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Hearing God for specific situations
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My faith wasn't that great that this could happen, as we have never had even a 50% response in 18 years of prison ministry. During that time too we have only ever had one of the officers get a little bit excited at hearing the gospel. The average response would be about 8-10 men and on an exceptional day we might even get 20 people standing. Thus to expect a 100% response including the officers seemed a bit unrealistic. But we prayed that in Jesus' name when the gospel was preached the following day there would be a 100% response. "Pentecost Sunday" The following morning, although I hadn't connected it in any special way with our prayers, was Pentecost Sunday. When we arrived at the prison everything seemed very much the same as usual. There were about 50 men present and three officers, including a lady officer, who sat at the back in the normal fairly detached way, supervising the men. Tom, one of our team, gave the introduction; Kevin, another member, sang a song, and then we all sang a hymn. Then one of the men read the gospel reading for the day and I got up to preach. Whatever I talk about, I always, at some point explain about salvation and the cross and what Jesus has done for us, in taking our sin upon himself. For many of the men this would be new to them so it is always a very basic explanation. I always emphasise, however, that giving your life to Christ is a very serious thing to do. We take the names of those who stand and they receive follow up from the chaplains afterwards, so it is quite something for them to make a public commitment like this. "What would happen?" I wondered what would happen this time in the light of our prayer. I always turn my back to give them some space while they reflect on their decision and I count to three before I make the altar call. I couldn't believe it when I turned round. All 50 men had stood, including the three officers. There was a real sense of repentance too as we prayed that the Holy Spirit would come upon them and set them free. The chaplain told me that he had never experienced anything like it in any prison. The sense of anointing continued into our second service, which is for prisoners who are on the special unit and can't mix with the general prison population. Here there was even singing in the spirit and tears which had never happened before either. The lady prison officer later went for one to one ministry and prayer. It was amazing. This experience had a real impact on our whole community and the blessings flowed over into the next week when I was teaching the students who do our discipleship course. During one of their classes I received a call from Geoff and Gina Poulter from the Catholic Bible School. They were very concerned because they had suddenly realised that the day they had invited me to speak clashed with the World Cup and only 12 people had booked for the event. I told the students about it and asked them what they felt God's will for this meeting was on Saturday. The students prayed and said they believed that God would want 35 people to come. So this was what we prayed for. When I went to the Bible School that Saturday, I took with me Tom and Martin, a young Slovakian man, who has only recently completed his studies with us at HOD. When we arrived we heard that the bookings had gone up to 20, and Gina and Geoff said they were believing that 30 people would come. Martin, however, quietly put out 35 chairs. His faith was so strong that when there only seemed to be 34 people, he was convinced that one of the women must be pregnant. But in fact, just before I got up to speak, the 35th person arrived. Martin was exultant. So much so that he interrupted the talk, coming to the front to tell everyone what had happened, and how God answers prayer. "Faith level risen" The whole experience has affected him in a deep way, raising his faith level to a new height. In fact he prayed over a woman at the Catholic Bible School, while we were there, who had severe hearing difficulties, and it seems she is now completely well. I have to say that on our following visit to prison, only one person gave their life to Christ, and we didn't feel prompted in the same way to pray as we did before. "Danger of making a law out of something" I have reflected on all this and I feel that through what happened God was drawing our attention to the fact that in certain situations He does want to give us specific guidance and inspiration. The danger is the desire to make a law out of it, and take it to extremes because God's will is also revealed through normal ways too such as the bible and Church teaching and simply our own knowledge of God. But there are also some times when we need specific guidance from Him and maybe we need to be more open to the possibility of this and not assume we know the answer. God sometimes wants to underline his presence and care in a special way and He can give us the grace to make a specific prayer and see it answered!! "God warned us to say 'no'" I know in our early days when the community lived in Slough, we would often be faced with difficult decisions and need to ask the Lord's guidance. I remember one time when we were asked to take in a 17 year old girl for a few months while her father was away. It seemed like an obvious thing to do, but we decided to pray about it. In our community prayer, someone received a picture of the house cracking, and we felt this was God warning us that as a community we would not be able to cope with this girl. She eventually went to stay with someone else, and I saw her in town a while later, where she was behaving very wildly and I knew we had done the right thing. On another occasion, however, we were also brought a young man by the airport chaplain. The boy looked very unkempt and on a human level we weren't very keen to accept him. When we prayed about it, however, we felt the Lord telling us to take him in and he benefited enormously from his time with us. He even became a Catholic and was baptised in the airport chapel. All these experiences have helped to reinforce
that God is with us all the time and when we need his help or encouragement
for whatever reason. He will show us His will in very clear ways which
help us to grow in faith and love of Him.
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We
have a regular men's day at the House of the Open Door Community, and
it was at one of these days recently, when we were meeting in the walled
garden that we started talking about prayer and how to pray. The thought
came up that in our prayer we should perhaps be more open to discover
God's will in the situations we faced. One of the group then suggested
that we pray for the prison visit that a few of us from the community
do some Sunday mornings in Gloucester prison, which would be taking
place the following day. As we prayed we felt an inspiration that God
wanted a 100% response from the men that day, standing and giving their
lives to Christ.