John Greenfield

Revival Fire, by Geoff Waugh

 

RJ Vol 1 (1-5) 1Also in Renewal Journals, Bound Volume 1, Issues 1-5

Renewal Journal Vol 1 (1-5) – PDF

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Contents of all Renewal Journals

Revival Blogs Links:

See also Revivals Index

See also Revival Blogs

See also Blogs Index 1: Revivals

Link to all Renewal Journals

All Renewal Journal Topics

1 Revival,   2 Church Growth,   3 Community,   4 Healing,   5 Signs & Wonders,
6  Worship,   7  Blessing,   8  Awakening,   9  Mission,   10  Evangelism,
11  Discipleship,   12  Harvest,   13  Ministry,   14  Anointing,   15  Wineskins,
16  Vision,   17  Unity,   18  Servant Leadership,   19  Church,   20 Life

GENERAL BLOGS INDEX

BLOGS INDEX 1: REVIVALS (BRIEFER THAN REVIVALS INDEX)

BLOGS INDEX 2: MISSION (INTERNATIONAL STORIES)

BLOGS INDEX 3: MIRACLES (SUPERNATURAL EVENTS)

BLOGS INDEX 4: DEVOTIONAL (INCLUDING TESTIMONIES)

BLOGS INDEX 5: CHURCH (CHRISTIANITY IN ACTION)

BLOGS INDEX 6: CHAPTERS (BLOGS FROM BOOKS)

BLOGS INDEX 7: IMAGES (PHOTOS AND ALBUMS)

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Renewal Journal 1: Revival

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An article in Renewal Journal 1: Revival
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See Australian Aboriginal Revival from 1979

Revivals Index – revivals into the 21st century

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Acts 3 cripple healed – acted out in faith in PNG

by Geoff 17 February 2015 1 Comment

Acts 3 cripple healed – acted out in faith in PNG

From Papua New Guinea (by Johan van Bruggen)

Johan van Bruggen

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Acts 3 cripple healed – acted out in faith in PNG:
https://renewaljournal.com/2015/02/17/acts-3-acted-out-in-faith-in-png/

See also: How I learned to pray for the Sick:
https://renewaljournal.com/2017/08/06/how-i-learned-to-pray-for-the-sick/

Acts 3 tells how Peter and John went to worship in the temple and Peter commanded healing in Jesus’ name for a man over 40 crippled from birth.

But Peter said, ‘I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.’  And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. (Acts 3:6-7)

That still happens, worldwide. Here is an example from Papua New Guinea, reported in 1990 by Dutch missionary Johan van Bruggen, then principal of the Lutheran Bible School at Kambaidam near Goroka in the highlands on PNG.  See Late Twentieth Century Revivals

This is what happened about two months ago. A new church building was going to be officially opened in a village in the Kainantu area. Two of our last year’s graduates took part in the celebrations by acting the story in Acts 3: Peter and John going to the temple and healing the cripple.

Their cripple was a real one – a young man, Mark, who had his leg smashed in a car accident. The doctors had wanted to amputate it, but he did not want to lose his useless leg. He used two crutches to move around the village. He could not stand at all on that one leg. He was lying at the door of the new church when our Peter and John (real names: Steven and Pao) wanted to enter. The Bible story was exactly followed: “I have got no money, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!”

Well, they acted this out before hundreds of people, among them the president of the Goroka Church District and many pastors and elders. Peter (Steven) grabbed the cripple (Mark) by the hand and pulled him up. And he walked! He threw his crutches away and loudly praised the Lord! Isn’t that something? What a faith!

Their testimony was given at a meeting of elders when Kambaidam was discussed. Mark was a most happy fellow who stood and walked firmly on his two legs. He also had been involved in criminal activities, but in this meeting he unashamedly confessed his faith in the Lord Jesus.

Later I talked with them. Steven (Peter) told me that the Lord had put this on his heart during a week-long period of praying. “I had no doubt that the Lord was going to heal Mark, and I was so excited when we finally got to play-act!”

And Mark? He told me that when Steven told him to get up he just felt the power of God descend upon him and at the same time he had a tingling sensation in his crippled leg: “I just felt the blood rushing through my leg, bringing new life!”

Mark is now involved in evangelistic outreach and his testimony has a great impact.

Reproduced from Flashpoints of Revival and South Pacific Revivals.

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HEALING BLOGS

 

Revival Blogs Links:See also Revival Blogs

See also Revivals Index

See also Blogs Index 1: Revivals

GENERAL BLOGS INDEX

BLOGS INDEX 1: REVIVALS (BRIEFER THAN REVIVALS INDEX)

BLOGS INDEX 2: MISSION (INTERNATIONAL STORIES)

BLOGS INDEX 3: MIRACLES (SUPERNATURAL EVENTS)

BLOGS INDEX 4: DEVOTIONAL (INCLUDING TESTIMONIES)

BLOGS INDEX 5: CHURCH (CHRISTIANITY IN ACTION)

BLOGS INDEX 6: CHAPTERS (BLOGS FROM BOOKS)

BLOGS INDEX 7: IMAGES (PHOTOS AND ALBUMS)

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Acts 3 cripple healed – acted out in faith in PNG:
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See also: How I learned to pray for the Sick:
https://renewaljournal.com/2017/08/06/how-i-learned-to-pray-for-the-sick/

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The 10 Domains – 12 Spheres of Influence

by Geoff 30 January 2015 1 Comment

The original 10 domains are now expanded to 12 spheres of influence – https://prayerstrategy.org.

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From the National Prayer Strategy:

The vision for the ten domains was revealed to Peter Kentley, the former CEO of Australian Marketplace Connections. Since 2009 we have received a number of confirmations to adopt and develop this vision in Australia, and to establish prayer (and mission) strategies for these domains.

The original ten domains were:

1. Trade and Finance (Business)
2. Government and the Military
3. Law and Justice
4. Religion and Philosophy
5. Creative Arts
6. Education
7. Charity and Not for Profit Welfare
8. Health and Science
9. Media and Entertainment
10. Sport and Recreation

These are now expanded to 12 spheres of influence – https://prayerstrategy.org.

Introduction

During the 20th Century life became multi-faceted and overly busy with Marketplace spheres (or mountains or domains) of influence dominating and competing for the Families’ time, money, affections and ambitions, and drawing them away from the Church (the eternal family) and God our creator.

Every month we dedicate prayer for these spheres (click on each):

To a great extent God is being largely relegated outside these spheres of our society. The cost of this relegation has been incredible: costs to society in the form of corporate ethical failures, physical and mental health burdens resulting from people failing to engage with Biblical solutions such as forgiveness, and the near meltdown of the whole global financial system (the ‘GFC’ and potential ‘GFC2’) as a result of debt-driven artificial wealth creation that was not based on Godly values and principles.

Even the Church has been largely seduced into a Greek world view of the division of sacred and secular, creating a separation of Sunday from Monday. This resulted in the Church only accessing some 5% of its people’s waking time and Christian discipleship becoming emasculated (minimizing the impact of the Great Commission).

Yet the Marketplace is the place where Christians spend some 67% of their waking time Monday to Friday. It is in the workforce that the Christians’ attitudes and character are put to the reality test…

…and if the Christians’ Monday behaviour does not reflect their Sunday belief, why would anyone believe their belief?

From this we can conclude that the BIG answer for the Church impacting the world is not primarily in programs, as good as some of these may be. The answer is in the excellence of discipleship expressed into the world: i.e. into the workforce, into the marketplace, into the shopping centres, into the schools, into the hospitals, into the courts and onto the sports fields and so on. This is our original Commission from Jesus in Matt 22:37-40 and 28:17-20 and John 17:18.

Our Principles are God’s Principles;
‘… on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matthew 6:19)

(Reviewed by Ps. Geoff Armitage)

At this time in history we are living under God’s grace, where good and evil can produce order or disorder (respectively), and according to our obedience or disobedience to God. In this reality two doctrines work in parallel: the free will of man and the sovereignty of God. While God calls all people to himself through His truth and kindness, not all will respond. God is not responsible for our sin and He will ultimately have the last say.

