Last night we had a prayer concert as part of our 24-7 week (the last one before they knock the Boiler Room down!). It was a practice one for when we are in the Czech Republic next week, as we're leading a couple of prayer concerts out there.
While we were in Liverpool, I felt quite strongly that the theme of the evening should be where God speaks to Elijah, not through the wind, earthquake or fire, but in the silence.
So, we threw paper prayer aeroplanes, we jumped on newspapers and prayed for what we saw, and then we burnt bits of paper with stuff we wanted to confess to God. Which brings me to the main reason I'm blogging about this:
So often, when we are leading prayer meetings or running prayer rooms etc, the problem of fire arises. Fire is such a good symbol and there are so many activities you can use it for, but it is a health and safety nightmare. There's always the possibility that an over-zealous intercessor will get too close and end up with singed eyebrows... or the chance that the fire will get out of control (clearly because it is a prophetic symbol of course...) and cause the evacuation of the neighbourhood. Even tealights are potentially dicey, with all that fabric and netting lurking around.
But now I have the answer, and it comes in the form of... Disposable BBQ's!
You light the little box at either end, and you have pretty immediate flames. The box is contained so there is no chance of the fire spreading. Also, after a while the flames dissapear, so there is no reason to worry if the pray-ers doze off etc. I was so so impressed.
Not only that, we put ours out by pouring a jug of water over it. Cue lots of smoke... an instant reminder of the stories in the Old Testament when the presence of God fell like a cloud.
And, if people get bored of praying (which, of course, is a rare event), you can always toast some marshmallows at the same time as praying!! Genious!
What is a prayer concert? I very dimly fail to comprehend what makes it different from normal 24/7 activity.
Posted by: Singing Librarian | August 02, 2007 at 02:51 PM
I think its just a nice prayer jargon-y word... it was just like a normal prayer meeting really.
Posted by: Vicki | August 02, 2007 at 03:57 PM
I can help you both there. It is a term which was deliberately coined by the SA, shortly before we started our year of prayer, as a cheap way of getting
people to come to what were, essentially, creative prayer meetings! It has stuck, but, like so much else that we do, makes no sense to anyone outside the
organisation!
Kindly post it on my behalf, serf!!!
Posted by: Lyndall | August 04, 2007 at 04:52 PM