Showing posts with label 24-7 Prayer. Show all posts

I thought it was bout time that I updated everyone on the life of the Lawton Mafia... Jr.Edition.

It has now been 5 months that we have been living with our neighbour Tracy... Neighbour isn't a strong enough word for this woman. She has become so much more to Steve and I. She really has gone out of her way over the last 5 months to show Steve and I what true hospitality, friendship, care-FULL-ness and love really is. I feel like I have gained a new family member and the way Steve and I get to attend her family gatherings so naturally, is truely priceless. I never expected to fall so madly and deeply in love with her and even though Steve and I are really excited to move to the community house, it will be with heavy hearts and many tears that we leave Tracy's. She truely is a Legand. She even would endure dinners with us when we invited over our favorite little neighbour Amara!

Steve and I went to B&Q a few days ago because we also have been allowed to choose COLOURS to paint into the house. I know to most of you this wont be that big of a thing, but for me, as we were gettting the paint I was thinking of that bible verse "Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world!".... Did you feel that... the shiver!? HA well I did... I am getting so excited to keep being the light... to show people the God-colors he painted them in and how beautiful this worls is when seen in His light!

Steve also has been saying his poetry here and there at local gigs and festivals and we are hoping that he will publish one of his poems in a book before the end of this year. He starts school on Tuesday... so back to working world for him.

Steve and I are co-leaders of Colchester Boiler Room, a 24-7 Prayer Community. We recently have been asked to job share a community worker role through a project called Abbeyfield Community Project. This project is supported by 7 local churches and has a vision to plant local missional churches on 6 newly build estates around the Abbeyfields in Colchester.

Part of this role comes with use of a large 4 bedroom house that over the last 3 1/2 years has been used by our community to be a home to a family of 3 and prayer community. The combo has worked really well and Steve and I are excited by the idea of continuing this with a bit of a twist. 

The twist being that we are hoping to share the house with a few different people.

Steve, Clare Field and I are all current members of the Colchester Boiler Room and are over joyed by the idea of moving into the house to live missionally for Jesus on our estate. But we want to ask for more. Steve and I have been married for the last two years and are in our late 20s early 30s and Clare is in her mid 20s. We all work full time jobs in Colchester and have a heart for prayer, people and Jesus.

Are you coming to live in Colchester.... Would you like to?!? Want to live in a missional house with 3 other people?

We seeking a 4th person join us to live in the house and share our passion for Jesus, Community and Prayer. This is not just about a house share, its an invitation to join intentional living and being missional. The type of person we are looking for is someone who is about prayer, wants to help keep the prayer room open, creative and prayed in. The person would want to help us be hospitable and creative to our neighbours. They would like the idea of eating together, studying the bible together and being nice to people. They MUST love Jesus and want to make him a priority in their life. Ideally we would love this to be a single man, as this would help to give balance in our house. We also would love it if they were only working part-time or less (or studying at uni!?!) and could be around and available in our community and house. (and since we have been blessed with the house the cost of living is going to be minimal). We would love for them to have a heart for local mission, English people, prayer, neighbours, being creative, a heart for 20 to 30 year olds and a desire to meeting new people. We'd also loved them to like the idea of living in Colchester and really blessing this normal town. If you know someone that is looking to get involved in a Christ- centred prayer community but not sure how to make it happen, have them contact us. Or if it is you, then contact us!

We are all planning to move into the house in September 2013. So spread the word. If you or someone you know is moving to Colchester or is already in Colchester and wants to get involved in a local, missional, prayer community then have them contact us. Email either Steve (mctkz@aol.com) or Tina (rockstartina83@gmail.com) or give us call on 07904207238 (steve) or 07769978216 (Tina)

We would love to chat with you about what is all involved and seeing if it is a good fit for us all. Really look forward to chatting with you!

CHECK OUT COLCHESTER BOILER ROOM'S BLOG:

http://colchesterboilerroom.blogspot.co.uk/

For those of you who didn't know, Ramadan is a time that Muslim people set aside a whole month to fast and pray. This is really important to Muslim people because the Muslim Faith has 5 'must do' or 'pillars' that help confirm a persons faith and acceptance by God.... and practicing a month of praying and fasting or Ramadan is one of those 5 pillars.

And Also if you didn't know Ramadan is happening right now! From 20th July to 19th of August.

As a Christians, Muslim people should be very very close to our hearts. If you look (and you don't have to look that hard) you will see that our story is one and the same....

