2007 Summer Prayer Letter #4
July 10th

Kids Club 2007 – Final Report

Thanks dear friends, for praying for us these past two weeks.  Without it, we would have been weaker; with it we experienced the power of God.

I woke up off and on during the night, certain that what we had experienced this Kids Club had something to do with the kingdom of God.

The disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray”

We taught 600 people this Kids Club, to ask for this same request.  Jesus answered his disciples and us.  Pray like this:

Come close to Me, call me Daddy
Ask that the things of the kingdom would be here, just like they are in heaven
Ask Me for your needs
Seek forgiveness and forgive others
And ask Me to protect you from all evil.

Whether it was the first graders prayer wall and prayer strings or my filled-to-overflowing prayer box, prayers were everywhere.  On Day 8, there were eleven classroom prayer gardens with prayer leaves filling the bare branches with words like "hope", "for my family", "pain", "I love you Jesus" and "I hope you remember me".

What happens when the dispossessed cry out to God, asking for forgiveness, protection, help and the kingdom.

Job 34: 28
So that they caused the cry of the poor to come to Him,
And that He might hear the cry of the afflicted--

Psalm 72:12
For he will deliver the needy who cry out,
the afflicted who have no one to help.

I want you to imagine with me what was daily prayed.  With childlike faith, these children believed us when we told them that Jesus was accessible, that His heart yearned for them to draw near, and not to stop coming.

But it could be, that with me, you couldn’t bear to know what was on those prayer requests.  What filled that box to overflowing.  The heartache, the loss, the imprisoned, the sick, the overwhelming conditions, the abuse --- many days, I thanked the Lord that I didn’t have to know, that He could bear it, that these requests didn’t cause Him to need a vacation or bring Him to a place of burn-out like it does to us.  He not only can bear it, He bore it.

And, as the nudging taught me in the early hours of this morning, we experienced the kingdom, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth – "

The marks of the kingdom we lived during Kids Club:

• Reconciliation with God and each other

• Love

• Trust

• Hope

• Restoration

• Convictions to become rebuilders of our broken community

• Reliance on one another

• Knowledge of the war waged in the unseen knowing that Jesus will win, and have victory in many lives

• All of us living in community, though fragile, finds loyalty, belonging and acceptance in mission together

• Spirit empowered, strengthened to do the work of the kingdom together

• Provision for the task, whether financial, practical, physical

• His faithfulness, not ours, but requiring our participation in his preaching and healing ministry

• His presence, tangible and real

• Allowing us not to be blind, but to see Him alive and active in our midst

• Redemption in all aspects

• Active toward justice

• Everyone is welcome, most particularly the least, lost and last

I’m certain, that this was what I was expecting to be the outcome of this kids club – with all this prayer – that we would experience the kingdom together.  But I am thankful for that.  Gloriously, thankful.

"For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever".  Amen

Thankful for you, for your praying on our behalf, on the children’s behalf, for the young workers and for our testimony in our city.

May God richly bless you, dear friends.

Love,  kit