The week of July 14, 2019, Denise and I attended a Church Intensive training put on by We Are Church. We are following a call God put on my heart to start a church in our house someday. This call is many years old and was reaffirmed during a Perspectives class in 2012, hosting church in our house during an ice storm in 2013, and most recently when I finished reading Francis Chan’s book called Letters to the Church. This four-day training was the next step in this journey. This multi-part blog is a recap of what God did that week. Each blog starts with my journal entry for the day, followed by a recap of how God showed up.
Sunday, July 14, 2019 – Day 1 – House Church – “Explore”
Journal Entry
Awoke early this morning (4:15) because we have an early start (6:30). God was stirring in me. Came in and out of sleep as I prayed at first and I had a dream of someone giving me a prophetic word (I never remember my dreams). The lady in the dream said, “God wants you to explore Him.” I asked God, “How is exploring you different from knowing you?” He gave me this analogy:
When a realtor sells a mansion, they know all about it – the size, the price, the upgrades, number of rooms/bathrooms. When a child enters the mansion, they explore it. They want to find the cool things about it – the hidden places, the secret things, places to play, places to hide, things to climb on. They are curious, full of life, fun-loving.
“Come explore me”, is what God said!
He then laid a verse on my heart. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” I knew the verse, but not the reference so I asked God to reveal the reference so I would know it was from Him. He did not, but Google did. I felt strongly, though, that God would confirm that this verse was from Him.
Psalm 34:8 Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
Side Note: For the rest of my quiet time, I meditated on the whole Psalm. It starts with “I will extol the Lord at all times.” Since I don’t use the word extol, I had to look that one up. It means to bless.
Pastor Meeting
As we observed the pastor’s meeting that morning, Angel (one of the house church pastors and whose house we were staying in during the week) spoke about fasting. He said that we should not think about fasting as going hungry or abstaining from eating but rather as feasting on the Lord and feeding our soul. I thought about the verse, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
House Church
At 10:30 am we gathered in the house of Rob Zabala. He was our house church pastor and the man who taught our church intensive training all week. Rob had spent many years in prison, some time in solitary confinement, and was covered in tattoos, including the words f*** y** tattooed on his eyelids. But Jesus changed his heart in prison where he studied two years of seminary and eventually found his way to Francis Chan’s house church after he got out. He blessed us tremendously all week.
Our gathering consisted of Rob and his wife Sarah, their 11-year-old son Gerrett, their two youngest playing on the floor, two single moms, two young men, another young woman, few more kids running around and Matt, the pastor in training who lead our group that morning. The morning gathering was simple. We prayed and worshipped for about an hour and a half with people praying out loud, sharing scripture verses, singing songs (off-key) or singing along with songs on their phone. It was beautiful. The kids stayed in the room and made noise and the singing wasn’t perfect, but Jesus was there. The 11-year-old boy shared a song on his phone, a scripture and later asked for prayer for boldness in his faith. So cool! Toward the end of this time, one of the single moms started reading from the Psalms. “I will extol the Lord …”. There it was, Psalm 34. Of the 1200 chapters in the Bible, she read the one God shared with me that morning. This was the confirmation Jesus promised and I wept.
We discussed the prayer time together and the teaching time was not really teaching. Everyone in We Are Church (the organization of house churches started by Francis Chan) is on the same reading plan that takes you through the Bible in a year. Everyone shared what they had learned in the reading that week. Some shared questions on the hard parts and others provided answers or new perspectives. God’s Word was the lesson because it is enough. We finished the time with communion and after this, we talked a little more. The lady who had read Psalm 34 shared that she almost didn’t participate in communion because she didn’t feel she was in a good place in her relationship with God. I was able to encourage her letting her know how God used her to bless me. We then enjoyed a meal together and continued to fellowship with one another until sometime after 2:00.
It was an amazing day. Jesus was worshiped and glorified and we were all blessed. It wasn’t perfect and polished, but it was real.
