Port Maria Prayer Night

Okay, so Sunday God laid it on my heart to get a few people together to pray over the Freshley Jamaica teams that went to Port Maria, St. Anns, and Montego Bay, so I wanted to go to the Russell prayer room, which is a study lounge in Russell Hall that the students converted into a prayer room simply by decorating it with biblical artwork and Bible verses taped up on the walls. Originally I had four or five people in mind, so I asked a couple people if they were interested and asked them to spread the word to the other two or three. But we weren't able to do it Sunday night. So I waited until Freshley on Monday to talk with them and set up a time. And I couldn't keep it between just the five of us, especially with the humongous party the Jamaica teams had at Freshley and at Snelling later. So word spread quickly. We decided to have our prayer night tonight at 8.

So we did it. We had our prayer night. And I can't even start to tell you how amazing it was. God is incredible! Two weeks ago, I would have been much too shy to lead a group that big in prayer. Two weeks ago, I wouldn't have even known who or what to pray for, or how. I wouldn't have even known who to invite to prayer night. But God's timing is perfect. He delayed us from having our meeting on Sunday so that we would be able to invite more people on Monday. When I got there tonight, there were probably 20 people there! And over the course of an hour and a half, we probably had another 10 walk in late. That's almost half of the Port Maria team! (Of course, we did have a few people from Mo Bay and St. Anns, so it wasn't really half of PoMo, but still, 30 people is impressive.) God was there in the Russell prayer room, but the sheer number of people wasn't the only evidence of His presence.

When I got there, my friends Josh and Melissa, from Wesley and house church, were already there with Josh's friend Des (short for Desirae). Around 8:20, we started with some worship, courtesy of John Hunter, from the Freshley praise team. After a few songs to get us into a heart of prayer, we started praying over the Port Maria team. (I realized afterward that we only prayed for the PoMo team, when I meant to pray for all three teams. But we can pray for the others next week... but I'm getting ahead of myself.) We prayed for boldness in going out into Athens to share God's love and His word with the people of UGA and the poorest city in America. We prayed for healing over the physically sick, the emotionally distressed, the economically broken, and the spiritually dead. We prayed for persistence in keeping up with our school work so that God would be glorified, even in the most grueling essays. Not long into our prayer session, Des, who had been reading, put down her book and started listening. Josh has been praying for her for two and a half years, trying to bring her to know the Lord. And tonight, something changed: she was willing to listen. Josh started reading the Bible to her, and she started crying. He prayed for her, and she cried some more. And then she had to leave, but she said that she wanted to talk to him more about what he believed and about what was going on in that room tonight. I had no idea she would be there. Josh had no idea we would be there. God put us there in the RPR at the perfect time. He is so awesome!

So many people stood up to testify to what God has been doing in their lives. We shared our victories with each other, because the victory of one brother or sister in Christ is the victory of all of God's family. We shared thanks for all our new friends, our brothers and sisters in Christ, who we can relate to in a more intimate way than has ever been possible. We rejoiced in the authority given us by Jesus, the authority to laugh in the face of sin and declare that Satan no longer has power over us. We rejoiced in the conquering power of the Holy Spirit, who was very present in the prayer room tonight. It was incredible!

Toward the end, Kyle, my small group leader, had to leave. He texted me soon after, saying that our praises were echoing outside the building from the eighth floor: "Come like a flood and saturate me now! You're all I want! Come like the wind and sweep throughout this place! You're all we want!" So we thanked God for spreading His glory all over campus without us even realizing it.

Everyone enjoyed tonight so much that we decided that we're going to continue doing this. So we're having Jamaica prayer and worship again next week, and hopefully every week for the rest of the semester! So that's what I was talking about earlier when I said that we would pray for Mo Bay and St. Anns next week (and maybe the next; we might just pray for one team each week). Anyway, I'm really excited to do this again next week. It was so much more than I could have ever hoped it would be!

So I want to thank everyone for showing up tonight. You guys made it awesome! Thanks to Meg for sending out the Facebook invitation so that people could hear the news. Thanks to everyone who lives in Russell Hall for letting us into the building and giving us access to the RPR. Thanks to all the Russell students who made the prayer room what it is, and thanks to the Russell staff for allowing them to do it; and of course, thanks to the Russell staff for being gracious enough to allow us to sing at the top of our lungs without disturbance. Thanks to all the eighth floor Russell residents for being patient with us despite all the noise we were making right next door to you. Thanks again to John Hunter for leading worship; "Prayer and Worship Night" couldn't have been what it was without you! And of course, thank You God for making all of this possible! Thank You for pouring out Your Spirit and Your love on us so that we could praise You and bring You all the glory in spreading Your love to others. You are awesome, Father!


Also, I have something special for all the PoMo people next week. I meant to hand it out today, but I forgot: I wrote the names of everyone on the PoMo team on slips of paper so that everyone can draw a name and pray for that person over the course of the week (or maybe the entire semester). So find me either at prayer night next week or at Wesley tomorrow or Freshley next Monday and I'll give you someone to pray for. (And if you want to make that person your Warm Fuzzy, feel free. It'll help develop our already incredibly strong community even more.) And if you have friends who went on the other Jamaica trips, invite them next week. I wanted to keep it limited to PoMo people tonight so that we wouldn't overcrowd the prayer room, but obviously enough people enjoyed it that space is going to be an issue no matter how hard we try to prevent it. So we want to get so many people that we have to expand out of the RPR and onto either the Russell parking deck or Brumby Beach. God is moving, and no one can contain Him!