Tuesday 16 February 2010

USA Tour: Day Ten

A strange day….

We met up for breakfast at the MorningStar Café and then headed down to the room we’re using for the meetings tonight and tomorrow night. The pixies had obviously been busy overnight as the room was trashed last night and this morning there were neat rows of chairs and the stage had been tidied up, the room is used for youth meetings and it seems young people are messy whichever side of the Atlantic you are! The tidy up was quite a blessing as it meant we could just get our stuff unloaded from the cars and start setting up the instruments and PA. Sadly the drum kit was a load of junk – the batter head on the bass drum was utterly wrecked as was the one first tom and it couldn’t be fasted tightly onto the cymbal stand it was hooked onto! The snare head was wrecked and the cymbals were bottom of the range cheap ones. Thankfully I brought cymbals from Charleston so I could use these. I found another snare behind the small stage and some broken drums parts that I cannibalized to repair the tom mounting, the tom was still a bit loose but at least it didn’t swing in the breeze! I spent some time trying to tune the kit, the tom had a batter head on the bottom so I flipped it over and will play it upside down. The single floor tom was ok after a bit of a tune up. It’ll sound OK for a live gig but you wouldn’t want to record anything with it.



Dave, Godfrey, John and I went out for lunch with some friends of John’s, Hilton and Kevin, who travelled in from Illinois and Nebraska respectively for the meetings! That’s commitment. We also had a guy called “T R” with us; he does the music on some of John’s CDs. We went to an “Olive Garden” Italian restaurant and got really really drunk on the Holy Spirit while we were there. Kevin and Hilton are lovely guys and I really connected with them – they’re passionate about Jesus and about worship. Hilton runs eight hour worship sessions in John Alexander Dowie’s (the turn of the 1900’s revivalist) old house! Kevin hosts what sound a bit like mini-sloshfests seven or eight times a year that attract people from all over Nebraska.


In the afternoon I sorted out the PowerPoint lyrics for the evenings meeting and had a bit of a rest up.


The meeting was due to start at 7pm and by then the only people there were the band and about half of the ten or so folks that were travelling up from Charleston for the meetings and about three other people! I was glad we hadn’t set out many chairs – the band outnumbered the crowd – we’d be taking and offering amongst ourselves and giving it to them!

By about 7:30 another 15 or so people had turned up and then we found out that because the MorningStar website said we were in a particular ball-room and there were no cars there and there was no meeting on, people thought it was cancelled! I quickly made a few signs with arrows on and fastened them up showing people where to go from the main entrance and I think someone else did the same from another entrance. When we got going I guess there may have been forty or so people in the room. Not a great turnout, but it’s not about the numbers. Godfrey did a fantastic job, bringing a sharp prophetic war-cry into the land to break open some of the things we’d seen spiritually over this area. Almost everyone in the room seemed to engage and run with it. Kevin, from Nebraska, brought a brilliant word about the principles of sowing into good land and not wasting your time and money sowing into dead land and asking God for his wisdom on which is which and our freedom to give as the Holy Spirit leads and not out of guilt or obligation. Then John Scotland spoke and was excellent, as usual, about the drunkenness and the reasons for it. He started talking about not waiting for the prayer line when a guy got up and walked to the front and asked John to pray for him now, as he didn’t want to wait for the prayer line. He was a translator for some Brazilian pastors visiting MorningStar and they’d all come along and loved it. They’d never seen anything like it in their lives. John got Dave up and they ‘ministered’ to the translator in their own inimitable fashion! He got pretty blasted!
After John finished speaking we started praying for those who wanted it and the heavy drunken glory of God came on most of those there. You could see the evening had been a life changing one for most of those attending. I think tomorrow night will be even better, assuming we don’t get thrown out for being drunk and disorderly; which we were when we got back in from supper at a local Pizza place. Oh boy. I was drunk, so very very drunk. I’ve never found it so hard to stand, sit, walk or talk. Three girls from Charlotte were so hammered Dave had to pick one up and carry her firemans-lift style to and from the cars and back to her room.

We’re living in interesting times. What God’s doing will offend many but bring much needed freedom and revelation to those able to accept it. Every major move of God in history has offended the established order. To quote John Scotland “The power of the prophetic is in the offense.” I don’t think Elijah and Jeremiah would have been very popular guys in most churches, do you?

3 comments:

  1. Really enjoyed reading your blog - feel I've been on the journey with you.
    Jen

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Phil, Tim Balfe here
    I'm travelling with you too!
    Less thinking more Drinking!
    Thinking about the Offence could bring on Abstinence.
    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the comments folks!

    Hey Tim! Wish you were with us man! We've just been down Broadway in Nashville and seen some STUNNING musicians in the bars there. Wow.

    Drink up! Drink, drink and drink some more. There's plenty of new wine.

    ReplyDelete