It’s Rosh Hashannah – the Jewish New Year – and tonight, Diane and I are (hopefully) going to spend the evening with some of the Messianic Jew community here in Sydney.  I’m looking forward to what I’m undoubtedly going to learn.

Sad that so many Jews have missed seeing Christ in all these holidays.  If you get the opportunity to be part of a Jews For Jesus presentation on the Passover meal and learn how Christ is there at every turn, I highly recommend it.

Are you interested in Jewish holidays?  Do you think they have any significance or relevance (in a totally non-legalistic way) for today’s Christian community?

Jewish Prayer Focus 2009 : Sept 18 to Oct 9

The Jewish Prayer Focus is a call to intercession for the Jewish people for the 22-day period (September 18-October 9) during the Holy Days of the Biblical calendar in Lev 23:26ff.

Its main focus is to pray for the salvation of the Jews and also to prepare for the return of the Messiah, which these holidays foreshadow.

The prayer guide contains prayer points, teachings, testimonies, and introductions to Israeli congregations, mostly written by Messianic leaders themselves.

And if you’re in Australia…

Copies of the Jewish Prayer Focus prayer guide are available from JPF, PO Box 54, Kerrimuir, VIC 3129, watchmen777@optusnet.com.au or call 03-9899.7231.  The cost is AUD$8.00 each, $15 for 2, $20 for 3, or $65 for 10 incl postage.  Cheques should be made payable to Living Way Christian Network (JPF is a sub-entity).  The Prayer Guides are also available at Koorong.

For further information go to www.jewishprayerfocus.info

Source: Living Way Christian Network

Posted via web from Preposterousness

The troubles in India, like so much other violence around the world, has been going on for years.  That doesn’t mean it can be replaced in our minds with every new ‘emergency’ that comes along.  There will always be some fresh attack to pray and intercede over, but let’s not forget the ongoing struggles of Christ’s followers across the globe as we live in our comfortable, safe, prosperous nations. I’m as guilty of forgetting as anyone.

Despite the deployment of law enforcement troops, India’s violence continues to inflict daily damage on Christians.

At least ten states have witnessed anti-Christian attacks in recent months. The increasingly tense situation is in contrast with the assurances from the provincial governments, which claim to be able to maintain security.

Peter Dance with Operation Mobilisation (OM) says the international community is becoming more aware of the import of the situation. “They are calling it genocide.  The U.S. government has written to the Indian government and said, ‘This is unacceptable.’ The president of France has also said, ‘This is unacceptable.’ It is genocide because it’s targeted at one particular segment of society: the Christians and the Dalits.”

Dr. Joseph D’souza, president of the All India Christian Council (AICC), said, “The anti-Christian attacks and the negligence of government in doing anything about them, would be sad if it happened in a dictatorship or a totalitarian regime. The fact that it’s happening in the world’s largest democracy makes it infinitely sadder.”

The state governments have been largely ineffective in quelling the violence, and the federal government has not exercised their options of taking over in order to restore peace. 25 pastors and their families have been moved to an OM base for safety and protection.

Within Orissa, attacks are spreading again. According to the AICC,  leaders have reliable reports of 315 villages damaged, 4,640 Christian houses burnt, 53,000 Christians homeless, 57 people killed, 18,000 Christians injured, 2 nuns gang-raped, 149 churches destroyed, 13 Christian schools and colleges damaged.

The OM team is acting as the hands and feet of Christ, but “we’re so restricted in what we can do going into the area.  Basically, our focus right now is those that are able to come out, are coming to the church. We’re doing what we can, financially, to take care of medical needs, also food and clothing and housing.”

Please pray for these traumatized brothers and sisters in Christ.

Do you have a strategy for keeping the international community of Christ in your prayers? Does it work? How do we make a difference without also taking on the burden the belongs to Christ?

Source: Intercessors Network via Australian Prayer Network

Posted via web from Preposterousness

In the wake of Iran’s controversial election results, protesters continue to take their dissatisfaction to the streets of Tehran.

The country responded by stiffening its deadly stance against protesters, refusing a new vote and expelling diplomats accused of spying. Their actions stepped up what could be the beginning of much worse oppression to come, says Glenn Penner of Voice of the Martyrs Canada. “Recent comments by the Iranian government and by the Ayatollah apportioning blame on foreign elements for these mass demonstrations is very concerning.”

Linking national unrest with international interference has resulted in increasing targeting of religious minorities, such as Christians. The situation for Christians worsened under Ahmadinejad’s previous term of presidency. That’s certainly going to deteriorate in the middle of this political chaos.

Iran’s population is over 71 million. 99.4% of are Islamic. The largest people group in Iran are the over 25 million Persians. The second largest group are the over 14 million Azeri Turk Azerbaijani people.

Pray for all the 94 least-reached people groups still living in Iran.

