A Date With Jesus

We had the most awesome all night prayer meeting through Women of Hope, an Alliance women’s prayer group that meets once a month to share, pray for and support our missionaries. When I first heard we were doing this I thought, ‘Oh my, I love prayer meetings but ALL NIGHT? That is a bit much” but actually it wasn’t, in fact it there were so many things to do, creative ways to pray that I did not get to do everything that I wanted to. It was an awesome life changing experience, to have this date night with my Lord.  Here are some of the things we did.

The church was divided up into different prayer areas with various themes and “activities”. We opened the evening and each round of prayer time with a worship time together. These times were focused on different aspects of our relationship with God, starting with

Worship of God, our Creator

Our Savior (focus on vision)

Our King (focus on Confession and forgiveness)

Our Shepherd (focus on contemplative scripture reading)

Our Master (focus on telling our story)

Our Father

Our Bridegroom

Our indwelling Christ

In these times after a very brief focus talk we sang a set of three songs. One song was sung, then we shared discussed the concept brought out in the song, did small prayers, shared scriptures and basically meditated together on the given aspect of God.

I Surrender All

Afterwards we went to private prayer areas scattered around the church. I only got a few pictures of them because I didn’t have time as we were still setting up as people were showing up and I went home and got some sleep and checked on Joe and when I came back a lot of them were pulled down, but this is what we had.

Vision

Delight and Cling

Living Water

Hope and Pain

•   A cross called the “Surrender All” area. This is where areas that you have been holding back from Jesus, things that are blocking your relationship are written on a paper and nailed to the cross.
• Vision: Where we prayed about our vision for the church and our ministry, individually and as a church. In this we have a need to start mentoring relationships with the people in the African church so we also prayed about that.
• Delight and Cling: which was where we focused on delighting in the Lord and Clinging to Him. To get the feeling of Him clinging to us or covering us there were beautiful silk prayer shawls in this area that you covered yourself with to get the sensation of the Holy Spirit covering you
•  Living Water: Had a bunch of verses on the Holy Spirit and the Living water of Christ. There was a small water fountain and a basket of stones. You held the stones in your hands and felt the weight of the things that we cling to that keep us from being filled with the Holy Spirit. You work on letting go of the weight that blocks you from being filled with the water.
•  Hope and Pain. In this area you had some black paper on the walls with some verses. You wrote on the walls pain you are having or others that you know are having; mentally, emotionally, spiritually. physically and prayed for them. Or you could pray for other ones that were written there.
•  Missions: A globe was placed on the table and you set down and picked a country to pray over, for the spreading of the gospel, for the missionaries there etc. After you prayed for the country you put some play dough over that country. The goal was to have every country prayed for by the end of the night.
•  Missionaries. A table with the prayer cards of our various missionaries was set out so you could pray over them.
•  Loved Ones: A basket was placed in the middle of the table. Jaggedly cut out papers were scattered around it. You put the initials of each of your loved ones who don’t know Jesus or are in special need on the jagged paper and prayed over them, then dropped them in the basket for the Fisher of Men to fish them out.
•  Family and marriage: A table was covered with butcher paper and you wrote on it prayer for family, for marriages etc. and prayed for them. This room was set up so it could be a small group prayer time or counseling time also.
•  Confession: In this room there were two things. One was butcher paper on the wall on which you wrote “Confess my sins” “Confess myself” (-ishness things) “Confess My God” (the things He does and is). On the floor were blocks covered in butcher paper. On this you wrote things that are blocking you from God, stacked them up and knocked down the walls.
• ' Pray' dough and other Arts for praying: in this area you could pray with dough, shaping the things God was saying to you or teaching you or that you want to give to Him or whatever, there were pens for writing or drawing your prayers out.
•  There was an area where they danced the prayers during one session in the evening
• There were individual rooms set up for private prayer.
•  There was a time of prayer drums “Soldiers of God”

We did these prayer times for a half hour to 45 minutes and then came back together and had 

• "Circle of Blessing” where each woman was put into the middle of the women some time during the night. A prayer shawl was wrapped around her. She shared her special needs and we all laid hands on and prayed for her. This was a totally cool time.

There was also a sleeping area and a snack and visiting area set aside. Altogether it was one of the most awesome nights I have ever spent with my Lord.