Well, well, well!

A spiritual well is a place where the Kingdom of God has come on earth - an example in the bible is Bethel in Gen 12:8, Gen 28:12. Often the well cannot be accessed because it is full of rubble (sin) so we need to re-dig the well (Gen 26:18-22).

Having rather unintentionally opened up a well through worship and prayer and seeking God in our workplace, the notion of wells has taken our attention, and God has been giving us permission to re-dig other wells. D has experienced a place where God showed him he could create a well, and there is now a flow of creativity there.... J has experienced a thirst and openness to spiritual conversations in the corner of a pub on the rows in Chester.... and last week God told me we could re-dig a large well in one of the City Centre churches today.

We began by praying for clean hands and pure hearts and spent time in confession. When we arrived at the church, we welcomed the Spirit of God there and spent time asking Him about the 'rubble' and obstructions. He showed us several things which we prayed about and the atmosphere seemed to lighten, faces began to break out in smiles and there was an increase in angelic activity (apparently - thanks, D!).

We headed from there to a pub in the centre, and very quickly got into a conversation with some people in the pub. This is the sort of pub by day whose regulars (mostly men, 40+) can detect a newcomer at 20 paces; as you enter it's like tumbleweed, and you feel as though your every move is being scrutinised; if you sit in someone else's seat, it's bad! We could feel the mockery and hardness towards us in such an environment. Once people had got over the novelty of having non-regulars who were Christians (fair game), there was lots of testing banter, mocking questions about faith (E.g. if the 10 commandments tell you not to bow down to graven images, why do many Christian churches use crucifixes and images as centre pieces) and even hushed confessions (one lady who reflected how sad it was that her life had come to drinking from 11am-3pm every day in the pub).

There were a few gems amidst the harshness of the landscape - J had previously had an amazing conversation with a woman there several months ago who 'co-incidentally' turned up again today as we were there , and we had discussions with her about her wanting to have something or someone when things turn bad. Normally, perhaps, people don't consider this and go on with their lives, but it seems increasingly that when bereavement or tragedy come their way, they have no methods with which to cope. When I asked her what she did when times got tough, she began to cry and told us of the anniversary of a friend's death coming up and gestured to her pint, her drink being her temporary saviour. We invited her to Night Church and promised we would pray for her.

On our way out, we bumped into a charity 'Shelter' worker, who told us he was searching for someone to help him. He was trying to be 'good' but failing. We explained about inviting God into your life and His holy spirit brings about goodness, told him about Jesus and he went away thinking about it.

So a random 3 hours spent in prayer, declaring the Kingdom of God, encountering hardness and mockery, then two wonderful conversations with people whose hearts were wide open.... as a colleague said to me later, sounds like the sort of morning Jesus might have had.

[Anina Thomas]

p.s...... once dead, now alive!

We had been praying for 'R', a friend of 'Z' who works in one of the shops in the Forum shopping centre. She was distressed and although she's not a Christian yet, she asked us to pray for him, as he was in a coma.

[She is the young woman who had been communicating with her dead grandad and knew things which were going to happen before they did. I had prayed (unbeknown to her) that she would stop hearing from her grandad or those spirits but would begin to hear the voice of God, which is exactly what began to happen straight away!]

Anyway, as we were praying for R as a team, we asked that he would come round in God's timing, but that he would encounter God strongly whilst unconscious and he would wake up completely transformed. Death to life. Spiritual eyes open.

We had a text from Z a few days ago to say that R had begun to move his fingers and that it seemed as though he is going to be okay. We continue to trust in God's timing and in His ways, and that through this, it will bring both R and Z into fullness of relationship with God.

"all the lonely people, where do they all belong...?"

On Thursday (17th Feb), since it had been Valentine's day just a few days ago, we decided to head down to Eastgate Street near the clock and do the 'free hugs' outreach. How often might it be since someone had been shown unconditional love, or the warmth of human contact in the midst of busy lives which can often be lacking in genuine connection....? It's a simple project and has been done by Glyn, Chris and others many times before; a great way-in which often goes straight to the central theme of the good news..... generous love, freely given.

Even though the streets are laced with roadworks at the moment, charity guys and buskers, this didn't seem to deter people from approaching strangers with brown Chaplaincy hoodies for a hug, and to ask why we were doing this. Even for those who were too busy to approach us, it raised a smile and thoughtful looks. One lady even said 'that's made my day!', as she was on her way to a difficult meeting concerning the custody of her child, and the hug and prayer seemed to give her courage.

We had the priviledge of chatting with a woman who works in a local shop who was trying, unsuccessfully to keep her brimming emotions down, as she asked for prayer for her parents. A heavily pregnant woman, although not a Christian, was keen to receive prayer for the safe and rather impending delivery of her little girl. We listened to 'M', a very bored older gentleman who was very lonely and probably had dementia... Jess listening to him seemed to give him honour and make him feel like a person who was 'seen' and 'heard', maybe for the first time in a long while. 'C' broke down in tears as we offered him prayer for his depression and a word of hope from scripture. 'K' was glad to receive a hug and prayer for her grandson who is having to be home-schooled following bullying and removal from mainstream education.

My most challenging chat was with a couple of lads who were well up for the free hug, and a chat about why we were doing this today. When I explained that we are Christians, he responded 'I think I'm a Christian!' and then he and his mate had a bit of a chat about it. He said he believes in God, but when I asked if he knows Jesus, he said 'no!'. I wonder how many people assume they're Christians, without knowing the most important person: Christ. After all, as I've heard it said - if you don't know Christ, what good can 'Ian' do you?! He went off with something important to think about.

So did I.

