Worship evening

I just got home from a wonderful evening of worshiping Jesus and praying for Finland. This is the second one of these evenings we've had, and they've both been pretty great. I guess I've kinda been organising them, with help from some others. Some people from the 24/7 Prayer team have been there, some from our Burn tour in August, and then others who hear about it.

Our first gathering was in an apartment, which was cool in terms of the informal style, but probably not great in terms of the noise level for the neighbours. This evening we gathered in the basement of a church building pretty near central Helsinki, which was cool.

The basic idea behind it is basically to meet with God. So I bring a guitar, others are free to bring other instruments (such as a violin today), and we begin by focusing on God. The style is pretty free-flow, I don't really start with a list of songs. Sometimes songs come up spontaneously, and a lot of the time we just sing what's on our hearts or wait on God. So we worship, and give God lots of space to speak. Sometimes we sing in tongues, and sometimes we just sing without any words (this is something I've only recently started, but sometimes there is a cry in my spirit that just has to be released through singing). The idea is that everyone can be part of it - everyone can pray out, or sing out. The Holy Spirit leads the worship through all of us.

As we encounter God, often He speaks to us. This evening, for example, as I was just singing without any words, I had the impression of God singing His passionate song of love over us. And then He gave me words to speak related to this. Now, I'm definitely not an expert at this, and it took a while for me to get over myself and actually say what I felt God was saying. I also listen to when others are singing or saying something, and then maybe join in with their song. It seems to me that this could be part of what corporate worship really is, we can all contribute.

And God really does lead the worship - we started in worshiping Him, then He revealed something of His love as a Father, wanting us just to be still and receive His love. Then He drew our attention to the cross and what His love looks like, that we are His inheritance and in view of such love we offered our all to Him. Then we became aware of how we need His love to empower us to love in the same way, and to carry His love to a broken world. Then we were led to cry out to God for Finland, that His kingdom would break out in this land, that His freedom and hope and joy would be released.

So yeah, there wasn't really a plan at the beginning, but I'm finding that as we give God space, He is more than able to lead us. As we come to Him without an agenda, His agenda becomes central.