prayed...

We prayed last night.

We gathered as a community (actually, just some of us... it's summer, I guess!) and prayed for about an hour and a half.
We met in the unchanging chapel at a small baptist church here in town where I used to be youth pastor.

The last time we had been in there was about this time last year when we gathered to pray about and discuss moving our Sunday gatherings out of the Lucky Lab in Multnomah Village. God heard our prayers, because
1. He opened up the possiblity of the Lucky Lab on Hawthorne
2. He kept us from going to a Nazarene church in Sellwood, that got sold recently and whose owners are now charging churches that use the space thousands and thousands of dollars a month... that could have really gone sideways for us...

Anyway, we prayed. We spent time praising God, we spent time in confession, both silently/individually, and then aloud, confessing the sins of our community- our oftentimes failure to live up to our core values, to be Jesus where we are called to, to talk more than act.
We spent time thanking God for all He's done in our community, we talked a bit about the future and prayed for God's direction and for wisdom.
We prayed for a couple of people who needed healing, and they even prayed for the pastor and his wife :)

It was just a sweet time together, very comfortable with one another, very challenging as well as I actually choked up a bit at times.

I love our community, I love their hearts for each other, their desire to make a difference n Portland, their desire for a deeper worship of and love for God...