Prayer and Fasting
Day
Around 210 women attended
for this, our fifth Women for the Kingdom Conference to be held at Mount Zion
Pentecostal Church in Bangalore. The day had been advertised as a fasting and
prayer day, so the English women fasted along with the Indian women. There were
four English women on the Together for God team this year - Eileen Roylance,
Terrie Thomas and Tina Pawsey from Watton Pentecostal Church in Norfolk, and
Lydia Field from Aveley Pentecostal Church in Essex. This was Lydia's first
visit to India.
The Indian women had
already begun to pray and worship before we arrived and then Eileen began by
giving a testimony about how she has experienced the active presence of God in
her life and quoted from Psalm 46:1 that God is our shelter and strength,
always ready to help us in our times of trouble.
Terrie then preached
about a woman who is not named, from Matthew 15:21-28, and how she showed great
love, faith and persistence when she came to Jesus. Terrie reminded us that we
need to be like that woman and simply come to Jesus.
Following Terrie's
message, Tina asked all the women to stand and respond to that message, and led
us in prayer, holding out our hands to God, giving him the people we're
concerned about, the situations and the problems that we face.
It was then Lydia's turn
to preach and she spoke a message about who we are in Christ and that we are
living stones, hand-chosen and placed by God into his temple. Lydia challenged
us about being willing to have sharp edges knocked off us as God moulds us into
the people he wants us to be.
Tina continued with a
challenge that we need to know, as living stones, that we are in the right
place, the place God where wants us to be. She also spoke about the importance
of vision and reaching beyond where we are now to take hold of God's promises,
his healing and his miracles. She then led the women in prayer as we reached
out to God to know our place and to grow in our ministry, for enlarged vision,
and for new visions to be birthed.
Joyce Lynn concluded the
day with a message about how we can be wise women for God and we were aware
that the Holy Spirit had dovetailed all the messages together.
The English women were
then privileged to pray for and anoint their Indian sisters with oil - this is
always a precious and moving time. A call for salvation was made and three
women (there may have been more) responded and asked Jesus into their lives to
be Lord and Saviour.
A meal was then provided
and gratefully received at the end of the day at around 4.00 pm.
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