Ultimately, for the life we have been given we will all be held individually accountable (John 3:16-18). The time will certainly come when the Lord Jesus Christ will return to earth to rule and reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords over the whole earth from the city of Jerusalem (Micah 4:1-8).

Therefore, our faith is in Christ the Son of the Living God (John 3:18), and this is where we stand.

Our Mission is to pray and connect people who are passionate about participating in growing the governance of Christ in every sphere/mountain/domain of influence in our society and follow God’s command to love one another as He loved us (John 13:34-35).

We look to connect Christians, who are passionate about the Great Commandments (Matthew 22:34-40) and the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) in everyday life. This connection is without regard for denominational affiliation.

Our ethos is vibrantly alive around nine magnificent truths:

  1. The Government rests on the shoulders of Jesus and his government and peace will never end – the Lord Almighty will accomplish this (Isaiah 9:6-7).
  2. The offices of Jesus in Heaven and Earth are Prophet (Hebrews 1:1-2), Priest (Hebrews 4:14-16) and King (Revelation 19:16).
  3. The three institutions of God on earth are Family, Government and Church.
  4. Church and State have separate jurisdictions under Jesus. For the Church Jesus is the head and high priest. For the State Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords.
  5. Society operates through spheres/mountains/domains with a multitude of sub-spheres/mountains/domains.
  6. The foundations of the Kingdom of God are Justice and Righteousness (Psalm 89:14).
  7. The Power of God works through all spheres/mountains/domains.
  8. Jesus Christ will come again to rule and reign over the earth.
  9. Our connection with God is through humility, faith and obedience (Matthew 18:4, Hebrews 11:6).

We are implementing these truths through praying and encouraging many church and marketplace leaders who represent their spheres/mountains/domains of influence.

 

GENERAL BLOGS INDEX

BLOGS INDEX 1: REVIVALS(BRIEFER THANREVIVALS INDEX)

BLOGS INDEX 2: MISSION (INTERNATIONAL STORIES)

BLOGS INDEX 3: MIRACLES (SUPERNATURAL EVENTS)

BLOGS INDEX 4: DEVOTIONAL (INCLUDING TESTIMONIES)

BLOGS INDEX 5: CHURCH(CHRISTIANITY IN ACTION)

BLOGS INDEX 6: CHAPTERS (BLOGS FROM BOOKS)

BLOGS INDEX 7: IMAGES (PHOTOS AND ALBUMS)

BACK TO MAIN PAGE

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Young Christians sharing Good News on the streets of Brisbane, Australia

by Geoff 24 January 2015 No Comments

Mitch1 prayYoung Christians sharing Good News on the streets in Brisbane

This afternoon we met Craig. Christie stopped him to tell him that Jesus loves him & asked if we could pray for him. He said yes!

When we prayed for him, he opened his eyes, jaw dropped & said he felt tingling in his face, in his words said “It’s Him” whilst pointing upward, smiling.

Craig was shot in the head by an intruder in his home one night in front of his son in 2009 (his son living in fear ever since). He let us take him to dinner & shared his story/scars of when he was hit by a car too, also how his father died in his arms.

Mitch dinnerHe couldn’t believe that we wanted to take him with us, saying “This doesn’t happen.” He said he usually puts his hand over his face because people always point and laugh at him – visible hole on the top of his head (bullet still lodged in his skull).

He said he would love to come to the conference [Todd White at Glory City Church] although he couldn’t stay long & on the way to the conference he asked more about God. Christie shared with him about Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

He thanked her & she was able to pray with him as he gave his life to Jesus in the taxi. The taxi driver was in shock, forgot to put his meter on so my mate blessed him with a $40 tip, we told him Jesus loves him too.

Craig wasn’t able to stay long at the conference so when he headed out, Mitch followed him to drive him home then Todd White walked past, Mitch asked Todd to pray with him, turns out Todd & Craig had a lot in common, including being shot at with the same kind of gun. Todd shared more of Jesus with him, they hugged then Craig asked if he could come back to church with his son – Mitch introduced him to the pastor to exchange details.

Craig said he couldn’t believe how nice everyone was & couldn’t wait to get home & read his new Bible.

We are all so blown away by how God aligned everything, & we were able to be a part of this! Everyday out there are opportunities to love people. God said we only need faith as small as a mustard seed. There’s nothing like when you get to break past fear!! So many people let us pray with them tonight, God is so real & the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in us! Craig is overwhelmed with joy and so amazed he now knows God’s love. He will never be the same. ‪#‎normalchristianlife‬
— with Tammi O’neon.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1391989774381183/ – January 22.
Reproduced from Renewal and Revival Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/renewal.revival/
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Interrupted by God, by Robby Dawkins

by Geoff 18 January 2015 2 Comments

Interrupted by GodDawkins Robby

 

Testimonies of personal and social transformation.

From Chapter 1, “Gangsters in the Doorway” in Do What Jesus Did, by Robby Dawkins.
[One of two testimonies by Robby Dawkins.  The other blog is Gangsters in the Doorway.]

As I thought through this experience, I kept wondering, Lord, why did You use me to do this? I don’t have that ability.  What I sensed the Lord clearly speaking back to me that day was “Robby, I’m just looking for people who are available.”

*******

The day that God chose to interrupt me, I wasn’t thinking of anyone but myself. I had been hired as a youth pastor, but my vision of ministry had pretty much been brought to its knees by the reality of answering phones and doing the menial tasks that consumed my days. That particular day, I was in a terrible mood. I felt deeply unappreciated by my senior pastor and his family. I felt far from God and from all of the things He had called me to. I was angry and hurt. This was not in any way my shining moment as a Christ follower.

The phone rang, and I answered it half-heartedly. Probably another sales call, I thought, or maybe a message for me to deliver.

The woman on the phone introduced herself hesitatingly. “Look, I don’t really know what to ask,” she began. “I don’t go to church. As a matter of fact, I’m not even a Christian,” she offered apologetically. “I just picked a church from the phone book because my father’s going in for heart surgery right now. He’s in bad shape, and the doctors say they really don’t think he’s going to make it. We had to press them to go ahead with the surgery.”

She sounded fragile and worn as she explained that this was her father’s third bypass surgery, and it most likely meant the end of his life. She didn’t know where else to turn, but it had crossed her mind to call a church. She hoped someone would burn a candle, rub some beads for her father, sing a hymn or say a prayer for him in his final stages.

As she tried to rationalize to herself and to me why she had reached out to us, I could tell she was a little embarrassed. Maybe she even regretted that she had bothered to call at all. What could I do? I offered to pray for the surgery with her, though I didn’t really want to. It sounded as though her father definitely wasn’t going to make it.

“Well . . .” I paused reluctantly, “I could pray for him. . . .”

Frankly, I just wanted to end the phone call as quickly as possible. I didn’t think much would change because of my prayer. As I began, it sounded as if I were giving his eulogy: “Lord, just be with this man’s family in this difficult time. You’re close to the broken-hearted. Help them, comfort them and be near to them in their grieving.”

I was pretty much burying the man in my prayers. My thinking was, Why would God want to heal him? He’s not even a believer. God barely even heals any of His own kids.

Then the Lord spoke something to me that I didn’t understand. I didn’t hear an audible voice, but I had a strong sense that He was urging me to do something. At the time, I could only point to a few other occasions in my life in which I had heard the Lord speak to me. This was another one. However, I was so distracted by my own concerns that I was almost annoyed at the interruption! What I heard God say was, “Get out on a limb.”

What could He mean by that? I wondered.

Then He urged me again: “Take a risk.”

I thought, What am I supposed to do? These people aren’t even Christians. There’s no risk to take. Immediately the Scripture came to mind that says, “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Psalm 81: 10 NKJV).

