Our church has been going through a lot of spiritual warfare in recent months.
This is no surprise considering that our church’s leaders decided at the end of last year to initiate a massive focus on prayer in our church for 2007. A lot of good strides have been made over the last 10 months, yet in spite of that the spiritual battle has intensified.
In August I was reading through the book of Nehemiah as I was doing some ministry planning for the upcoming new ministry year which for us begins in September. With our eyes on all the opportunities for outreach and spiritual growth over the next 11 months of ministry between September and July I felt that we needed to get off on the right foot. It seemed to me that many in our congregation had gotten their eyes off of Christ and on to more distractive things. In addition, a situation had arisen over the summer months which included my mishandling of a situation within our ministry. I had sought personal forgiveness and reconciliation with the person I had wronged and offended yet God was still dealing with me about the situation. While studying through Nehemiah I came to chapters 9-10 where Nehemiah and Ezra called God’s people to an assembly. It became clear to me that this assembly was a catalyst God used to call His people back to faithfulness and obedience – a.k.a. – revival.
I knew that what God did in Nehemiah’s day was what we needed in our church. So I studied the steps that Nehemiah took and the commitments that the people made to God and we designed our own Sacred Assembly. One of the important elements of the assembly was the actions of the spiritual leaders in spearheading the event. So I outlined for our spiritual leaders what Nehemiah did and proposed that we likewise unite in leading our church in meeting together for Bible reading, personal and corporate confession, and worship. In the weeks and days leading up to the assembly it became clear to me that God wanted me on a personal basis to lead the way in confession.
Even though I had personally asked forgiveness from the person I had wronged, it was obvious that I needed to publicly ask this person to forgive me and give my commitment for reconciliation. I had met with this person the day before the assembly and we both knew what needed to happen but they didn’t commit to being present at the assembly. Less than an hour before the assembly they informed they would be present. In the assembly itself I brought I message from Nehemiah and just before releasing people to go to the prayer stations for personal reflection and cleansing, I publicly confessed my sin and asked the person to forgive me. I believe everyone was quite shocked. But looking back our leaders agree that this was the catalyst that opened the floodgates for everyone present to seek God and to seek forgiveness and reconciliation – not only with Him but with anyone with whom they had a strained relationship.
While everyone was moving from station to station, the person I had wronged came over to me, put their arm around me and after having been estranged from them for 3 months, extended their forgiveness to me. Words cannot describe the holiness of that moment. After a time of personal reflection and cleansing our elders led in prayers of confession to God for the sins of our church as a whole. We then, following the example given in Nehemiah, ended with a time of worship. After worshiping through song for 25 minutes the Spirit of the Lord was so powerful in the room that everyone was singing and praising God with uplifted voices and hands. It was a movement of God that we had never seen in the 12 year history of our church. The ripples of that event are continuing as people are continuing to forgive one another of offenses and renew their commitment to live holy lives for God’s glory.
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