Source : Intercessors Network via Australian Prayer Network

Posted via web from Shaping The (Posterous) Space

Posted via web from Shaping The (Posterous) Space

I’m not going to say much, but just to let you know that this space might be a teeny bit quieter than it has been since it burst forth like a supernova in January.

Maybe.  I’m undecided.

It might get noisier as I suddenly start sharing even more.  But it’s way more likely to get quieter.

Or stay the same.

Anyway…

Diane and I have been in a weird part of life for the past year or so, and we’re about to enter a transitional phase with considerable change afoot in the Goodwin household.

There’ll be :

tears
laughter
excited nervousness
nervous excitement
sadness
happiness
grief
joy

and a whole host of other emotions and stuff surrounding the changes that are coming.

Tonight our Connect Group will be praying with us. Accountability partners are great.

We’re sure this is right (and I say we like this is a joint blog I know, but…it kinda is…at least until Diane’s actually starts), but are equally sure that some of what we have to do isn’t the way we want it to be. The end result will be the same, but the path is not our preference. God has made this clear, even though I (we) didn’t (don’t) want to listen. But it’s not about me.

Could I be any more cryptic? #Prorably – I’m known for my crypticosity (ha! take that!)

So while we’re dealing with “stuff”, I want to hear from you something that is the exact opposite – light, fluffy, celebratory, joyous. Preferably something that will help with the laughter bit I noted above.

Fire away, make me laugh

Hint: I’m an easy laugher.  Even if I end up rolling my eyes, I’ll still laugh.

As you may know, I’m trying to hire for a few positions. I’ve been tweeting about it a fair bit, so if you follow me, I offer my humble apologies.  The process is quite exhausting, but I’ve found doing it internally yields better results than using agencies.

The small win I’m celebrating is that I finally filled one of the positions. So just 4 more to fill. Yay.

Still, I’m blown away by the things people do to try and get noticed.  I’ve talked to some friends who are in human resources full time about good ways to benchmark people’s applications, and have also tried to help an awesomesauce friend in refining his applications by putting my experience on both sides of the recruitment fence to work.

Clever creativity is key in getting the attention of those who have the sometimes always painful job of trawling through the emails. And for me, it’s a good way of putting into action my constant prayer for more of patience.

I thought I’d seen most of the ludicrous attempts to capture my attention until yesterday, when I received an application typed entirely in a font very similar to the one below.

If you are the person who sent this to me…what on earth were you thinking????

I suppose I should be happy that it wasn’t snailmailed on parchment shouldn’t I…

Ladies and Gentlemen…please welcome my first guest blogger…the very wonderful, Diane !

Well I’ve caved to husband pressure in order to provide my first ever guest blog! David has already supplied his perspective on the Bill Johnson conference @ Dayspring last weekend, but as I was the one taking notes the old-school way, he thought I may have picked up on something else. And since I get told that I look at things from a different angle most times, I thought, ‘why not’.

First things first, I don’t think I was mentally prepared for a conference, but I find I seldom am. Busy, tired, distracted; I’m sure most of you know the drill. I also don’t ‘do’ crowds at the best of times. I needn’t have worried – the team @ Dayspring know how to welcome and make people feel comfortable from the get-go, and one of our Pastors had kept seats for us, so it was easy. And it was PACKED. So many people with expectation in a smallish room. It was tangible how hungry people were for the Word.

The Dayspring worship team kicked everything off – they were tight, volume maybe a bit low (or it could be that my hearing has been permanently damaged by ear-bleedingly loud sound elsewhere…), but the most important thing was that the Holy Spirit was there. An hour of full-on worship is a wonderful thing, but my note to self was to not wear heels next time…hard to enter in when you can’t feel your toes.

I just could hardly wait to hear Bill Johnson. You have to understand that I’d never heard of the guy until a copy of ‘Dreaming With God’ caught my eye in a Christian bookstore, and told me to buy it. It did, really. When I read that book I felt something shift in my head, heart and spirit, and the repercussions of that are still being felt today. It was the catalyst to rediscover my creativity – something that had been shoved down as ‘not practical or worthwhile’ and ‘only a hobby’. Since then, God has opened doors for me to try my hand at video editing, animation, graphics and to have people like it. A big boost to the old self-esteem.

I’d heard some podcasts from Bethel Church, and I liked what I heard, so I knew the content of the conference would be good. However, it’s like David said, being able to watch and share the move of God as it happens is something else.

Some of my highlight quotes of the weekend:

“People who feed on bad news can never become part of the solution.”

“The world is crying out for an example of the goodness of God. He’s better than we think.”

“Everything and everyone before Jesus pointed to something they could describe, but could not demonstrate.”

“We each represent an aspect of God’s character that no-one else on earth can.”