As I was challenged later on, what do we do for those who 'get it?' Are we then brokering for them an opportunity to respond to this God who they have just encountered?

[Anina]

words, words, words!

....so, today was mainly an admin day - taking time to remember those we had met and whose lives we had shared, albeit briefly! although reviewing policies and risk assessments aren't super exciting, they are necessary to protect ourselves and those who we meet...

...whilst we were in the cafe, one of the team had a prophetic word for a lady sitting at a table opposite us. sharing this 'word' with her opened up conversation. as i shared about my background, she too spoke about her childhood which was lacking in demonstration of love and affection, and we spoke with her for some time about how powerful it is to know that you are loved, especially by God...

...as we were at the til paying for cuppas, i suddenly got a shooting pain down my arm. it wasn't my own pain, but i felt that God was saying that someone else in the shop was suffering with a pain in their arm and that He wanted to heal them.... I turned to the lady behind me in the queue and asked if she had any pain in her arm. she suffers almost consistently with shooting pains in her arms and in other joints in her body. when I told her that God had told me this and could we pray, she reacted in an unexpected way.... sadly, she didn't accept prayer. she couldn't accept that she might be free of pain and felt that this illness was something she was stuck with. as we headed back to the office, we prayed for her nevertheless .... it was very hard, but sometimes you have to walk away and leave someone with illness, emotional baggage etc. being free and healed is a choice, i guess....

p.s. a few weeks ago, an employee of a city centre shop had asked us to pray for a young colleague who had discovered a lump and feared that it was cancerous. jess and i went back into the shop today to find out how things were - the young lady had been to the doctors and was relieved to discover it was only a cyst which is being removed in the next few weeks. phew!

[anina]

Free Lounge

Last week we took a sofa down to the library and set it up opposite a bench as a free lounge with a coffee table in the middle, inviting people just to come and sit down and chat and pray.

We prayed for and with a lot of people. Prayed for one guy not to be tempted by drugs, leading to him deleting his dealer's number from his phone. We prayed against addiction and depression and he felt some real peace after that. Prayed for a uni student with tissue damage on her right knee. Also for a tense shoulder which was preventing the guy from turning his head, and afterwards he could turn it :-)

From the various conversations we got the distinct impression that people do believe in God, but they don't wanna belong. Eg: "I'm not religious, I believe in...". It's like people want to belong to the church but they're afraid of a commitment to religion, of being brainwashed.

A good day all round and we chatted about doing it again...

[Dave]

Oh wow, God is amazing - part 2!

Here's a follow on story from Thursday's encounter with our two lads; Anton (James) and Mike, as blogged by Lucy Marskell (Year2) yesterday:

"So Jess S and I are studying at the office and we get Mike and Anton these
two guys buzzing at the door. ..... Mike was on a crutch which he wasn't last time I
saw him, he explained that he was drunk at the weekend and had fallen down the
stairs hitting a metal bar, hurting his foot especially his ankle in the
process. He gets rushed to Chester hospital instead of the Liverpool one.

He comes out of hospital with one crutch and his friend Anton is there. Anton is
the homeless guy who got healed of a blind eye on Thursday, both of them wanted
prayer and wanted us to take them to the Christian cafe called the Spirit shop
around the corner to get prayer.It was closed so we offered to pray for them on
this bench in Rufus Court. They were talking about how 'The Holy Spirit is
better than drugs' and that they were 'born agains'. Mike takes off his shoe n
sock and apologises for the smell, it's majorly swollen so we pray for it and
Mike starts shouting because some of the pain has gone away!

So we prayed for it some more and the pain gets less and less!! I asked Mike to stand up without the crutch and he's shouting asking 'IS THIS FOR REAL??' because he can walk better than before!We prayed for Anton too about other stuff and then Mike said he had to go because he needed to pee, there was still a teeny bit of pain left in his foot but that he really needed to go and pee!Make of this story what you will. I think it is legit.God rocks!"

"Just saw a blind eye get healed. Jesus you are actually incredible!!"

This was Jess's facebook status sign in earlier today. She is a student on the City Centre Chaplaincy team and is in her first year at the Light Project. I asked her to blog for us what happened .....

Sooo... as part of the light project i get to go round town on a thursday morning doing something called 'city centre chaplaincy' which is basically like being a chaplain in a hospital but on the street, making myself avaliable for chats/prayer with the local businesses, shops and the general public. you get to meet all sorts of people and every thursday is different.

This morning we were walking through town when we stopped to chat with a homeless lad, one of whom Anina had met before and one of whom we hadn't. The one Anina had met with and prayed for two months previously had now been placed in a shelter, been offered some money and was getting back on his feet and totally knew it was from God. We then asked if there was anything else we could pray for (i.e. shelter/healing/finance) and his mate piped up that we could pray for his eye. Just at that moment Aliss walked past who works in a local christian cafe and she regularly prays for healing for people and they've seen so many miracles there. We stopped her as she was a friend of Anina's. The guy had an accident in a workshop when he was 12 so was partially sighted in his right eye and couldn't make out more than blurred to describe what his eye looked like - you could see the iris (coloured part) but not the pupil, it was covered by a kind of cloud shaped white scar.

Aliss covered his eye with her hand and prayed for his sight to be restored. After that we got him to cover his good eye and see what he could see and he could actually make out how many fingers were being held up whereas he couldnt before.
We then started chatting to them about the power of God, which they had been feeling strongly, and whilst we were chatting the scar was visibly moving away from his pupil and he could see more and more.

And then the best bit - we asked the guys if they'd like to know Jesus so we prayed for them and they became Christians :) absolutely amazing!!

[Jess]