Revive

Revive is a meeting on the second Sunday of the month at 4:00pm. 

It is a journey of discovery that we are embarking on together as we seek to develop our corporate worship, prayer and ministry in the Holy Spirit.

January 2012

Hi everyone.
Firstly I need to apologise for neglecting my blog about Revive.
Over the course of last year we have been exploring what worship is, and trying to experiment with freer forms of worship within a smaller more intimate environment.
Our meetings have been characterised by spaces to hear what God is saying to us through his Spirit and the opportunity for all to contribute.
It is a place to exercise spiritual gifts like prophecyand healing and is also characterised by prayer.
In a sense we have been attempting to return to our Baptist roots and the roots of the early church where church was expressed in community with contributions expected from all.

As it says in 1 Corinthians 14:-
“When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church”
Some are more able to contribute than others and that is fine.
The key focus has been on God’s Holy Spirit. We invite Him, acknowledge Him, seek to be led by Him, hear from Him and respond to His promptings.

In February we will be changing the format of Revive in order to help people learn more of God’s Holy Spirit.

We will be running a series of workshops called “Discovering the Holy Spirit”. Be sure to come along.
I am really excited about this and I hope that you are too. Come ready to learn and to encounter the living God.

Looking forward to seeing you at 4:00 on February 12th.

 
God bless you all

Steph 
 

Revive

Revive is a meeting on the second Sunday of the month at 4:00pm. 

It is a journey of discovery that we are embarking on together as we seek to develop our corporate worship, prayer and ministry in the Holy Spirit.

10th April meeting

Hi All
I just want to say WOW!
When we get together we always have a framework but on this occasion that went in favour of how we felt God was leading us. There was an extended time of unplanned prayer ministry. Many people were visibly touched by this.

We talked a little about the different ways we are touched by the Spirit and what our different experiences of worshipping in Spirit means to us. It is clear that each of our experiences is different. God made us all different and each of us experience him in different ways.
There was a time of sung worship and prayer. Joy felt that it was as though the Lord was cleaning us from the inside out. It was as if Jesus was among us, leaning back in an armchair relaxed with us now.
We pray and ask for the Spirit’s presence but Jacque felt that we need to think about why? What is it we want more of the Spirit for?
This is a good question. She felt that God wanted us to ask for our hearts desire.
This set me to thinking. Makes a change! She is right, we need to ask for our hearts desire.

Do we want more of the Spirit to love God more, to have a deeper relationship with him, to hear his voice more clearly, to be lead by him, to serve him in power?

What is it we want or need? 

Our next meeting will be on May 8th. The Theme will be “Worship as the Gateway to God’s Presence”. We will be working on developing our prayer, worship and singing in the Spirit. Well that is the plan, but who knows what God will have in store for us.
Looking forward to seeing you all there.

God bless you all
Steph 
 

Revive

Revive is a meeting on the second Sunday of the month at 4:00pm. 

It is a journey of discovery that we are embarking on together as we seek to develop our corporate worship, prayer and ministry in the Holy Spirit.

13th March meeting

Hi all
It was good to meet this month to listen to a brief piece of teaching reminding us that to be orthodox in our theology and our lives Jesus calls us to worship God with all of our heart mind soul and strength; Mark 12: 30. We recognised that we struggle to do this. So often our corporate worship is half hearted.

This may depend on how we are feeling or who is leading or playing or maybe the songs are not our favourites.

But we are called nevertheless to worship wholeheartedly.