“The problem with the church is that we have exchanged ‘the Kingdom of God is near’ for ‘the end of the world is near.’ “

“God isn’t looking for an answer, but a testimony.” (LOVE this.)

“We’re told to ‘grieve not’ and ‘quench not’ the Holy Spirit. We grieve Him when we do wrong things. We quench Him when we don’t do the right things.”

“We have to learn not to be offended at God, and unimpressed with us.”

“The Holy Spirit is imprisoned in unbelieving believers.”

“The church spends a lot of time praying for what we already have.”

“God may ask you to sell your house and give the proceeds to the poor, and the next day ask you to open a savings account. When you ask “Why? God, you’re confusing!!” He says, “That’s why you need to stay close.”

David Crabtree – “When there is no Holy Spirit, we are governed by externals.”

I could go on, and on, and on, but space and a blog reader’s attention span may be limited!

I talked of a shift in my heart, mind and head after reading the book. Well, after this weekend it feels like I’ve been rotating on a certain axis – it was a perfectly fine axis as it was still going round – but there has now been a shift of degrees. I can feel it, and I know it. Without getting too esoteric on youse all It feels that I can see things clearer and am stronger. And totally non-hyped.

I was prayed for by one of the team – I didn’t go forward or anything, we were to pray for those around us, and she turned to me twice – I recall her praying for me to have ’sharp teeth’ like a lion, to be given wisdom as I walk into what God has for me to do, and that I would be given the right words to say, because God has given me the ability to speak and create a new atmosphere, as my words contain weight and make people listen. I certainly hope so.

So yes, I’m still experiencing a little conference-sickness. It was an awesome time full of hope and joy, now it’s the hard yards of applying it. I do know one thing – after being a bit non-plussed by the noisy and ‘big-bang’ ministry experiences in the past, I’ve realised that when correctly applied, there is NOWHERE else I’d rather live than in a life where the prophetic, and the tangible and frequent intervention of the Holy Spirit is expected and experienced. I want to hear amazing stories of the miraculous power of God for healing and not just say ‘wow’, but to also go “yep, that’s what happened when we prayed too”. People who live in that way don’t need to shout and scream, they just allow God to move, and there is a closeness in their relationship to Him. They KNOW Him.

I want that, please.

Continuing from my post after the first session of Bill’s conference, and some tweets about it being the most amazing 24 hours of my life, here’s my attempt to put into words what this weekend meant to me :

* I’ve often come back from conferences ‘hyped’ and ready to do stuff.  Once the hype wears off, so does the desire to do stuff.  There was no hype here.  In fact, almost the opposite.  DaySpring Church are probably one of the most old-school-yet-modern pentecostal churches in Sydney and flowing in extended free-worship, prophecy, healing, etc is normal for them, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons why Bill has taken on apostolic leadership for the church.  Both Diane and I have come away from the weekend feeling a shift in our mindsets, a shift in our spirits, and completely unhyped.  Just ready to move deeper into the mysteries of our wonderful God.  Everyone else who has been there this weekend is feeling the same.

* If you’re not familiar, do some research on Bill and Beni Johnson (his wife) and their home church Bethel in Redding, CA.  Their ministry has seen people raised from the dead, creative healings, countless other miracles, and all without any of the flashiness that can sometimes be part of these ministries. They are real people.  They both had people in the conference congregation praying for them, laying on hands, etc.

* David Crabtree, the pastor of DaySpring, gave a snippet of his awesome teaching series on grace.  In short, grace doesn’t just mean “unmerited favour” like so many of us think.  Try some word substitution with some key verses and you’ll soon see that “empowered presence” is really what God is getting at.

* By far the majority of the sessions were designed to help us walk in authority when we pray, especially for healing or recreative needs.  We weren’t just receiving, we were doing.  Practical workshops in any other context always leave me feeling “ugh”, but this was so beautiful, natural and real that I soon realised this is how I need to live my whole life.  One thing Bill said that really resonated with me was about why some are healed and some aren’t, etc, etc.  This is not a direct quote, not even close, but I’m going to put it on here as a quote…for effect, ya know.

Jesus came to earth, fully God and fuly human, yet stripped himself of His divinity in order to live as humans except that He was completely without sin.  He was therefore totally reliant on the power of the Holy Spirit to “do” all the things He did (and remember, if all of that was written down, there would not be enough room in the entire planet to house it).  When Jesus died for us, we too became blameless, sinless.  He then sent the Holy Spirit to live in and with us.  So from the day of pentecost onwards, we have had exactly the same “tools” at our disposal as Jesus did.  The only thing which prevents us from being as effective in our lives as Jesus was is our self-imposed separation from the fullness of the Holy Spirit.  In other words, our free-will.  We have all we need, we just don’t use it, or even realise it.  The reason some are healed and some aren’t is that I’m not aware of everything that is going on, I’m not in that place of total submission to the Holy Spirit.

