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We Are Church

Pursued by God – Part 3

Posted on July 27, 2019 11:36 pm by drmay Comment

Tuesday, July 16, 2019 – Day 3 – Church Intensive Training – “Blessing”

Journal Entry

This is the word God gave me this morning – blessing. I thought I got it at 4:23 am, turns out it was 2:43 am, so I went back to bed. God joked, “We can meet whenever.” I told the Lord that blessing is pretty broad as I wondered where in His word He would send me. Genesis 12:1-3? Nope. I was then reminded of Psalm 34 (the Psalm from Sunday morning) and God said I would find it in there. I thought, “Blessing in Psalm 34? I don’t remember it.” The reality was that I could only remember “Taste and see that the Lord is good” but I could not even remember the second half of that verse.

Opening Psalm 34 again, I saw this:
Verse 1: I will extol (bless) the Lord at all times.

God said to me that we bless Him. I need to explore this concept some more. Now I thought I had it, but no …
Verse 8: Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.

Wow! How blessed have I felt these last few days? This is a spiritual blessing like Paul talks about.

Ephesians 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

Blessings go both ways. We usually think of blessings in a physical way, but this week has been so much more than that.

Testimony from street ministry

In the afternoon we walked around the streets of the Tenderloin District in downtown San Francisco. This area is known for the many homeless people on the sidewalks and the open use of drugs without repercussion from the police. We had an hour to engage with people, looking for opportunities to pray with them and share the gospel. This is way out of my comfort zone. Fortunately, Denise and I walked around with Perry and Angie who had done this sort of thing before. We stopped to talk with a group of three men sitting on the sidewalk. Perry engaged one of the men, so I ask another if I could pray for him. His response was sharp. “No, you can’t f***ing  pray for me! I’m gonna f***ing pray that you get the f*** out of here.” Well, that didn’t go the way I hoped. But since Perry was still talking, I continued to make conversation. The man really just wanted $2 so he could get some pot to help him with his knee pain. I shared how Jesus delivered me from my alcohol addiction, but he didn’t care to hear anymore. He told me to talk with Edwin, the guy sitting next to him. After a few minutes of conversation and some laughs, it was time to move on. Edwin (who was high or drunk) gave me a hug and his belligerent friend asked for help to get up. He too gave me a hug and we parted ways.

As we continued walking up and down the blocks, many people refused our offer to pray with them so Perry began to ask if we could bless them. This was always well received and we would pray a prayer of blessing over them. I didn’t clue in right away but conversing and hugging and asking God’s blessing upon these people really made them smile. We saw the joy in the faces of some people who had nothing. We blessed people and we too were blessed. Thank you, Jesus, for the laughter and the smiles of some of the most destitute. Once again, God clearly confirmed my word of the day.

Francis Chan sharing about his trip to Burma and Thailand.
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Pursued by God – Part 2

Posted on July 27, 2019 11:35 pm by drmay Comment

Monday, July 15, 2019 – Day 2 – Church Intensive Training – “Remember”

Journal Entry

Sunday was awesome. I have so much to say about it, but it will have to wait. I feel like God is pursuing me. He has woken me up the last two days shortly after 4 am. It was 4:19 am this morning, which is 1 minute before, I’d normally get up in Texas (6:20). The word He gave me this morning was Remember. Two verses came to mind, but after a search, I’m including a third.

  1. Isaiah 46:9 Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.
  2. Revelation 2:4–5 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
  3. Deuteronomy 32:7 Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you.

I’m not feeling rebuked right now; I’m feeling loved and pursued. I don’t feel like God is threatening to “take my lampstand”. But I have not been pursuing God as I have in the past. I’m feeling called back into fellowship in my quiet times. I also see God pointing to the early church and His Word.

Lord, show me today, as you did yesterday, what you mean with remember.

Right at this moment (6:30 am CA time, 8:30 am TX time), my phone rings. My old friend and neighbor Jake Tedesco called. After years of running from God and going through life the hard way, with a hard heart, Jake wanted to share that he had recently surrendered to Christ! Jesus had set him free from his anger, his drinking, his lack of self-worth. He was calling to say that he wanted those people who had been a godly influence on him to be back in his life. Talk about remembering!!! This was an immediate answer to my prayer. Praise God! You are on the move. Thank you for this.

Church Intensive Training – Morning Prayer and Worship

We had an almost two-hour prayer and worship time before we even started. This included song, prayer, scripture, prophetic words, and visions. So powerful. So moving. So simple.

Two amazing things happened during this time. First of all, Rob (our leader and pastor) asked if anyone had a “word” from God. I felt like God wanted me to share the prophetic word I dreamt about on Sunday. I searched for a scripture to support it (1 Corinthians 2:4-16). I said, “I feel like God wants us to explore Him, not just know Him”, and I read the verses. As soon as I finished, Randy (sitting to my left) read John 14:2. “In my father’s house are many mansions …” (KJV). I found out later that Randy did not know why he read that passage. He was prepared to read something else and God had him jump to John instead. This verse seemed out of place to everyone except me. Rob came back to me and asked me to repeat what I said. He wanted clarification. I gave the picture God had given me in my dream about the mansion and I validated the John 14:2 passage.

The other amazing part of this prayer time was that Pastor Brad (one of the attendees) had a vision of God removing wax from someone’s ear! Rob again asked if that meant anything to anyone in the room and I began to weep. I shared about my deafness in my left ear and how God used that to show me that we can barely hear Him when our lives are too noisy. Rob came and laid hands on my ears and prayed. I felt confirmation of my promise from God that I would someday hear again, but I was still on my journey to hear Him better spiritually. And boy am I hearing Him better this week. So encouraging!

Praying for one young man in our group who leads a ministry for inner-city kids in Philadelphia.
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Pursued by God – Part 1

Posted on July 27, 2019 11:34 pm by drmay Comment

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.

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