Without really having any idea of what I was about to say next, I told the woman, “I hear God saying He’s about to . . .” The words fumbled from my lips, and what I heard coming out was “. . . completely heal your father and give him a brand-new heart, and as a matter of fact, He’s going to give him new lungs to go with it.”

This was weird! She hadn’t said anything about her father’s lungs. Have you ever heard yourself say something, then wished you could reach through the air, grab the words and pull them back into your mouth, destroying any evidence that you spoke something so foolish? Most married men know exactly what I mean. As soon as I realized what I had said, I panicked and stopped myself. I began to backpedal as quickly as possible, saying, “Now, wait a minute! What you need to know is that I’ve never prayed for anyone and seen them healed before. You should know that most of the time when I pray for people, they get sicker, and some have even died. I know that God can do things like what I just prayed, but He’s never used me to do them. What I just said probably won’t happen. . . .”

I was panic-stricken. What if this woman got her hopes up and wound up horribly disappointed? It would be all my fault. She interrupted me. “You said God is going to give my dad a brand-new heart?”

I gulped out, “Yes, but—”

She cut me off with a brief “Thank you!” and hung up the phone.

With that click of the phone my heart dropped to my toes. What in the world was I thinking? I felt that I had done everything but make this woman’s pain easier. What if they sued the church? I mean, I was no healer!

When the woman called again crying hours later, my heart sank. I couldn’t make out a word she said at first, and I thought, Oh no, I killed her dad with my prayer. Why did I pray for him? What was I thinking? I started to apologize profusely: “I am so sorry this happened! I am so sorry for your loss. . . .”

“What— are— you— talking— about? What— loss?” she stammered.

I could just make out her words through the sobs, and I wasn’t sure that I had understood. “Your dad,” I said, “he’s . . . dead?”

She said, “No— he’s doing great!”

Nobody was more surprised to hear that than me.

“Yes, that’s right. . . .” She pressed out the story through her tears. “When the doctors opened him up, they said my father had a brand-new heart!” She explained how several years ago her father had had a valve replacement. The doctors had implanted a heart valve from a pig to save his life. All of that was gone. All the scar tissue from the previous surgery was gone. The doctor said it was like the heart of a thirty-year-old man.

I was absolutely stunned. Could this actually be happening? I wondered.

She kept going: “I didn’t even tell you this, but he had had half his lung removed on that side. You mentioned something about God giving him a new lung. When they looked inside, they also saw that he had a whole lung where they had removed half!”

I kept trying to understand if I was hearing her right. “Are you sure?” I asked. “Now, are you sure this happened?” It was hard to wrap my brain around it. God had healed this man, and I could barely believe it. I told her, “I have to see documentation.”

Because of my disbelief, she said, “Are you sure you’re a pastor?” That next Sunday, she came to our church with her whole family. She even brought me her father’s medical records from before and after the surgery. Through that experience, her entire family believed God and decided to follow Christ.

For me, it was the breaking in of something I had longed for ever since I was a kid. I saw the reality of God’s power and His desire to work through us, which I had been living in complete ignorance of. I hadn’t been on some forty-day fast or an in-depth Scripture study. What I had was a really lousy attitude before she called— nothing seemed particularly holy or superspiritual about that day. Quite the opposite, in fact.

As I thought through this experience, I kept wondering, Lord, why did You use me to do this? I don’t have that ability.

What I sensed the Lord clearly speaking back to me that day was “Robby, I’m just looking for people who are available.”

Dawkins, Robby (2013-06-15). Do What Jesus Did: A Real-Life Field Guide to Healing the Sick, Routing Demons and Changing Lives Forever (Ch. 1). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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church, evangelism, miracles ,

Gangsters in the Doorway, by Robby Dawkins

by Geoff 18 January 2015 2 Comments

Dawkins Robby Testimonies of personal and social transformation

From Chapter 1, “Gangsters in the Doorway” in Do What Jesus Did, by Robby Dawkins. [The first of two testimonies by Robby Dawkins.  The second blog is Interrupted by God.]

This meeting took place at the end of 2011. It has now made national news that there were no homicides in all of Aurora in 2012. That hasn’t happened since 1946.

*******

The door of our church swung open, and in sauntered two of the “princes” from the Latin Kings, the dominant gang in our city. Our church is located in the hub of East Aurora, Illinois, a Latin King hot spot. As they walked in, they simply squared up to me in greeting, hardly twitching a muscle. With a nod to the door, they began pointing out different bullet holes in the building and other scars recalling their past battles. This was a typical “Don’t mess with us” threat. When they walked into my church that afternoon, it was because our city was on a brink of an all-out gang war, and they were making it clear that I was definitely in their territory.

Aurora has a long history of violence, from its Al Capone days in the 1930s and ’40s to the ever-increasing gang violence of the ’80s and ’90s, when the gentrifying of Chicago’s urban slums squeezed whole neighbourhoods of lower-income tenants into our western suburb. The resulting pressure between warring gangs that were being channelled into smaller and smaller overlapping territories often boosted our homicide rate higher than Chicago’s. Thanks to exhaustive efforts by community leaders, churches and the police, the situation had finally begun to stabilize. Then the threats began. Outraged by an increasing sense of marginalization and a “lack of respect” from the police, the Latin Kings began issuing warnings that blood would soon flow in the streets. Several drive-by shootings occurred, and a repeat of history seemed imminent.

Alarmed, police began calling me. As a police chaplain I had mediated several high-profile situations in the past and had seen God radically work in the gang community. I currently had several major ex– gang leaders attending my church who had confirmed that a war was on the horizon. After talking with some insiders, I connected with an Aurora businessman committed to community-gang relations. He had grown up in school with one of the major Latin King leaders, and through this connection he often was able to serve as a liaison. He agreed to set up a meeting for me with two of the main leaders. They had street names like Diablo. I had seen their faces on the police station walls for years, and now seeing them framed in the church doorway with nothing but thin air between us sent a quick jolt down my spine.

One gang leader, Shotgun, was in his forties, a fiercely grim-faced man who seemed possessed by an obsession with death. (Shotgun is a nickname I gave him; I’ve changed some names in my stories to protect people’s privacy.) His second man, Diablo, was mainly silent but kept his eyes locked on me the whole time, watching my every move. A woman with them, Diana, had also come. She looked rough when she walked in and was a fiery talker. She had no problem letting me know who she was and what she was about.

I had two of my dear friends with me. Todd White was one, and Darren Wilson was the other. Darren was working on a documentary about the power of God.

Shotgun wasn’t too interested in introductions. He was doing most of the talking. In candid detail, he described for us a shootout that had occurred on the front property of the church and the killing that took place at the corner of our building. He was letting us know just who it was I was dealing with. Without being too specific, he let us know that “they” were about to do some damage in town. He told me that “some people” in the gangs weren’t happy, and if that kept happening, there would be blood in the streets. He said a lot of people were going to get “really jacked up,” and added, “If people aren’t careful, things are going to get really crazy around here.”

I had watched Shotgun before, in the park across the street. One afternoon he and a friend got out of a car and strolled into the crowded park. Within a few minutes, the other men in the park stopped what they were doing, walked over to shake his hand and his friend’s, then backed away carefully. The men took their families and left. Women pushed their strollers quickly out of the park, and twenty minutes later there wasn’t a sign of life on the block. This was a man who wielded fear in our community.

I looked at Shotgun now and thought about how much God actually loved this person standing before me. I told him squarely, “I know there’s the threat of a war, and that can’t happen.” The two men looked at each other. “Yeah, is that why you invited us here? To try and stop the war?” Diablo asked.

“No,” I said. “Actually, I asked you to come here so that I could introduce you to God.”

That was obviously the last thing they expected to come out of my mouth. Diablo looked at me with the strangest expression, then clutched his crucifix and said, “What do you mean? We know who God is!”

I studied him. “Yes, that might be true, but you’ve never met Him the way you’re about to. If you’ll let us, we’ll pray for you, and you’ll meet God.” I glanced over at the businessman and asked, “Could we start with you?”