And that was from just one minute of the hours of gold this ministry team brought.  The way he explained this made so much sense.  If I haven’t made sense, and you wanna know more, leave a comment and I’ll try to elaborate or simplify.

That’s all I can process for now.  I do plan on doing another post with some more of the thoughts from our notes (actually, Diane is likely gathering some thoughts for that post – a guest post from my wife!), but we eventually stopped taking notes as we’ve ordered the CDs.  There is just too much to take in all at once.  I take comfort in knowing that I’m not the only one who thinks this way too, others who’ve heard Bill speak before didn’t even start taking notes and just ordered the CDs before the conference even began…they were ahead of the game.

Today was hot. I mean nearly 40 degrees C or just over 100 F hot. I neglected to mention that last Wednesday was nearly as hot, which made the intensity of last week’s meeting even more amazing as that much heat can so often completely zap enthusiasm – and our church doesn’t have air conditioning in the main hall. Praise God is has fans though

All day I’d been feeling that tonight’s meeting was going to be a bit different to last week, and during the day this was confirmed (though not in the way I was expecting) as a lot of worship team members let me know they weren’t going to be able to make it for various reasons. No drama, we still had a full team ready to flow.

We got to church to find people enjoying the air conditioning in the cafe (our church building is a 1920s theatre/dance hall), with no-one keen on going into the main hall to experience the heat.

But we did – and to our complete surprise, it was comparatively comfortable in there. That never happens on a hot day. How does God work that kind of thing?? It was hardly cool, but it was bearable.

Not for long though, as tonight’s meeting made last week’s look like we were sitting around in a silence. One of the most amazing things for me last night was listening to 250 people free-worshipping in tongues. It was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever experienced. And wow! 250 people to a prayer meeting on a hot night – that’s over half the church!

All of which has left me wondering just how much more God has in store for this year that’s only just begun.

After 90 minutes of prayer and song, PsG closed the meeting, and no-one left. They didn’t even go out to the cool of the air-conditioned cafe. Eventually, there were about 30 of us left fellowshipping on the footpath out the front of our church, and we were the last to leave – 2 hours after the meeting ended. This is SO good, and we all know it’s preparation for a new season. Bring it on Lord – we (think we) are ready

On a practical note, in answer to some comments (thanks for these guys!), the meeting is pretty free in terms of structure – it’s all about seeing what the Holy Spirit does through the people. PsG opens the night and shares what God has put on his heart for the prayer needs, and just generally directs the night (favourite line “stick to the theme – if we’re praying for the Love In Action team, don’t come up and pray for Israel at that moment”). There’s no message or specific devotional, just prayer and song. The music and singing moves from very meditative right through to warfare style – usually all within the one song…it’s just a matter of flowing in the how the Holy Spirit directs us in that moment, and completely unrehearsable. It’s where team unity really comes to the fore – so all that time you spend with your team getting to know them inside out really pays off ! And if you’d like to know a little more about our church in general, click on the link on the left of the page up there for Harbourside (note the correct Australian spelling, btw

Anyway, this post is way too long! The songs which formed the basis of the night…
Lead Me To The Cross (Brooke Fraser/Hillsong) – we opened with this as a preparatory, “get us into the right frame of mind for prayer” song led by my wonderful wife, and followed by a short prayer from…actually, I can’t remember who was actually talking, it hardly mattered.
Fire Fall Down (Marty Sampson/Hillsong) – this went for 45 minutes, with several prayers during quieter moments, which usually brought us back to a louder moment, with lots of free/prophetic worship
The Anthem (Henry Seeley/Planetshakers) – this song is SO high. Most men can sing it comfortably down an octave (and I usually go between the 2 as I have a big range), and women can easily sing in the original octave. It’s a really well-named song if you don’t know it, with just 6 lines. The 11 minute version in the link is about half the length of what ‘happened’ last night. And happened is the right word – you could not orchestrate this yourself.

Finally, I just want to thank the amazing team I’ve been blessed to lead. What blows me away is that most of them are still in high-school. God has amazing things in store for these guys!

Don’t forget to see what else is on my mind as I share how I’m going with Shaping The Space.

As I begin this week in my still-new job, I wanted to thank everyone around the world who was praying for me during the weeks leading up to this point. It’s incredibly cool to know that I’ve got friends across the globe who are holding my future up in prayer to our Lord!

Very, very cool.

But this blog is also to apologise.

See, I actually drafted this post to put up at the beginning of last week, and I was just reviewing my posts lists during lunch and noticed I had a draft still sitting there. Of course, it wasn’t one of frivolous posts like my one on cheese toast, but probably my most important ramble so far because it thanks you, my God-following readers

So – thanks! I appreciate you more than these words can ever express.