God makes it clear in Revelation 3: 15-16 that halfhearted worship literally makes God sick!
We talked about how difficult it is to give God all that we have and a discussion began about what it means to worship in Spirit. Hopefully we may try to develop this theme more during next month’s session when we will be looking at diversity in worship. This will include singing in the Spirit. We will try to overcome our natural inhibitions.
Of course worship is not just about our corporate meetings. It is about how we worship God through our actions. Perhaps this is how we can effectively worship with our strength. There are reminders in history and more recently of people who have given their lives to serve God. It was good to spend some time praying for a few people that we know who do this.
First we prayed for Abs Dumbuya who has recently moved back to Sierra Leone to devote all of his time to The Dorothy Springer Trust. For more information go to

 http://www.dorothy-springer-trust.org.uk/

There were 5 prayer point. The most urgent is to pray for a quick sale of his property in Easthampstead. We also prayed that he would settle well , particularly in regard to his health. Abs has Post Polio Syndrome which gives him pain, particularly in his hips. Free Town in Sierra Leone is not set up for ease of access for those with disabilities! Abs is also in the process of trying to place former students into employment and recruiting the next raft of students. He also asked us to pray that he would stay close to God and know his leading and have the courage to follow.

We also prayed for James and Julia Henley      

They are currently training to be sent to Peru with BMS. for more information and a photo of us all taken on their recent visit go to:

http://jjhenley.blogspot.com/

Of course we cant all serve abroad but we are all able to express our worship as we serve God in our neigbourhoods, families, workplaces or schools. Let us all commit to worship the God who made us and loves us with all that we have and are.

Next month we will be hearing about diversity in worship and hopefully experience singing in the Spirit.

I hope to see you there.

God bless you all
Steph 
 

Revive

Revive is a meeting on the second Sunday of the month at 4:00pm. 

It is a journey of discovery that we are embarking on together as we seek to develop our corporate worship, prayer and ministry in the Holy Spirit.

13th February meeting

Hi All 

I just wanted to thank all those who came to the February Revive meeting. As it is a meeting where we all contribute and try to hear from God I thought that it might be helpful to have a forum after each meeting to remind us of what we heard and to see if God has spoken further to any of us, building on what happened at the meeting. This is also an opportunity for the wider church family to hear what God is doing during our time together.

I want to apologise for all of the technical difficulties we suffered at the meeting. Thanks for your patience throughout the meeting.
It seemed to be an illustration of what we studied about needing power to be useful to God, that power coming from the Holy Spirit.

Below are some notes from Revive's last Sunday 13/2/2011.


"I saw some beautiful smooth pebbles in a clear stream. Then I saw a 2nd picture, it was a flashback to the pebbles as they started - jagged rocks being broken by a workman with a hammer into smaller chunks."

This was felt to be about the way that God refines and perfects us; knocking and wearing off our rough edges.


"It's not what you do - it's what you don't do. A baby develops to crawl, walk to run and will fall down. Don't fear the fall. It's okay to get it wrong to fall that how you learn to get up again. Trust me - grow - develop."

The day after the meeting I heard someone talk of how babies learn to walk. They start by pulling themselves up and holding on to furniture. To begin with parents protect them by removing anything that will harm them and they stay close to protect them. Then as they get closer to walking they give them more space allowing them to step out. They keep one step away, then more as they learn to walk. This is something like the way God treats us as we learn to step out in faith with him. We may feel that he is not there. We may fall on our faces. He has not deserted us. He needs to allow us to fall and fail so that we can grow and develop. 

"Whisk - hand whisk getting by - electric whisk gives you power. "

"Light - let our light shine, We need to stay plugged in."


"God is saying I have created you in my image. You are special to me, I love you. "


"Bellows being pumped, fanning the flame - wind from the bellows. "



I am reminding you of this so you are able to bring any further thoughts to the next meeting. Our focus, as you know, will be "Wholehearted Worship" A significant part of the meeting given over to prayer for Abs and James and Julia's ministry. We will also take up the challenge to worship God with all that we have and are.

Some of us may be less vocal than others. Please don’t feel that if you are too shy to speak that you should not come. If God is speaking to you and blessing you then please continue to come. However if you feel that God has given you something to contribute, song, reading, picture etc, but are unable to speak at the meeting do let me know. Email it to me before the meeting at steph.littlejohn@ebc-bracknell.org  or bring it along on the day. 

Steph