This businessman attends our church now, but at the time I didn’t know him well at all. He’s a tall, well-built businessman who heads up the Latino business network in the area. He may have been from a mildly Catholic background; I wasn’t sure. But whatever his beliefs, clearly the last thing he had expected us to do right then was to pray. He seemed especially surprised to suddenly find himself at the center of it. Thankfully, he agreed to go along with it, though I realized that if this didn’t go well, he would probably never meet with me again. I intentionally wanted to start with him because he was the leader of our meeting and the gang leaders trusted him. What he experienced would help legitimize it for the others as he encountered the reality of God and what He was about to do.

We began to pray, “Lord, we bless my friend.” I knew he had had an accident years earlier and had suffered back trauma ever since. As we prayed, I recalled this and felt led to pray for healing. The suffering from his back injury was something he struggled with on a daily basis, and his attempts to find ways to numb the pain had negatively affected his life. I asked him if his back still hurt, and he confirmed that he was in pain at the moment from both his back and his shoulder.

I told this man in front of the others, “God is about to make Himself real to you and completely heal your back and take away the pain.” We prayed, commanding his back to come into alignment and be fully healed. After a few minutes we asked him to check his back. I could feel God’s presence in the room.

He started to move and twist, his eyes widening in disbelief as he realized that not a single twinge of pain or discomfort remained. He said out loud, “It’s gone! I can’t believe it. It’s been years since I’ve been without any pain.” He sat there perplexed. “I don’t understand where it went.”

His childhood friend, Shotgun, looked at him. “Are you for reals, man?” (Yes, for reals, not for real. For reals is a very typical phrase in poor urban areas; I hear it in my church every week.)

The rest of the meeting the businessman was silent, his face half hidden behind his hands as he seemed in deep thought, considering what had just happened. He told me later that he felt heat and electricity come over his whole body when we prayed for him. During the rest of the meeting, he didn’t try to stop us or intervene in anything else we did, although later he told me it was way outside what he felt comfortable with.

Diablo had been leaning forward and staring at me the entire time, rocking back and forth a little in his chair. From experience, I could tell already from a few things that had happened that he actually was demonized, but I could also see a look of great hunger on his face. It seemed as though what had just happened with the businessman had peeled a layer off Diablo’s defensive mask. He seemed a little softer and I saw desperation in his eyes, almost like, “I don’t know what this is. It scares the hell out of me, but I just have to have it. . . .” His desperation was reaching past the barrier wall— past the dark stronghold of fear and destruction that had defined his life.

We turned to Shotgun and I asked, “Can we pray for you next?” I also asked him if he had a daughter. I sensed the Lord telling me that He wanted to heal Shotgun’s relationship with his daughter.

Shotgun answered, “Yeah, I have two daughters. Neither of them will even speak to me anymore.”

Then I asked him if something was also going on in his back. I sensed the Lord wanted to heal that, too.

He confirmed, “Yeah, I was shot in the back a while ago; it’s still always in pain. One of the disks was permanently messed up.”

My friend Todd White, who was sitting next to me, also asked Shotgun if one of his legs was shorter than the other.

“Yeah, that’s right.” He nodded slowly, as if a bit mystified by what was happening around him.

Todd asked if he could take Shotgun’s shorter leg in his hands, and he spoke to it: “Leg, get out here! Bones, muscles, skin, grow right now.”

The leg shot out as we watched. Diablo’s eyes popped open, and he stood up to check it. Everyone was stunned.

“Yeah, it’s straight now,” Shotgun confirmed. His back pain was also completely gone.

I looked at him with so much love. “You know, what God just did with your back, He wants to do with your entire life.” The guys looked at each other, and it was as if something had broken in the room. Diablo was next. I sensed God prompting us with a word of healing for his torso area, and Todd said he felt God highlighting Diablo’s stomach in particular. Diablo lifted up his shirt and showed us scars where he had been shot in the stomach. A huge chunk was missing where the wound had been. We prayed for the pain to leave and for complete healing to occur in his stomach.

Diablo’s eyes widened, and he grabbed his stomach. He said he felt heat and electricity there, and that he had felt it all over him since the moment he first walked in the door.

We explained that what he felt was often a manifestation of God’s presence that comes bringing healing. Todd then began praying for Diablo’s scarring to disappear. Honestly, we couldn’t tell much of a difference afterward, but the two gang leaders swore it had changed and said it was about 50 percent gone. Shocked, they were stunned into silence. Their posture was completely different from when they had come in; the hardened arrogance, cursing and threats that had surrounded their entrance were gone.

When I looked at Diana, the Lord showed me some of the spiritual weight she had been under.

I told her, “You’ve been having demonic visitation at night, hearing voices and having terrible nightmares.”

The brassy, outspoken Diana dropped her head down to her chest and started nodding quietly. We also sensed that the Lord wanted to heal her from the stomach trouble and digestive problems bothering her. She confirmed that she was suffering in those areas, too. I told her, “Diana, God loves you and wants to heal you. We can pray for you, and all those problems can leave right now.”

We started praying and commanding the demonic spirits that had been attacking her to leave in the name of Jesus. As we took authority and bound them in the name of Jesus, Diana began sweating profusely. Suddenly she doubled over in her chair as if pushed, and she gasped and let out a huge sigh of air. With that, a heaviness seemed to lift off her, and her face looked different.

We asked her if she had felt something leave, and she nodded. Then we told her, “This needs to be sealed up so that it can’t return. The only way that can happen is if you want to accept Christ.”

Diana nodded and agreed she would do that.

We looked around the table, and I said, “That goes for all of you. If you want to pray right now and give your life to Christ, He will continue to heal you and set you free in every area of your life.”

They all nodded and said yes. I asked them to repeat a prayer giving over their lives to Jesus and making Him their Lord. Shotgun especially, who was standing behind Diana, was almost shouting the prayer, passionately asking God to forgive him for every sin he had committed.

All four of them— the businessman, Shotgun, Diablo and Diana— ended up coming back to join our church on Sunday morning. They’ve also started new relationships with people in the community. Today, Shotgun in particular is a changed man. When I met him before, he was driven by the spirit of death. Whereas before he looked completely angry and hollow eyed, today he glows with laughter and joy. He is the first one to tell jokes and welcome newcomers to our church.

Diana has not missed a Sunday in church since that day and has become an outspoken advocate for Jesus to everyone she knows. She brought her entire family to our church. Shotgun and Diablo brought some other men they met on the street into our church for prayer, and those men also decided to leave their gangs and follow Christ. For weeks afterward, I would get calls from these former Latin King leaders telling me that they kept experiencing the presence of God everywhere they went— when they woke up, in the shower, when they were eating, all the time. One of them told me, “Robby, this is the best stuff in the world.” Crying, he called to say, “I don’t know why, but when I think about how Jesus has changed me, I can’t stop crying. I want the world to know how much Jesus can change people!”

Needless to say, there never was any gang war after our meeting, but both Shotgun and Diablo are still somewhat haunted by their reputations. Every time they show up on a Sunday morning, cop cars begin circling our church. Yet these men continue to praise God, grow in Christ and bring more and more people into relationship with Him. It’s interesting how God works.

At the end of our meeting when everyone had accepted Christ, I looked at these guys and said, “What just happened here will change this city.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was giving a prophetic word. This meeting took place at the end of 2011, it has now made national news that there were no homicides in all of Aurora in 2012. That hasn’t happened since 1946.

Another twist to this story is that we started the church fifteen years ago in Diana’s sister’s living room! I remember her sister, Bobbie, asking us back then to pray that Diana would come to Christ and turn away from the life she was leading. Fifteen years later, I had the privilege of leading Diana to Christ when she walked through the door that day. Yet Diana and I did not know our connected history through Bobbie until afterward.

