Keep on going!

In case you have somehow missed it, we are currently in the middle of 40 days of prayer as a church family. When we first started this time of prayer in the middle of January I was worried whether people would ‘buy into’ it. After all, 40 days seemed like a long time, and so close to Christmas? During the dark nights?  Maybe people weren’t ready to pray, maybe people needed some time to ease into the new year first. Maybe we should wait until spring for our 40 days of prayer?!  Thankfully, (as is quite often the case) I was wrong! 

God has done amazing things in us as a church over the past 40 days. I am hearing so many stories from different parts of the church which are inspiring me and building my faith during this time. Here are a few…We have had record attendance at our early morning prayer meeting (9:15am upstairs in the boardroom). Our online prayer meetings on Sunday evenings have been vibrant and full of life. During our first online prayer meeting we had to scrap the agenda completely due to so many people sharing encouragements and prayers. Our Genzees group have committed to praying and worshipping each week during the 40 days, which has led to a number of prophetic words and great encouragement within the group. In my community group Elaine led us in a really helpful activity to write our own Psalms as prayers back to God, the results were wonderful and faith building (speak to me if you want to read them!). During our Sunday morning worship we have heard testimonies of what God has done and had real intimate times of coming before God with the right heart. 

So all of this said, God has done amazing things in our period of prayer, I'm blown away so far! If we stopped now we would look back with great encouragement I'm sure.  But we are still only around half way through, how do we keep this going?! 

Those of you who know me well, I'm sure, are aware that I am a keen runner. A few years ago I ran my first (and only!!!) marathon. When thinking about our 40 days of prayer, I'm reminded of my experience during the marathon. Like most people I was full of excitement as I stood on the start line in October 2021, and why wouldn’t I be? I’d trained for months and months, many hours of effort had gone in. I had fuelled perfectly, had the race mapped out in my head, I even thought carefully about the socks I would wear to ensure that I was comfortable for the whole 26.2 miles! 

Then the race started. I flew out of the blocks, the cheer of the crowd and the excitement of the other runners left me swept up in a crowd as I ran through the beautiful streets of York! I ran faster, and faster and faster until suddenly everyone around me looked much fitter and more professional than I did. It didn’t matter though, I felt great and I was ready to go. 10 miles in and a quick glance at my watch and I thought, ‘WOW I could finish this marathon in under 3 hours’. I kept going faster and faster, overtaking many people on the way. Then…….the wall. 

As I reached 30km into the race suddenly my legs stopped working, the excitement and the speed from the start of the race had been replaced by pain, anguish and a fear that maybe I wasn’t going to finish this race after all! Where I had previously glided along the pavement with ease, suddenly every step felt like a chore. Slower and slower I ran until I was barely running at all! I was overtaken by over 100 people, the same people I had run past with such ease just a few miles before. The final 12km that followed was one of the most physically difficult things that I have ever done as I crawled towards the finish line. - So I ended my marathon experience with a respectable, but maybe disappointing time of 3 hours 44 minutes. 

Now why am I telling you this story? Hopefully this isn’t just a funny story to help you laugh at my inability to pace myself in a race, but maybe a warning about our 40 days of prayer. As faith has stirred, as God has spoken to us, as we have experienced his presence in a new way over the past few weeks we can feel like I did at the start of my race, but unlike the race, I want to encourage us to keep pushing on. The start has been amazing and maybe beyond our expectations but let’s not sit back over the next 2 weeks and look at this time of prayer as a success, rather let’s continue to seek God and be expectant about what he will do in and through us over the remainder of our prayer time and indeed beyond. 

Jesus tells a story in the Bible about persevering in prayer (Luke 18:1-8), about a widow who keeps speaking to a judge and asking for justice. Through the silence and negativity she continues to ask, and ask, and ask - until finally the judge gives in and she gets justice. This story is told by Jesus to encourage us to keep persevering in prayer, even when we don’t feel like we are getting the answers. We keep asking God and seeking him in the confidence that he will come through and answer our prayer in some way. 

As we continue our prayer time, we are in a slightly different position to the widow in Jesus’ story - we HAVE seen God do good things, we have been encouraged, our faith has been stirred - but I believe the application is the same. Let’s keep asking, let’s keep seeking. God has even more for us during this season. As we pray for our 5 key areas (Children and Young people, The building project, Multi site, Outreach and social action, Being everyday missionaries) I am confident that God will speak to us and we will see breakthrough. For many of you I’m aware that this prayer time has been extremely personal for you, praying into personal situations and asking God to move - keep going, don’t give up. At the end of our 40 days of prayer I'm sure we will hear many stories about what God has done in these areas, giving us a chance to celebrate his goodness. Before that moment however, we keep going, pushing forward and full of faith, 

As we move towards the end of our 40 days of prayer I want to see Jubilee sprinting towards the finish line in excitement and faith. 

The opening 25 days of our prayer time have been amazing - but God has even more for us! Let’s keep pushing on together and see what God does.