God Says WAIT

We want to share our most recent breakthrough and ask for your continued intercession on our behalf.

The last three or four years have been very challenging. In fact, the last three or four months had brought us to the point where we were making plans to close the ministry and move.

After more than 8 years of ministry we have only 7 members and about 10-12 in attendance. We were like: Seriously? Really? Seven members after 8 years? I’m a business man. I know when it’s time to quit. It’s simply not working. So we sent out an e-newsletter to state the seriousness of our situation and called a meeting with our church family to prepare them for the inevitable.

The meeting was held this past Sunday morning. We met in the home of two our most dedicated members, and we laid it out there for the Urban Life family. We told them that we have 10 months left on the facility lease and that this is now the official deadline for us to remain in Harrisburg. I took them through our journey from the day we started training our first team in September of 2004, through the day we opened (March 2005), our Bishop's first visit (Sept. 2005) to the closing of the first building (December 2005).

I took them through our journey in the years that followed and all the way to the present where we currently have only 7 members after 8 years of ministry. I told them our final prayer before the Lord has been: How can we continue in Harrisburg if we can’t build capacity? I told them about some of our journey in St. Louis; that after 8 years we had our own facility (paid in full) and a congregation upwards of 300 and still growing. I told them about our dear friends and colleagues, Pastors Frank and Robin King’s journey and where they were after 8 years. I told them I wasn’t just making a comparison about church growth, but I was talking about the level of commitment a pastor must have from a core group of people.

I told them there was no way we could sign a lease for another facility without a certain level of commitment in place. I told them I wasn’t blaming them, but if we can’t grow in Harrisburg, then it’s time for us to go.

Then I had Carol to share her heart and she just broke down in tears. Then they saw and felt how serious we were. They saw and felt how disappointed we were that things are not coming together.

Well, they responded. One person pointed out that, first of all, the only people in attendance for this meeting were the official members of Urban Life. So God had set up this meeting to happen this way. They each declared that they were not going anywhere because this was the first church they have ever gone to that was not religious and abusive. They began to testify of the things God has done in their hearts and homes.

Then they gave some surprising feedback. They said they’ve been inviting people to come and they have also been surprised, disappointed and frustrated that they never come.  One person expressed her frustration that their own family, even after all these years, still have not made a decision to even visit or join the church.

Of course Carol's mom talked. She said, "I just see God in this. We needed to go through this so that we would see who our committed members are. Now you know who you can work with." They gathered around us to pray for us and the prophetic began to flow. Carol’s youngest brother, Michael began to exhort us by saying, “You brought the prophetic word to us. We have never had that before. You were the one that God sent to us.”

It was obviously being communicated: Don’t leave us!

Then each one prophesied right out of the scriptures.

Isaiah 54:17 No weapon formed against you shall prosper, And every tongue which rises against you in judgment You shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, And their righteousness is from Me,” Says the Lord.
John 10:28-29 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.
Isaiah 40:31 But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

Carol’s cousin, who walks in a strong prophetic anointing, prayed last of all She prayed: Habakkuk 2:3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; Because it will surely come, It will not tarry. Then she prayed, “Lord, we need a strategy. During this time of fasting and prayer, God is going to give you a strategy.”

Even as she was prophesying the Lord was speaking to me to gather THIS group together on a regular basis to pray. So I told them that is the first part of the strategy. "If we are the core group of this ministry, then we have to pray, and we have to do it together, and we have to do it on a regular basis."

It may seem obvious that we could have started with this group all along, but it wasn’t until recently that even this group could attend on a consistent basis. Nearly every person in our church family works on nights and weekends.

So for the first time in 7 years we were able to set a schedule. So that’s what happened after we laid it all on the line. I must be honest and say that I did not expect this. Our extremely negative experiences, since we moved here, told us that they weren't going to respond at all. So God has clearly spoken. God says wait. God says He’s going to give us a strategy. I don’t know any more than that, now. I’ve finally stopped trying to figure out how one event or prophecy is going to lead to the next thing that God has promised. All we know is that He clearly said WAIT, and He clearly said that He will give us a strategy.