The Prayer Room Story

I recently posted on my instagram account about our little prayer room that is part of the youth home. Anyway a few people commented on the uniqueness of our prayer room, and as I am used to it by now I realised afresh that it requires a story.

When I lived in the Middle East, the rhythms around prayer and worship in a dedicated prayer room space were central to our work there, and I found it to be such a life-giving space in the midst of the challenges of living on the edge of a warzone. For those of you unfamiliar with what a prayer room is, essentially it is a space used to meet with God whether it be a room in a home, a business, or a stand alone building. Some of the common threads are worship music playing (live or recorded), sometimes corporate prayer and other times individual prayer.

Since moving to be a part of this home for youth almost one year ago God gave me the vision to host living room worship events with the sole purpose of creating an intentional space for people in our community to connect with God in a meaningful way. The first gathering was held in a home, in a living room. For the second such gathering the living room was unavailable so we moved it into our basement chapel in the main youth house. For awhile the chapel space has been gathering cobwebs and it's unique design unappreciated. (One whole corner of the room is a terraced garden with live plants built into the earth around the corner foundations of the building, and the uneven earth floor necessitated the creative addition of green plastic turf as the floor covering, meanwhile there are huge photographic panoramas of the region and mountain on two of the walls. Essentially it is part greenhouse and part basement room).

But last week as I was evicting the spiders from the room and put on some worship music and began to sing, the atmosphere quickly shifted back to it's original intent and I felt the presence of God sweetly and strongly. One of our young people who is very sensitive to the Spirit was driving somewhere else around the same time and remarked that she felt God really strong in that moment. Later that day some of our youth and extended community joined Simi and I as we met with God in that room. I find it so amazing that we get to love on young people in so many ways in this season, and that this space of God’s presence will be instrumental in ushering in the goodness of God in their lives.

There is much more to come!