The results of our meeting with the gang leaders became an awesome testimony in our community. It was part of a long series of changes we’ve seen God bring since we moved to Aurora to plant the church. Many times, it has been an uphill battle. Numerous break-ins have occurred at the church building, and I’ve had my car stolen several times— twice by members of our church. At different times over the years we’ve struggled financially, and it has been difficult growing a community of people as committed to the vision as we are. There have been pain and hard times— but in the midst of it all, we’ve seen incredible breakthroughs time and time again. God has been at work healing, transforming families, restoring marriages, providing jobs and ultimately changing the Aurora community. He has made it a place of hope where people from different parts of the country and even the world come to be trained and equipped.

Dawkins, Robby (2013-06-15). Do What Jesus Did: A Real-Life Field Guide to Healing the Sick, Routing Demons and Changing Lives Forever (Ch. 1). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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aborigines, evangelism, revivals ,

Fire of God among Aborigines by John Blacket

by Geoff 20 December 2014 2 Comments

Fire In the OutBack, by John BlacketChurch on FireFire of God among Aborigines
by John Blacket

Chapter 2 of Church on Fire

Church on Fire is available in PDF

Church on Fire – PDF

The Rev. John Blacket, a Uniting Church minister is author of Fire in the Outback.

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Soon after the arrival of the first European settlers in Australia some Christians started to take the gospel to Aborigines. Much of this early work was thwarted by aboriginal repulsion at the life style and cruelty of these strange new people.

Not that all Aborigines rejected foreigners. There had been contact with Macassans from Indonesia every year for hundreds of years. They came to gather trepang, a sea delicacy found in North Australia. Some Aborigines visited Indonesia with them, and the cultures and even families mixed together.

No, the clash between Europeans and Aborigines was a deep cultural issue of differing world views related to what is important in each culture. Europeans did not value highly the same things Aborigines did, especially family relationships. They seemed more interested in material things.

These Europeans spoke about God and his love. They tried to teach the ‘inferior, primitive’ Aborigines by rational, cerebral processes. Aborigines, however, ‘know’ things by a heart experience rather than abstractly in their minds. So Europeans tended to see mission as a very long process of teaching abstract Western concepts.

There was some success. This came mainly from the love and commitment of these Christian foreigners to total strangers at incredible personal sacrifice. That spoke more than words.

Ron Williams, an aboriginal evangelist, observed that those Christians were the kind of heroes the children ought to know about, people not ashamed to shed tears and love their black friends, pioneers who poured out love and healed the wounds of many sorrowing, suffering and dying Aborigines.

Aborigines were searching for something in this new teaching to catch hold of, but it didn’t seem to have any spiritual handles for them. It seemed to be ideas without answers to the struggles of life. Their world was full of very real spiritual powers, especially evil spirits and the power of ‘magic men’. If this God was like they said, he should be stronger than the evil spirits, and they would see evidence of this. They didn’t.

To the European, this world view was primitive superstition and was wrong. People just had to learn with their minds. Then they would understand. Even missionaries who did believe in satan and evil spirits did not seem to have the ability and power to deal with them.

Yet through it all God was at work. Seeds were sown which paved the way for the aboriginal revival.

Aborigines began finding a real relationship between their culture and the gospel. They rejected aspects of their culture which conflicted with God’s Word but came to see that their ‘law’ was like the Jewish law which Jesus came to fulfil, not destroy. They sensed that God had given Aborigines some revelation of his divine nature and purpose in their culture that needed to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

Makarrwala (Harry) from Buckingham Bay in eastern Arnhem Land, North Australia was one. An early convert in the region, he committed his life to Christ at Milingimbi in 1940. His conversion resulted from God speaking to him in a dream, a way in which God speaks to many Aborigines still. That led to the beginnings of indigenous changes, submitting the culture to the gospel, not through missionary teaching but through personal conviction by the Holy Spirit.

God prepared the way for revival, in people like Harry, in visions and dreams, in personal sacrifices and teaching, in signs and wonders, in healings and struggles, in personal relationships, and in meetings where God’s power was clearly evident and many lives were changed.

Arnhem Land revival

It was not until 1979 at Galiwin’ku (Elcho Island) that a really powerful community-changing move of the Holy Spirit occurred. It seems that most of the revival among aboriginal people has stemmed from this in some way.

Arnhem Land, the north east section of the Northern Territory, is an aboriginal reserve, so over 90% of the residents are Aborigines. The rest are called ‘balanda’ (non-aboriginal) who work in the region to assist the aboriginal communities. Galiwin’ku is one of the largest communities with over 1,000 people.

The Methodist Church (which became part of the Uniting Church in 1977) pioneered missionary work in this region in 1923. Rev. Harold and Ella Shepherdson worked at Galiwin’ku from 1942, spending 35 years there and 50 years altogether in the region. This gave Galiwin’ku great stability through their incredible practical wisdom.

The church and tribal elders carefully trained key young local Aborigines for leadership. Rrurrumbu Dhurrkay, the assistant school principal and an evangelist was one. Another was Rev. Djiniyini Gondarra who was placed in charge of the local church in 1977. God was preparing him for a wider and important national apostolic task. For both of them, this involved preparation in spiritual dimensions of family life which neither balanda nor aboriginal training had given them.

Yet the Holy Spirit began to move visibly in the community at the time Djiniyini and a number of other leaders, who were all praying expectantly for this move of God, went on holidays.

The first evidence of this special move of the Holy Spirit came with the wet season of 1978-79. People started to ask about God. At a social gathering on the beach Christians sensed God’s presence in a unity they had never before experienced. Only one or two balanda were present. People wanted to spend more time together, and with God. Many fellowship meetings began to happen spontaneously, every night and at other times.

The fruit and gifts of the Holy Spirit started to be experienced in new ways. Non-Christians felt God’s presence, came to join in, were convicted of sin and repented. Even some who were sceptical and opposed to what was happening were drawn to come and sit on the side-lines and mock, but were brought to repentance by God.

While Djiniyini was on holiday he prayed for God’s leading about what should be planned for the church for 1979. He listed many things.

On the day of his return in March some people said they wanted a fellowship meeting at his house that night. Tired after his journey, his spirits fell. But it turned out to be an exceptional night. During the night people began crowding into the lounge room. Many of them were people he had never seen at church. They began telling what had been going on while their pastor had been away. As Djiniyini and his wife Gelung listened, tears filled their eyes. Everything on that list had already happened, or was beginning to happen.

A visit by the Rev. Dan Armstrong, a Uniting Church minister and evangelist, had previously been planned for May. He arrived with a small team and found a people prepared by God. The church had more than doubled that year already. The team discovered they had come on the crest of a wave of God’s Spirit moving among the people.

Dan Armstrong tells the story of their visit to that revival.

‘The first day when we arrived there was such a sense of expectation. It was tremendous. We had a feast the first night, not a meeting. About 500 people arrived! They were gathered around the area, sitting at their little fires. Someone just started strumming a guitar. Others joined in and a few people started to sing.

‘Then out of the darkness more people started to come. They knelt down all round the area. Some started to weep. I hadn’t preached or anything at this point!

‘We started to gather around and pray with them. The incredible thing was that the Lord just ‘smote’ them. But then they would get up and join with us in praying for others.

‘There must have been fifty of them who came to Christ that night. Then the next day the word got out and the place was just jammed with people. We couldn’t fit in the building where we started and had to move out into a big open area.

The beautiful thing was that the first morning the old men came first and started weeping. Others gathered around them day after day and night after night. We saw miracles. Several people were totally delivered from demonic power. Some were healed of all kinds of physical ailments.   Particularly significant was the description that they gave again and again of a blanket of blackness being lifted and the light of Christ shining in.

One of the meetings was held on an old ceremonial ground. Through the worship and praise in that place that night the evil spiritual forces were at first aroused and then soundly defeated by the mighty power of God. Some dramatic manifestations were reported. This was another point of release for many people.

