Mid Week Service at Bagot Victory Church

We had an amazing time at Bagot last night. I thought it was going to drop in a totally dysfunctional hole to be honest. Paula was at work at the hospital and David Gawler was out at one of the remote hospitals so that left Josiah setting up and Isobel Gawler driving the bus everywhere picking people up. There was no one to lead at the meeting itself. And there was some angry drunk Aboriginal guys there who were on the verge of a punch up or two. So I decided to wander around talking and praying with people who were sitting and waiting. Isobel was probably the default leader and she was away until quite a way through the meeting. With Josiah (young boy from Victoria who is working with the Gawlers for a year) we agreed to start the meeting with prayer. So I got up and began to pray over everything that would rob us of the presence of God. I prayed that the pain in the hearts of people would be replace by the peace of Jesus. I prayed till I felt that something was happening. One of the Barunga women, Rachel began to get the ladies together and they started to worship in Creole (an Aboriginal form of Pidgin English). That certainly started to gather things together and the threat of a punch up seemed to die down. They sang for about forty five minutes or a bit more.

Before Isobel got back I started to preach and the Spirit of God came upon me in a very profound way. God gave me a message from Joshua 5 about not asking whether God was on “my” side but asking whether “I” was on God’s side. There was a great sense of the presence of God there and the people didn’t stir for probably fifty minutes while I preached. I even sang a song that was anointed (just to be kind to people’s ears). In fact I sang two worship songs and the Spirit was on that as well. So I spent the last thirty minutes or so praying for just about everyone. God healed some of the people from pain and some diseases. Aboriginal people are not backward in getting prayer for things, but even so it was an amazing time. Everyone knew that the presence of God was there and that we were all responding to Him.

Unfortunately I had to leave before the pack down was done, but Isobel asked if I might put the message in a DVD video form so that she could give copies to people who were not there. I’ll have to figure out a way to do that. I think John and Faye Williams are going to come back for next weekend so I might get John to tape something before I leave and he can do it up for them.