Once upon a Bible Story there was a guy named Abraham. He was just your average guy, but God chose him to do something special. God chose Abraham to be a part of His plan to save all the people in the world... (remember when God originally made the world it was suppose to be a place where no bad things happened, but because humans made the mistake of letting evil things (or sin) into the world by choosing bad over God's good i.e. naked man and woman in garden munching down fruit from the tree God asked them not to eat from... #EpicOops... God now had to come up with a way of getting his creation out of the dirty mess we made.)

So back to the Abraham... He agrees that he will be a part of God's rescue plan and then God tells him that the way he is going to do it is through Abraham's family... that Abraham will have a son and that son will have sons and they will have more sons and then... duh duh duh... God will send his own special son through this family into our world to rescue us from the mess we got in.

Abraham was more than happy to hear the plan, but also a little confused. See, he and his wife Sarah were childless and on top of it all God decided to tell Abraham his plan when he and Sarah were much to old to have babies (think of your grandparents and then add a few years!)...

But God told both Sarah and Abraham to just trust him that he would work it out. But ... you guessed it, true to our human nature Sarah and Abraham just had a hard time trusting that God could work this miracle child into their story... So they decided to take matters into their own hands... Sarah told Abraham to sleep with her servant girl and to get her preggo. Abraham did it and the servant girl, Hagar, became pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy named Ishmael.

But this wasn't what God had promised. He had promised that Abraham and Sarah would have a baby... not Abraham and Hagar. And to top it off once Hagar had her baby Sarah couldn't stand the sight of her or the baby and started to treat them horribly (even though this was all her idea to begin with!).

God reminds Sarah and Abraham what he promised and soon Sarah becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby boy they name Isaac. Isaac goes on to have twins name Esau and Jacob... Jacob goes on to have twelve sons who become the 12 tribes of Israel... the 2nd born of this twelve is Judah who descendants have the famous King David (yep the boy that killed the giant Goliath) who's descendants have Mary and Joseph who become the parents of Jesus, God's promised child to rescue our world...

The End....


If only it was all that simple.... but see the one thing that humans keep forgetting is that their actions and re-actions to God's plans have consequences. God is in control of his plan and what is going on, but he isn't a puppet master. He lets us choose what we will do and also the fall out from that. If we choose to get involved in God's plan the fall out is God's amazing blessing. If we choose the opposite it often brings with it issues that make things complicated, but still not impossible for God to work out his plan... but way more complicated.

Remember Ishmael... well Ishmael goes on to have loads of kids too and his descendants believe that Ishmael was the child God promised. This has caused loads of tension between these two families... and that tension has continued as the two families have tried to tell the story of God's plan... one family divided by a moment in time when humans decided again that we knew better than God.

Ishmael's descendants have continued in their faith and are known as Muslims. Isaac's descendants have continued in their faith and are known as Christians. One family broken by humans trying to work out the promises of God through their own power instead of trusting God in his. 


Both believe in the same God, but struggle to clearly understand and see who and what are God's promises. Muslims have missed that Jesus is the promised child because they are two caught up in trying to earn their place in God's story. Christians often miss the full importance of Jesus by failing to make the connection between the Muslim and Christian story of God, as well as failing to honor Jesus through a lack of love and care for Muslims.


So, Why do we pray for Muslim people?

we pray for them because if we look back at the story we realize that they are our closet brothers and sisters.

we pray for them because we realize that, through no fault of their own, they are often mistreated and hated.

we pray for them because often the way Christians treat Muslims completely dis-honors the Jesus we claim is their savior and loves them unconditionally.

we pray for them because they are so near to the story of God that its hard for them to see how Jesus is more than just a prophet but is actually the promised child of their and our great ancestor Abraham.

we pray for them because just like us before Jesus came and took our place, we to felt like it was through deeds and good works that we had to earn our relationship with God and it was hard... even impossible... and we want them to experience the freedom of knowing that Jesus has completed every law on our behalf and we are free now to just be in relationship with the one true God we all love and pray too.

we pray for them because we love them!

Join Colchester Boiler Room on 17th August 2012, 8p to midnight to pray during this season of Ramadan for our Muslim brothers and sisters. We all have much to learn and praying for broken families to be re-united is exactly the love Jesus died for us to show!

message me at rockstartina83@gmail.com to get involved.

