Mind blowing! That's the only way to describe God and the last 18 hours!

First I met up with a friend to 'get honest' before God, talking life through, sharing together and praying for one another. Its great how God brings people around you, people who can support and encourage you, and help you to grow in your relationship with him. It was great to speak to God honestly, talk to him and know that although they may take time to work through the things discussed can be left at the foot of the cross and are his and not ours any longer.

I then got a phone call from the local Uni CU, their speaker had pulled out on them with half an hours notice - could I step in and help them out? Not begin at all prepared I wandered over there with a collection of old Bible studies under my arm, praying that one would be suitable. As the praise time was going on I sat at the side contemplating and praying through which I should use, or if I should do something totally new, flicking through my Bible I came to Luke 11 - the Lord's Prayer...

Prayer is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, not least because its something that easily gets pushed out of my life, crammed into 5 min, or when I do commit the time; it becomes a routinely said few sentences; no imagination, passion or creativity. But I know that it is vital, I know how important it is, it should be the root of all I do, and through it, it should give me the inspiration to go on and do more. It helps to pull us in line with God, allows us to hear his vision and understand the things he is doing that we either don't see or choose not to.

So we looked together at the passage - God inspiring me to lead, discovering the points of the verses a few min before he enabled us all to discover them together. How awesome is the Lord's prayer! These are just a few of the things we discovered last night:
Father = God wants to be addressed as our dad, he wants an intimate relationship with each of us, as a father has with his children, a true and loving relationship.
Our Father = He is not just my dad, but communally he is our father, the relationship we have with him is not an individual thing.
Your kingdom come = God rules, he is the King of all creation and one day everyone will recognise this, so lets pray that people recognise it now, not at judgment.
Give us each day our daily bread = God provides
Forgive us our sins = God is our saviour, and by his grace will forgive us
For we also forgive everyone who sins against us = in the context of Matt 6 (where the passage is also found) forgiveness isn't cheap, it cost Jesus his life and it costs us too; as we learn to go through the pain of forgiveness. Scary point was that we have to learn to forgive or we have no right to be forgiven ourselves!
And lead us not into temptation = this was 2 fold, firstly, that God wont lead us into temptation, but secondly that Jesus guarantees our salvation! - We will only be forgiven if we forgive others, but here Jesus tells us to pray not to be lead into the temptation of unforgivness and therefore promises to help us to forgive so that we can be forgiven - HOW COOL!
We then realised where this passage lies in the context of Luke, following immediately on from the story of Mary and Martha - a story teaching us how we should make time for God, and then Jesus reveals to us what we should do in that time we have dedicated to him - pray like this!

And no this morning...I've just returned from a meeting with Alan, from one of the other local churches. Again God has been revealing more and more of the plans he has. I came away from the meeting with tears of joy and excitement in my eyes - I was literally crying! To think that God has brought me here to Wycombe, where he is clearly doing some amazing things, and has some awesome plans. That he has planned I will be a part of it, is truly humbling. The meeting was just great, yet again ideas were spilling over about how we can move the youth (and childrens!) ministry forward in the town. God is just so so great, there is so much going on in Wycombe I can't wait for it all to get started.

But the thing I feel I am really being taught at the moment is to take time out and pray. If we don't pray these things through, then there is no point. We need God to be running these things not men, we need God to be sat in the driving seat. It's all greatly exciting, but first and foremost we need to commit every idea to Christ. I need to learn to pray, and to be patient with it!