Each night after the team retired, others would remain singing and praying into the early hours of the morning. One night a country and western group held a concert in the big hall near the space where they held their meetings. Only 40 attended the concert while over 500 attended the meeting. For Aborigines, that is a miracle!

Aboriginal teams

This revival took teams from Galiwin’ku throughout Arnhem Land, into Queensland, Western Australia, and even to Canberra. They visited aboriginal communities in remote places but included some balanda churches in cities. The results showed powerful evidence of God’s ministry to receptive people. Mostly it was not as dramatic as at home, except for Warburton.

Warburton, with a population of 400, lies in the Central Desert area 250 kilometres west of the junction of the Northern Territory, South Australian and Western Australian borders.

The United Aborigines Mission has worked there for many years but it was hard going. Fighting, drunkness and despair filled the town. In 1980, the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs described it as the worst aboriginal community in Australia.

In September 1981, Rrurrumbu led a team from Galiwin’ku to Alice Springs, and the Pitjantjatara area south of Ayer’s Rock, and finally to Warburton. They flew almost 3,000 kilometres, mainly by light aircraft, to conduct the meetings.

One man commented about Warburton: ‘We knew things couldn’t get worse, so God was our only hope.’ There was real expectancy in spite of disruptions.

A group travelling to a men’s tribal ceremony arrived in town at the same time as the mission team. They intended to take all the men with them on to the ceremony.

One of their truck drivers said, ‘I want to stay and listen to what these strangers have to say.’ So they all stayed!

Drunkenness and petrol sniffing caused disruptions. The old warehouse community store made of corrugated iron used for the meetings echoed with every dog fight or disturbance, despite being packed out. Young people hurled rocks onto the roof or rattled sticks along the corrugated iron walls.

Yet, somehow God moved sovereignly that weekend. Hundreds came to new life. A change took place in the spiritual realms over that place.

A couple of months later, Djiniyini led a smaller team from Galiwin’ku to Warburton in response to another request for help. Once again the Holy Spirit moved in power. Hundreds had prayer for the release of the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives, receiving supernatural signs of his answer and a real sense that God was anointing people for ministry.

The first test of this change came through a horrible car accident where six young people were shockingly burned. Instead of plunging into ceremonial grieving, wailing, injuring themselves and seeking revenge, the Christian leaders went to the hospital to pray for the young people, some of whom were dying. Christians went around comforting and praying with the families and ministering to them.

Within a few weeks a team went out from Warburton to share what they had received. In 1982 the team had up to seventy on the road for months at a time, preaching the gospel all over Western Australia. Their teams picked up new members from each community they visited. No outside church group supported them. Basically it was a tribal movement.

The revivals of Arnhem Land and the Central Desert resulted in thousands of aboriginal people having their lives changed from misery to new life in Christ. Families were re-united and many family relationships healed. The misery of alcohol was exchanged for joy and hope. Over 1,000 people were baptised. In one small town 150 were baptised. Even non-aboriginals, seeing the changes, made their own commitments to Jesus Christ.

Sometimes God worked through unusual events to deal with social evils and sins. A group of gamblers were mocking Christians who were praising God in the front yard of a house in one aboriginal community in South Australia. Suddenly one of the gambler’s vehicles started up, drove into a ditch, and burst into flames and the cards in the gambler’s hands caught on fire. That is a true story! The people who told it gave the moral: ‘Don’t mock God.’

I have concentrated here on Galiwin’ku and Warburton. The Holy Spirit has moved strongly in other places as well, especially the Kimberleys, Fitzroy Crossing, and Roeburn in Western Australia, and in rural and urban areas of northern New South Wales. The details I have given portray some of the overall picture.

Results of revival

Has it lasted? The gatherings of 100 to 200 every night at Galiwin’ku gradually diminished. By August 1979, weekly Bible studies were established to nurture new Christians, and have continued. Five years after the revival began a core group of 30 to 50 people still met three nights a week for fellowship, with attendances sometimes as high as 100. In the nineties a strong core group is still meeting.

When I revisited Warburton and the whole region late in 1989 I saw that many had fallen away from the Lord and a lot of the fire had gone. I asked about the changes that remained. Even non-Christian European staff acknowledged that conditions were enormously better than before the revival.

Similarly I have seen some of the highs and lows of spiritual life at Galiwin’ku in several recent visits. Many have fallen away, and some still have an active faith but are not involved with the organised church.

However, conversions still happen, lives are changed, relationships healed, and there are miracles, physical healings, signs, wonders, dreams and visions among them. Many who did not know Jesus before the revival and had been real problem people now follow him with a strong commitment. Some still reach out to groups beyond the normal family responsibilities, including ministry to outcast groups.

There is a deep desire to work through the relationship between the gospel and their own culture, rather than sweeping it under the carpet or trying to deny their roots by rejecting all their culture. This process will take time, prayer and hard work with the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, guidance and strength. It requires prayerful support, not the misguided intervention of well meaning non-aboriginals.

Most of all they have a growing expectation of a further wave or move of the Holy Spirit. There is a new earnest calling out to God. I believe that what has happened is just a foretaste of an ingathering that is far greater than most of us have dreamed possible. Certainly the vision regarding Aborigines that God has given to many people, even before the revival, has only just begun.

The Lord gave Dan Armstrong a vision on the last day of his 1979 mission at Galiwin’ku. He saw the young men going out in groups and landing in other spots. Everywhere they went, a fire came up. He shared this with them and the Lord gave them the word from 1 Corinthians 1:26-29,

Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were
powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is
foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in
the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised
in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that
are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

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See Australian Reports – Aboriginal Revivals

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Fire of God among Aborigines:
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Africa, evangelism, miracles, prayer, Reinhard Bonnke, revival , ,

"This Disco is a Church"

by Geoff 10 July 2014 3 Comments

This Disco is a Church

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https://renewaljournal.com/2014/07/10/this-disco-is-a-church/

See also: Reinhard Bonnke’s beginnings in Africa
See also: Immune to Fear, by Reinhard Bonnke
See also: Reinhard Bonnke’s final crusade in Africa
See also: Reinhard Bonnke – 1940-2019 – a Tribute – 2019

 

Living a Life of Fire

Daniel Kolenda wrote:  This book is very different. It is 628 pages crammed full of some of the most fascinating and thrilling stories you will ever read…and they are all absolutely true! It reads like a sequel to the book of ACTS and every minister will draw courage and inspiration from its pages…especially evangelists.

It is especially interesting to me because I have heard Evangelist Bonnke tell many of these stories firsthand and they are unforgettable. Here is an abbreviated excerpt of one such story from Chapter 18. Enjoy…

 

My phone rang. Brother Harold Horn, someone I had known since my arrival in Lesotho, said, “Reinhard, come to Kimberly and preach to us.” I said, “I will come.”

…Friday night as I sat on the platform I looked across the gathering of 200 people. Not one young person did I see in the room. Not one. I leaned over to Harold, who was near to me, and asked, “Where are the young people?” He nodded sadly, acknowledging that I had correctly seen the problem. Every head in the room was gray. I preached. The service was closed, and the people filtered out to their cars to go home. When they had gone, Harold came to me.

“Reinhard, would you like to see the answer to your question? Would you like to know where all the young people in Kimberly are?”

“Yes, I would,” I replied.

“I will show you. Get into my car, and I will take you there.”

…He drove through the streets, turning this way and that until he came to a large building at the edge of a warehouse district. The building was ablaze with gaudy neon signs. One large sign blinked out the word, disco, disco, disco…The parking lot was jam-packed to overflowing with vehicles. …As he turned off the key I could hear the boom, boom, boom, of the heavy bass beat coming through the walls of that building. The so-called music seemed to shake the very ground beneath us with an ungodly spirit. “This is a den of iniquity,” I said sadly…He nodded. “This is the latest thing, Reinhard. It is called a discotheque, a dance club. It is a craze that is sweeping the whole world right now, and young people everywhere are very attracted to it. … Let’s go inside.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Let’s go home. I have never gone to such a place. It would be an abomination to me… But as I turned to get into the car I felt bad inside. I stopped in my tracks. This is when the Holy Spirit began to speak to me. Since I had come this far, something seemed wrong if I now turned away. But I had no idea what the Spirit wanted me to do. I just couldn’t leave.