I spent last week volunteering with the CYO team that host Sanctum (sacred prayer spaces in schools). This last week they were in a secondary school here in Colchester. I went just M W F, but we had so much fun. There were 12 different prayer activities for the kids to get involved in. They set the activities up, each in its own space. Some had to do with writing down a question you had for God, or something you were thankful for or sorry about. Another had the kids walk through this maze with mirror to help them with their identity or this other one that had sand so they could put their hands in it to learn about impressions. One of my favorite was this "calm" zone where they could chill and listen to music and think about God!

I made a little video about it... check it out and feel free to spend some time praying as you listen and watch! The music and glitter might help! :D

Dear All,

This is an open invitation to the people of the world (or readers of my blog) to offer an invitation to interested individuals to join our prayer community here at the Colchester Boiler Room Community (Colchester, Essex).

We recently have had one of our young professionals let us know that she would be interested in moving nearer to our estate to specifically live in a community house with other Christians, be intentional about prayer and supporting the mission and vision of our Colchester Boiler Room Community.

The time scale for this invitation is a short one:
We are looking for a minimum of 2 more people to move into this house (either move from another part of Colchester or move completely to Colchester). If we get a group interested, we would start looking for a house by the 1st of June 2012 for a move in date of no later than the 1st of July 2012.

We would be most interested to have single young professionals age 20 to 30, but are eager for people who simply have a heart for loving Jesus, prayer and community. Members of the house would need to have a means of funding themselves: meaning rent for the house, their lifestyle and bills (we would assume most would need a part-time to full-time job). They would also need to be able to commit to being a part of a community and getting involved at Colchester Boiler Room for a minimum of 1 year.

Colchester Boiler Room Community would classify itself as a missional, prayer, organic and nontraditional form of church.

The vision and mission of Colchester Boiler Room is Jesus. Our commitment is to God and each other and is expressed most simply in our community prayer "Lord, Jesus help me to be true to you, kind to people and take the Gospel to the nations".

Being a part of Colchester Boiler Room Community offers its members a chance to be in a Christ centered community, do focused community work on a 200+ house estate and get involved in creative prayer. Below are some of the activities are community chooses to express and meet Jesus in:

• Maintaining an allotment
• Hosting a Toddler Group
• Organizing Messy Church for Families on our estate
• Facilitating a girls club for 8-12 year olds
• Communal teaching and learning of God Story
• Extended time of Prayers for community, the Nations and children
• Volunteering with a local charity for homeless youth
• Youth Football Club
• Starting Prayer in Clubs
• Organizing two/threes for mentoring and deeper bible learning
• Arranging House Concerts for Young Adults (20-30s)

At the moment we predominately work with young families and children. Building off this momentum we are seeing we are praying for breakthrough among young professionals (20 to 30 year olds). We are hoping that the addition of even just two to three more Christian young professionals would help us pioneer relationships among young adults that we have been praying for. 

I am very excited to say this! Steve and I are off to Kosovo. We are heading on our great adventure in June 2012 to spend one whole week learning and living in Kosovo. Steve lived there for 4 month in 2009 and really found the place to be incredibly inspirational and life changing. The country is riddled with poverty and brilliance. About 17% of the population lives in extreme poverty. While on the other hand Kosovo has one of the highest percentages of higher educated young adults (such possibilities). The countries struggles to have stable infrastructure and development. Many depend heavily on NGO's and Charities. Families are growing, children are valued highly and relationships are extremely important.

A beautiful culture frapped in war, racism and death.

I really would love to find some positive way to get involved. To do something that really beings to empower the people of Kosovo. But first I need to see if my heart can be about the place. And like wise I realize how important it is that Steve and I go, as a married couple, and see if it is a work we both can be about. We really want to be a part of something that we can work at together.

We are connected with a few of the local churches there and I can not wait to get involved with what they are doing as well. One of the local groups is looking to start a community center that has a 24-7 Prayer Room on the top floor. I think out of everything this excites me most. I would be honored to go to Kosovo and get involved in prayer.

We have a couple of friends here that are looking to move to Turkey to do mission work. They said that recently they were advised by a wise mentor to be asking themselves/asking God "What type of work do you want me to be about in Turkey?". I thought this was a great question because so often I just shoot from the hip; go somewhere, be available and not having a clue if any of the skills and talents I offer line up with what the group or organization is trying to do.

Using this same frame of mind I am really excited to go with steve and ask, both as individuals and as a couple, what type of work would God want us to be about in Kosovo? If our talents and skills fit in with the work/vision they are focused on? And if there really is a place that God has prepared for us in Kosovo or are we just pushing ourselves there?

CAN'T WAIT FOR JUNE TO GET HERE!!!

P.S. Should I try and start learning Albanian???