Thursday, June 24, 2010

Day 165 - Life Begins Outside My Comfort Zone

Today was a good day. I finished four days of work in a row, and now I am off for the rest of the month. After having three 3AM wake ups in a row, I was able to sleep in until 6AM. That gave me some much-needed extra rest. Work went well, and I went out to eat Mexican with John and Biddie before we went to our Healing Ministry at RiverStone. It’s the last Thursday night at of the month and we have a healing room open from 7 – 8:30. We have a sign out on the street, and we mention it at church, but it is mostly advertised by word of mouth. I don’t know how many people e prayed for tonight, but I think it was well over 60 people. Once again over half of them were not from RiverStone. They either saw it on the sign in front, or heard about it from someone else. Tonight we were so busy that we didn’t stop praying for people until well after 9PM.

It really is all about His presence and His power. Without Him, we may as well all go home and watch a movie. But He was with us tonight just as He is with us every time we meet. We do everything to invite Him. We meet early for prayer and just to invite Him to come and release His anointing and His presence. Then we have live worship in an area where people can just rest in Him and people from our team just go around and quietly pray for them. After they “soak” in His presence they are led into another area where we have teams of two that pray for and declare healing over the guest. People come for many different reasons. We had people come because a family member was in trouble; others come for physical healing; others come for emotional healing. It doesn’t matter why they come if they come, we will pray.

We have what I consider four places for healing and healing ministry at RiverStone. The first is at the alter on Sunday morning. We have teams of people to pray for those who come down with specific needs. This is a place where anyone can receive prayer. All that they have to do is to walk down front. Normally our alter ministry is very busy on Sunday morning. Most of our people have finally realized that there you don’t have to be dying or have a marriage falling apart before you come for prayer. On the contrary, we all need prayer, and I believe that everyone should go down sometimes. Our second level of ministry occurs in our cell groups. If you are in a cell, this is your primary method of receiving ministry. There you can get prayer every week if you desire. The third is what we did tonight, our Night of Healing Prayer. Really it is a Healing Room and I am hoping that we will change the name to reflect that. Anyway, this is a lot of fun and very rewarding for all who are involved. Lastly we have Sozo. This is an inner healing, deliverance session that is normally between 1:30 – 2 hours long. It is in depth and deals specifically with wounds and lies. The wounds and lies keep us from being who Papa has called us to be. For this you need an appointment. We can normally do around 30 of these a month.

So, why do we do this? Why are we so committed to healing at RiverStone? Well, the main reason is because Jesus commanded us to. We are commanded to preach the Gosple of the Kingdom, heal the sick, raise the dead and cast out demons. If we are going to have an impact on our community and bring true community transformation to an area, we have to be doing this stuff. It is not optional. But really the main goal of doing it in the church is to train, equip and release our members to take it to the streets. I find myself constantly being willing to pray in church, but I find it hard to pray outside the church. That is the main reason that I went to BSSM last year. I wanted to be pushed outside the four walls of RiverStone. I was, and I realized that I have a lot to give the community because Holy Spirit lives within me. I’m going back for year two because I still fond that I need to be pushed. I haven’t quite gotten all that I need to “just do it” yet.

But there is another reason. I have to continue to be pushed to operate outside my “Comfort Zone”. What is a comfort zone? It is where you can operate comfortably. At work, you know your comfort zone. You know when you get out of it. You get worried that you can’t do things right and that you will be criticized. We have comfort zones in the spirit too. For some of us, we can worship to slow songs, but worshiping to fast songs makes us uncomfortable (out of our comfort zone). Well in order to grow, we have to press out of our comfort zones. As we continue to step out a certain distance, it becomes more comfortable as our “comfort zone” expands.

In order to continue to grow in any area, but especially in the Spirit, we have to press outside of our comfort zones. That’s where life expands and grows. So the framed plaque I saw tonight is really true. Life does begin outside our comfort zone. My comfort zone continues to expand because I continue to push outside its boundaries. I guess that is why I love and embrace change. You see, if we are to impact society, we have to have something that they want. But we have to get it firat. I believe that the way we get more of His love and His spirit is to press beyond our comfort zones into areas whwere He has to show up or we will fall flat on our face. So I invite you to join me tomorrow. Press outside you comfort zone in an area. Choose to take that step of faith. If you fail, so what? But what if you don’t?

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