Punching a Hole Through the Darkness

Yes that’s right; God really is ready to punch a hole through the darkness. I believe we stand on the verge of a mighty move of God. On the precipice of something magnificent. In our nation. In our localities. And when God does something amazing, when He comes in power (as we call on His Name), it is a sad fact that the enemy will be sniffing around, endeavouring to disrupt, discourage, and rob us of our inheritance (the lost!)

Tuesday evening at the drop-in sat in pretty stark contrast to the previous week. From the moment we opened the doors (literally) we had antagonism and disruption. Defiance, severe verbal abuse, and violence characterised the hour and a half that we were open. By 9.00pm we had permanently banned two teenagers, temporarily banned two more, and had had to call the police to deal with an incident in which one of our young female members outside of the Church building had been twice punched in the head when she protected her brother from attack by another young lad. Oh, and a teenager brought a family member down to make false allegations that he had been injured in the club when nothing of the sort had happened. Full on, all evening!

It was so evident during the course of the evening that we were under spiritual attack. The ferocity of it maybe caught us a little by surprise and yet we got through. We coped and managed as a team, as brothers and sisters fighting for one-another in the certain knowledge and practical covering of Jesus’ victory at Calvary! Amen!

So are we broken, are we discouraged or beaten, did the enemy “win the field” that evening? No way! Jesus’ triumph is absolute and His Return is certain. We may have been tired, even dejected, but that passes. And what remains is a resolve that has been bolstered, not broken. And so to our most powerful weapon…P R A Y E R…we exhort Y O U, the reader, to pray, to proclaim Gods Sovereignty, to declare His authority, and to cry out for His care and protection, His healing, and His salvation. On yourselves. On us. On these teenagers - all of them.

There is much more I would like to say, many verses from Scripture that would seem appropriate. For me, Proverbs 2. v7-8 sums it up…”He holds Victory in store for the upright, He is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for He guards the course of the just, and protects the way of His faithful ones…” So we exhort you… P R A Y, P R A Y, P R A Y against the principalities and watch that hole in the darkness brighten with unquenchable fire.

Paul Huggett

I'd just like to add to Paul's excellent report. I was in the prayer room hoping to experience an evening similar to the Interrogate session that had produced so much fruit the previous week. There was antagonism there too and eventually all but one of the young people left the room. But the lad who was left wanted to talk. This is a lad who can be mildly disruptive at times - a bit cheeky and challenging. So I was really taken aback by his sharing with us how touched he'd been by a video he'd seen in his school assembly that morning. The video portrayed people abroad who are starving. He described their legs as being 'so thin, you could have snapped them with your hands'. They were kneeling on the ground searching for single grains of fallen rice. ' This is wrong', he said. And he was right!

He was so touched by what he saw that he put his £3 lunch money in the charity box and went without his food. We asked whether he ever talks to anyone about his feelings and thoughts, but he doesn't have much opportunity to. We felt privileged that he'd opened up to us.

I wonder if it's coincidence that he was the boy who outside of the church was attacked by the other one? I strongly suspect not.

John Durrant

Church for the Unchurched

Wow, what an evening! In one sense it’s all so simple. Take one average sized room with about ten chairs inside, put a big notice on the door stating “Interrogate: Ask any Question” and see what happens.

That’s what happened at the drop-in on Tuesday night and we were blown away by the enthusiasm and participation of the youth in attendance that evening. The idea is simple; the kids really can ask any question, bring up any subject, state any point of view. And that’s exactly what happened, right from the off.

God, Jesus, death, disease, jobs, sex, the afterlife, the occult, prayer, evolution v. creation, the environment – it all came up in the hour and a half we had with these kids last Tuesday. The desire to talk was really strong – the need for answers even more so. As the questions and answers got knocked about the room at an ever quickening pace it became clear that for a few, the chance to talk through some really serious issues in their life had touched a nerve.

For one or two in particular the need to find some meaning in a desperate situation seemed acute. But how can you get really personal with eleven others in the room? You can’t, unless God graciously intervenes with news of food in the kitchen, removes everyone for just a few minutes, and allows you to share intimately with someone who is hurting really bad. Amazing. What a privilege.

By the end we’re offering to pray with people left, right, and centre. The kids don’t want this to end, and neither do we, but we’ve got so many prayer requests we just can’t remember them all. So we decide to pray for each other. All of us. No distinction. Just pray for the person sat to your right. The kids join in readily and then slowly begin to meander out in to another winter’s evening. It dawns on us that this really is church for the unchurched. We’ve been in Church for the last hour and a half. And loved every minute of it!

Jesus said “You shall know them by their fruit”. If ever there was an evening that felt “ fruitful”, like the beginning of a harvest, the start of a race, the verge of a precipice this was it. Over the years, members of Outside Light have faithfully tilled the soil and sown seed even when the discouragement and despondency was seemingly everywhere. But here’s the thing. God IS faithful! God IS just! God is the God of the hurting, the downtrodden, the sick and the hopeless……now watch out, because we can’t go backwards, we can only go forwards, watch out because God really, really is on the move, watch out, because God really is going to punch a hole right through the darkness…….

Paul Huggett