What an emotional roller coaster the last few days have been for us. As many of you will know, we spent the weekend as part of the team for the Nancy Goudie Spiritual Health Weekend in Birmingham, helping 500+ women to encounter Jesus in a fresh way. As usual it was immense fun, serving with so many amazing friends on the team, involved very long hours and little sleep, but the joy of seeing a number of ladies becoming Christians, many healed physically and emotionally made all the hard work worth it. I even managed to get quite a lot of steps in, walking over 27 miles around the hotel during the conference!
So why have I titled the blog Tears? Because over the weekend I shed a few. On Saturday it was tears of joy. In the last week, following our last day of prayer and fasting, we’d been planning recently to start travelling further afield to visit church leaders and have started drawing up a list of people we felt we needed to see. The only fly in the ointment was that we didn’t quite know how we would be able to fund it, but knew that God would provide. We were contacted by a pastor on Saturday who just asked for our bank details, as they’d felt that they should send us some money. So we received a gift on Saturday evening that will pay for our travel for the next few months, hence the tears of joy. Later that evening we were asked for our address, as some friends wanted to invite us to their daughters wedding, queue the tears from Ruth.
On Sunday morning there were more tears. I was called across to pray with one of the guys in the worship band, as he was upset. When I got there, I found out that a lady from his church had been taken ill at the conference and had been rushed off to hospital in an ambulance. So we prayed together and cried together, before he jumped back up on stage again. Then during the worship time I had tears rolling down my cheeks again, this time in wonder and awe. We’d shared a prophetic word with Nancy before the weekend of one of the team dancing on stage during worship and that this released a wave of the spirit across the room. Here I was standing by the stage, with 2 dancers on stage and I could visibly see a wave moving across the room, from the front to the back. As it touched ladies, I could see their faces light up, the Holy Spirit was burning in them. I was blown away by what I saw, it was exactly what I’d seen while praying.
After a lie in on Monday morning, I opened our emails up and saw that we had a message in our Time2 inbox. As I read it, I again felt tears welling up as I read a message from a leader:
“Sorry I have not replied. We are having a pretty tough time at the minute. My husband’s right hand man (exec minister) has resigned which is leaving us very thin on the ground and a bit confused! Along with people not returning after Covid, people generally being more critical, we feel really under attack and low. My eldest daughter has also returned home so we’re not having the same space and respite at home is hard….”
We’ve already started to try and support them from afar, but I can feel a 7 hour round trip coming up soon. Please do join us in praying for all our church leaders and their families, behind the smiling face on a Sunday is often a lot of hurt and sadness. As Time2 we are called to love them, encourage and support them, which we love doing, despite the emotional rollercoaster that seems to be part of the process. I think that we’re going to be buying lots more tissues and Ruth’s going to be needing waterproof mascara!
We thank God for the small gift we’ve received and are praying that He will multiply it.
Click here to read another blog inspired by being on the Spiritual Health Weekend team
Read our blog