“Let’s take a look inside,” Harold suggested. Suddenly, this seemed exactly right. Everything in my spirit said yes. I nodded. “OK, Harold. Let’s just take a look at this disco.” …We came to the door and stood there. I felt the Spirit say to me very clearly, Look inside. I will show you something you do not know. I took a deep breath then opened the door. The blast of music must have knocked the hair back from my forehead. I have never heard such volume in my life. It was deafening. But it was in that instant that I received a spiritual vision of the reality of the disco. In the flash of the strobe lights, I did not see young people dancing with joy. I saw frozen images of boredom, fear, loneliness, and insecurity, one after the other, captured on the faces of those young people. The split-second flashes of light revealed these images, over and over and over again, like stop-action. Each of those haunted faces spoke to me of emptiness. Pure emptiness.

…Suddenly, I could not care less what anyone thought of me. I knew that I would preach in this disco. Nothing could deny the love of Jesus that I felt. I shut the door and looked at Harold. I heard the Holy Spirit say in my heart, Find the owner of this place. And so, I said to Harold, “Help me to find the owner of this disco.”

“What good will that do?”

“I must talk to him. Let’s find him now.”

“But what will you say to him?”

“I will ask him to let me preach in his disco.”

Harold laughed. “You won’t do that, Reinhard.”

“I will. I absolutely will.”

Harold followed me now. I inquired inside the disco, and we were led to an office at the rear of the building. The owner was a middle-aged businessman who looked to be very much a part of the rock-and-roll culture. He had long hair, gold chains around his neck, an open-collared shirt, and blue jeans. I said to him, “Sir, I’ve come all the way from Germany. I am asking you for permission to allow me to address the young people in your disco for just five minutes.” He looked at me from top to toe. “You’re a preacher,” he said. I was still dressed in my suit and tie. I nodded. He said, “If you want to preach you should preach in a church.”

“There are no young people in the church,” I said. “They don’t come to the church so the preacher must come to the young people. Now give me five minutes, only five minutes, I ask of you.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” He shook his head in disbelief, then turned around and walked away. “There is no way, man.” He had no sympathy for my plea at all.

As he was walking, suddenly the Holy Spirit touched me. He said to me, Tell him what you saw when you looked into his dance hall. I went after the man and took him by the arm. He turned to face me again. “One question, sir,” I said, looking deep into his eyes. “Do you think the young people find what they need for life in your disco?” Slowly the face of that man changed. He looked down thoughtfully. When he looked up again he said, “It is very strange that you would say that. I have children of my own. I’ve thought many times that the disco will not give the young people what they need for life.”

“I beg you, sir, give me five minutes with them.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “OK, but not tonight. Saturday night, tomorrow night at midnight, I will give you the microphone for five minutes.” I grabbed his hand and shook it. “It’s a deal, and thank you, sir. I will be here.”

…The next night I…dressed in casual clothes. I did not want to look like a preacher just coming from church. I needed disco camouflage….When at last the clock struck twelve, the music stopped. I jumped up and onto the stage where the records were being spun. I took the microphone from the disk jockey and shouted, “Sit down, sit down, sit down. I’ve come all the way from Germany, and I’ve got something very important to tell you.” Suddenly the young people began sitting down everywhere. It was then I realized I was not in church but in a dance hall. …Most of the young people plopped right down on the floor. There they sat, smoking cigarettes and chewing gum, waiting for me to tell them something very important that I had brought with me all the way from Germany.

I started to preach one minute, two minutes; suddenly the Holy Spirit was there; I mean the wind of God blew into that disco. Suddenly I heard sobbing. I saw young people getting out their handkerchiefs and starting to wipe their eyes, crying everywhere. …I had preached enough to know that when people start shedding tears, it’s time for an altar call. I said, “How many of you want to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior? How many want to find forgiveness for your sins and enter God’s plan for your life, as of tonight?”

Every hand that I could see in that place went straight up. I said, “Alright, repeat after me.” We prayed the prayer of salvation together. My five minutes were up. My work was done. I left walking on CLOUD number nine, rejoicing, absolutely rejoicing…

A year later I returned to Kimberly. Harold met me at the airport. He said, “Get in my car. I have a surprise for you.” I got in his car. He did not say anything about it; he just drove through the winding streets until he came to the warehouse district. The car stopped. I looked out of the window. I could not believe my eyes. I wiped them and looked again. Instead of seeing the big disco sign, there was a huge white cross on the front of the building.

“This is not the surprise,” Harold said. “Come inside.”

We walked up to that door where we had stood one year ago…”Are you ready for this, Reinhard?” Harold swung the door open, and I looked into a packed house full of young people. They were chanting, “Bonnke, Bonnke, Bonnke.” I cried out with joy. They rushed to me, hugging me and shaking my hands, bringing me inside. One young man said, “Remember me? I was the disk jockey that night that you came.” Another grabbed my hand. “I was operating the light show.” Another said, “We were dancing the night away. Now we are serving Jesus.”

“After you left town, the disco went BANKRUPT,” Harold shouted to me. “This disco is a church!” He was beaming from ear to ear.

A fine-looking gentleman came up to me. “We heard about what happened to the young people here. My church has sponsored me to be a pastor to these kids.”

I stood again on that disco stage looking at those faces, so different from the ones I had seen in the strobe lights a year ago. The lights were up full now. Even more, the light of the Lord’s favor was shining on every face.

I pointed my finger to the heavens and shouted, “Jesus!” – “Jesus!” they shouted back to me as one, making the walls to tremble.

“Praise Jesus!” – “Praise Jesus!”

“He is Lord!” – “He is Lord!”

“Hallelujah!” – “Hallelujah!”

Now that disco was rocking the right way. Kimberley’s true diamonds were shining in their Father’s eyes.

Bonnke, Reinhard. Living a Life of Fire: An Autobiography by Reinhard Bonnke. Harvester Services, Inc.

See also: 17-year-old Evangelist sparks Revival in South Africa
See Reinhard Bonnke’s Beginnings in Africa – 1975
See Reinhard Bonnke’s Final Crusade in Africa – 2017
See Reinhard Bonnke – 1940-2019 – a Tribute – 2019
Video: Reinhard Bonnke Memorial Service – 3 hours – 2020

Back to Index of Topics and Contents

Revival Blogs Links:

See also Revivals Index

See also Revival Blogs

See also Blogs Index 1: Revivals

GENERAL BLOGS INDEX

BLOGS INDEX 1: REVIVALS (BRIEFER THAN REVIVALS INDEX)

BLOGS INDEX 2: MISSION (INTERNATIONAL STORIES)

BLOGS INDEX 3: MIRACLES (SUPERNATURAL EVENTS)

BLOGS INDEX 4: DEVOTIONAL (INCLUDING TESTIMONIES)

BLOGS INDEX 5: CHURCH (CHRISTIANITY IN ACTION)

BLOGS INDEX 6: CHAPTERS (BLOGS FROM BOOKS)

BLOGS INDEX 7: IMAGES (PHOTOS AND ALBUMS)

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“This Disco is a Church”:
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See also: Reinhard Bonnke’s beginnings in Africa
See also: Immune to Fear, by Reinhard Bonnke
See also: Reinhard Bonnke’s final crusade in Africa
See also: Reinhard Bonnke – 1940-2019 – a Tribute – 2019

 

 

evangelism, healing, prayer, revival , , ,

He woke up totally healed, by Daniel Kolenda

by Geoff 17 June 2014 2 Comments

He woke up totally healed

by Daniel Kolenda

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cfan1Have you ever drifted off to sleep . . . and suddenly woke up totally HEALED?  When you’re sitting in the presence of God, it can happen.

