Posts Tagged Texas

The Prayers Looked Like What?

Last month, my wife and I were fortunate enough to spend time at Bethel Church in Redding, CA at a children’s pastors’ conference. While there and in the days immediately following, I wrote a series of short posts about the trip.

Our first night home, I had a remarkable dream. In my dream, I could see what appeared to be an enormous glass or crystalline train station. However, the “trains” that were zipping in and out were unlike any train I had ever seen. They were like bullet trains, or enormous silver cylindrical bullets.

The destinations of these bullets that were coming and going were not cities, however, they were nations (Israel, China and India were the three that I recall specifically, although there were many others).

The station was no typical train station, either. It was actually more like an airport because the bullet trains whizzed in and out in all directions continually and with amazing speed.

Right about this time, my dream was interrupted by my dog Oliver who needed to be let out. I knew this was a dream I would need to remember, so I desperately prayed for the dream to pick up where it left off.

I couldn’t fall asleep, so I prayed for the interpretation. Now, the interpretation will make little sense to my readers unfamiliar with the goings on of our church (Emmanuel Fellowship Church), but my pastor asked that I write this so that he could link to it from his blog.

The train station is what our prayer center (Sweetwater Prayer Center) was, or has the potential to be, in the spiritual realm. And the bullet trains were the prayers going forth from the prayer center, and those that were returning.

One of our pastor’s goals is that someone from every nation in the world will pray in the Sweetwater Prayer Center. A means by which we can accomplish this goal is for our church members to pray for those nations and pray those leaders here, as well as for our members to go there.

I envisioned every church member praying for a specific nation or nations. I think part of our mission must be to bring sweet water to the nations.  At the end of 2 Samuel 12, Joab sends word to King David that he (Joab) had taken the city of Rabbah’s water supply, and that David should come and take the city lest Joab receive the credit.

We need to pray to take water supplies. For a given city or nation it could be the government, for another the education system, for another the actual water supply. In so doing, we can actually replace the stagnant water supplies with fresh, sweet water, and invite King Jesus in to take the nation and receive the credit.

This is not only how we can heal and make disciples of all nations, but keep our rivers, lakes and water supplies full as well.

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Texans in the Holy Land

This funny little exchange between Peter Kirk, ElShaddai Edwards and me reminded me of something humorous I noticed when I was in Israel.

In August of 2007, my wife and I went to Israel with a group from our church.  One predictable question frequently asked of tourists is, “Where are you from?”  The standard response was to say, “Spain,” “Canada,” “the United States,” or some other such country of origin.

However, everyone in our group always answered by saying, “Texas.”

It didn’t seem to come as any surprise to anyone asking.  And almost to a person, they would respond, “So you ride horses?”

“Yes, I tied mine to the parking meter at the Western Wall,” I would say.  I’m kidding, I wouldn’t really say that.  But they really did ask?  One cab driver in particular seemed especially dismayed that we didn’t own a single horse.

Do any other Americans identify so principally with their state.  New Yorkers, Illini, Rhode Islanders?  Or is it just Texans.

By the way, I spent several weeks leading up to our trip learning conversational Hebrew, and I only got to speak Hebrew once.  In fact, I spoke Spanish more than Hebrew because we met a group from Spain at one of the hotels.  Apparently, my Tex-Mex is very close to their Castilian.

And to think, I spent all that time learning Hebrew so I could get it right when I asked, “Where can I park my horse?”

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