A Day at the Beach...Sort Of

I've just come back from a wonderful day in Hawkinge, near Dover along the coast. John Pressdee had invited me along with several others from Green Street Green to pray with the vicar in Hawkinge, a friend of his named Robert.

Robert, an Anglican vicar, has felt called to plant a church in Hawkinge apart from the Anglican church already in the village. As he does so, he is also overseeing the church currently in existence there. His new congregation, he says, is already beginning to blossom after just six weeks and this is where he believes God will be working in the future of this community and where he is called, personally.

Yet the Anglican congregation, St Luke's, is a sad old place. A big part of the reason John was called down was because Robert had been finding details of previous vicars who had been grossly unfaithful to the gospel. Rob said that after preaching one Sunday morning a gentleman from the leadership of the church told Rob that Rob had just shaken his faith greatly. "How so?" asked Rob. "Well, you've just told us that Jesus was the Son of God..." Furthermore, Rob has been finding more and more items scattered about the church that represent ancient idols. While visiting the church before taking over, he did not recognize what was being read from the "scriptures" only to find later that it was actually from the Koran. Rob also had a deep sense that there had been a spirit of abuse (perhaps sexual abuse) in the vestry (the pastor's office), and the rectory (parsonage) had a hidden room with a bed stashed away in it. Essentially, he had come into a parish that had a strong history of disobedience to God, a strong history of idolatry and abuse.

So John was called down to help him pray over the place. It was really quite powerful, as we felt that God was really moving and working in loosening the grips of some of these spiritual powers over the place. I don't know exactly how to describe it. If you've done this sort of thing before, you know, but it's hard to explain exactly what was going on for those of you who may not have seen or heard of this kind of thing. I guess it's like praying for healing over a physical place like we would pray for healing over a person. It's as if Satan gets a grip on a piece of property (because someone let him long ago) and he has control over it (and the people there) as long as he's not ordered out in Jesus' name. Our job today, then, was calling him out and freeing the Holy Spirit to do what God has been wanting to do in that place. I hope that makes sense.

Anyway, it was wonderful, and we could really sense that God was in the work. For those of you who aren't accustomed to hearing about this sort of thing in Christianity, it's nothing new, though probably it's not common enough in most churches. It's not about being superstitious about demons, but simply ordering them out where they had been invited in. There are places in the Bible that talk about real curses on particular plots of land like Jericho, for example (see Jos 6:26 & 1 Kgs 16:34) and this is simply believing that such is still the case in certain places.

Regardless, it was a fine day. And I even got to dip my feet in the English Channel.