In fact, that’s exactly what took place on night 3 in our Great Gospel Campaign in Accra, Ghana.

It was one of those nights that is hard for me to describe. As always, our emphasis was on the preaching of the Gospel of salvation, to which many thousands responded.

But when the Gospel is proclaimed the inevitable result is miracles.  Even though I hardly said anything about healing, the Holy Spirit loves to confirm the lordship of Jesus and manifest His Kingdom through supernatural demonstrations.

“And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen.”  (Mark 16:19-20)

And on this one particular night, we saw so many hearings: A man blind for ten years healed. A woman with an issue of blood healed. A deaf man healed. A lady threw her walking stick away. A woman took off her neck brace. I even danced with the woman who had been crippled.

But the most moving testimony came at the very end. A man, who had been deaf for almost two years, had just arrived in town by train. He had a long lay-over for his next connection so he unwittingly ventured into the city center (Independence Square, where our campaign was being held).

He was a Muslim. He had no intention of coming to a Gospel meeting. He could not understand anything that was going on anyway … so he laid down and went to sleep. (He was about to make a divine connection.)

When he woke up, to his utter amazement, he could hear!  He came to the platform and stood before me trembling, overcome with emotion. He had a look of shock on his face. “My name is Mohammed,” he said, and he  proceeded to tell me his story.

I asked him if he knew who had healed him and he said it is “The messenger of the Almighty God  .. Jesus.” The whole thing was so raw and fresh. I could see he was struggling to come to terms with what he had just realized. “Jesus is, Jesus is … he is a God,” he said, as though the thought had just occurred to him.

He said, “Even the Koran says if you do not believe in Jesus Christ you are not a good Muslim.” He seemed to be trying to justify this to himself.

But I wanted to make it clear for the thousands watching this unfold. “Jesus is not just a messenger.” I said, “He is the SON of the living God. He is the Way, He is the Truth and He is the Life…”

He jumped up and down and shouted, “I thank God. I thank. God. I can hear. I can hear.” By the end of our conversation, he seemed to be settled and completely sure, but he desperately wanted to get the message to his wife.

So he boldly announced the name of the city where he lives and in his own words he said, “My wife is not watching this  … but I persuade anybody who knows me and sees my face    …  that my name is Mohammed (he also shouted his last name) and you can tell my wife that Jesus is the Son of God. And tell her that I am healed. I am healed. I can hear. I can hear.”

I wish you could have seen the crowd. No football team has ever received such enthusiasm – they were jumping and dancing and shouting with joy unspeakable and full of glory. It is a moment I will never forget.  YOU HELPED TO MAKE THAT MIRACLE MOMENT HAPPEN for that dear man. Your prayers and your financial support make you a key part of EVERY single miracle o salvation and healing in our meetings.

cfan2There are more men and women (just like Mohammed) who need to find out that Jesus is the SON of God; that He can save their souls; forgive their past; and heal their hurts.

Please ask the Lord what you should give and sow into this soul-winning soil … and make your next gift a personal act of obedience to His leading in your heart.

You have no idea just how much your prayers and gifts matter. But God does … and He sees and knows how to supply, bless and multiply every seed that you sow …  according to His word.
(2 Cor 9:8-10)

Evangelist Daniel Kolenda, 2014
www.cfan.com

See video on:
http://danielkolenda.com/2014/12/31/mohammed-confesses-jesus/

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BLOGS INDEX 5: CHURCH (CHRISTIANITY IN ACTION)

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evangelism, social media ,

Your Smartphone as a Spiritual Resource

by Geoff 16 June 2014 4 Comments

shopping10 Ways to Make Your Smart Phone a Spiritual Resource

Covenant people in covenant with our covenant God

We live in a technologically rich (and distracting) culture.  Most of us have smartphones, tablets, laptops, and all the accessories to go along with them.  We can check email, send a text, upload a photo, or update our status almost anywhere and anytime.  This is a great resource, but it can also be very distracting and time-consuming. Despite all our modern conveniences many of us struggle to fit everything in that we’re required to do for our job and family much less spend quality time with God regularly.

You can share Good News in emails and on social media (eg Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest), eg., see my Facebook.

So here are ten ways you can use your smartphone or tablet to bring you closer to God and to pray more often.

1. Take five minutes to be inspired by a devotional/Bible reading app

Only got a few minutes? Download an app for daily bible verses, quotes, and prayers. Ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you, open the app and see how today’s bite-size bits of inspiration relate to your life.  Make the prayer your own and share your own thoughts with God after reading.

See BibleGateway.com – many translations. Try one verse and see 50 versions of it.

2. Capture God moments with your camera

God is on the move and speaking in so many ways we may not expect. Set yourself the challenge to be on the lookout for things, sounds, places and people that help you think about or talk to God today. Take a photo or video and keep a digital journal of what God is saying and how you’re connecting.

3. Don’t go it alone – Share your prayer requests

Got something you really need God to help with? Why not get your friends to pray with you. Find two people to whom you can send and receive private messages. When a need arises send a photo/text of what you need prayer for instantly through an app like Snapchat. Make sure you pray for God’s help as you press send and add your amen to their requests in return. (Don’t have Snapchat? There are other means of sending private messages too – you could DM on Twitter, message on Facebook or just text)

4. Playlists that plug you in

Got a regular walk or commute? Create a playlist to plug you in to God. Download theworship tunes that stir you and connect you to Jesus and what he cares about. You could even create different playlists for chilled, meditative moods and wake-me-up-now worship journeys.

5. Use social media to help you pray for others

Fancy shaking up whom you pray for? Why not open up a social media app or site and pray for the first person in your home feed. Ask Jesus to give you an encouraging comment to leave them after you’ve prayed.

6. Use a news application to pray for the world

Ever find praying for the world daunting? Download a news app and choose one news story with your first tea/coffee/smoothie of the day. If you find it hard to start praying imagine what the best possible outcome of the situation could be and ask Jesus to intervene. Keep it simple, specific and pray,“your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

7. Take the plunge – turn off your phone!

Silence can be scary but there’s nothing like silence and space to help you relax, clear your mind and connect with God. If you find it hard try finding a quiet place and turning off your phone as a sign that you’re switching off from the world and switching on to God for just two minutes a day. As those two minutes get easier (and start to feel quicker!) try increasing the amount of time you give your attention to God. You may even want to fast from those distracting apps on your phone for a time.

8. Use the alarm to remind you to pray

Your phone’s alarm doesn’t have to be exclusively used for waking you in the morning.  Try setting it to go off at certain times of the day to remind you to take the time to pray. You may have different ways that you pray throughout the day.  In the morning you might pray out of thanksgiving and adoration.  In the evening it might be confession and repentance. It is always great to have a reminder to do what’s most important in the midst of the busyness of life.

9. Download an encouraging book

This idea may be best used on a tablet, but if your eyesight is still strong you can read an ebook on your smart phone.  Download a Christian book that will challenge and encourage you. Read a chapter while riding the train into work or just before you go to bed at night.

10. Use your phone to call someone

I know this may be a novel idea, but your phone actually works quite well as a….well, phone.  Stop texting, Facebooking, or Tweeting and actually TALK to someone.  I know it is controversial, but not long ago that was our main means of communication!  Take five minutes to call someone you know just to say “I love you and I’m thinking about you”.  Ask them if there is anything that you can pray for them about and pray for them over the phone.  Personal and direct human to human communication can be powerful.

Edited from Kenmore Baptist Church: KBC Life, June 2014

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BLOGS INDEX 1: REVIVALS (BRIEFER THAN REVIVALS INDEX)

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BLOGS INDEX 3: MIRACLES (SUPERNATURAL EVENTS)

BLOGS INDEX 4: DEVOTIONAL (INCLUDING TESTIMONIES)

BLOGS INDEX 5: CHURCH (CHRISTIANITY IN ACTION)

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BLOGS INDEX 7: IMAGES (PHOTOS AND ALBUMS)

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