Tag Archives: riverboat

God is Doing a New Thing!

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Greetings from Austria!

Actually I am on the train from Bratislava to Vienna, and we just crossed the river.  There are lovely yellow fields of flowers.  It is a beautiful, sunny day, and my mood is equally sunny.  I just feel very hopeful after having such powerful and successful prayer in 2 capitals: Budapest and Bratislava.  It’s funny, I don’t know what to expect in Vienna because I’ve only passed through on the train.  But I feel a kind of breathless expectation.  This trip is pregnant with possibilities.  More later!

—Several hours later—

The mood swung dramatically when we entered the church.  Our hosts started right into a slide show about the history of Vienna, with emphasis on the spiritual realities here.  For me, the most impacting was the final slide: a map of Vienna 1913-1914, showing that Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky, Tito, and  Freud were all living in Vienna within a few miles of each other.  It occurred to me that Vienna is a spiritual womb (see my comment above, written on the train: pregnant with possibilities!).  At that time she birthed some pretty horrible things, but through prayer and worship, Vienna can birth great things for the Kingdom of God.

However, before receiving that revelation, we tried to worship, and it was a disaster at first.  The worship was weak, and only the English-speakers were worshiping.  One of our teammates pointed out that our hosts were not singing.  An Austrian host told us that what they need is not worship, but prayer, and prayer warriors for Vienna who will seek God’s face and pray these things through.

We tried to explain that prayer and spiritual warfare is exactly what we had come to do, but that we enter into prayer first with worship, like the priests of Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20).  At that, a missionary who has lived here for 26 years put on a worship song in German, and we all worshiped together—some in English, and some in German.  That was an important turning point.  After that prayer began to breakout among our hosts, and that depressive atmosphere lifted.

Afterward, we enjoyed a lovely meal prepared for us by our hosts.  Friendship and fellowship developed, and there was lots of laughter and love.  God is good!

Kings and Castles and UFO’s

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe Slovakian Parliament Building

Yesterday we all met at the Slovakian Parliament building.  There are 2 Members of Parliament that are born again, and another 8 who are Christians, but perhaps unsure about the whole “born again” thing.  We met with 1 of the born again MPs, Boris.  He seemed very discouraged and hopeless.  I think he feels very alone.  Boris started a prayer meeting with the other Christian MPs, and he said that usually only 4 show up.  He said that the meeting lasts about 30 minutes.  The meeting starts by Boris reading a Bible verse about righteousness, they meditate on it for about 5 minutes, then they pray about it together.

Whenever there is an important vote, Boris calls a prayer breakfast for his supporters who are believers, and they pray together about the issue.  However, we were told later that he’s not very organized about getting the word out, so the prayer breakfasts are only about 10 people.  In reality, Boris has many more supporters who would come and pray if they knew about the prayer breakfast.  So we prayed for Boris and for the Slovakian Parliament.  It was powerful.  At one point I felt very strongly the urge to kneel as I prayed.  When I opened my eyes, everyone around me was also on their knees, including Boris and his translator.

After lunch we took a trip out to Devin Castle.  At the foot of the castle was a monument to the victims of Communist terror.  This was where the iron curtain separated east from west, at the Danube River.  From that spot in Slovakia, you could see Czech Republic, Hungary, and Austria.  There more than 400 people were killed trying to escape Communism.  A few members of the team said that they couldn’t pray there because it felt so heavy.  So before praying we decided to do a prophetic act and worship.  So we marched through the gateway of the memorial singing a worship song.  Then we went to the riverside and poured wine and salt into the water (another prophetic act).  Then we sang more worship songs.  The songs started out weak, but became strong.  Then someone noticed that a couple of snakes swam across the water and the frogs began singing louder.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABullet-riddled monument to the victims of Communist terror

Then we climbed up to the castle.  Up there we heard a strange buzzing noise.  I laughed and said that it was a UFO.  Well it was unidentified and it was a flying object.  It was a photographic drone, which after the place of so many Communist murders gave me the creeps.  There was a big team up there, taking pictures with equally sophisticated equipment.

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It was a good day, with wonderful prayers and lots of hugs goodbye.  Today we travel to Vienna.  A couple of teammates are going by riverboat in order to pray and worship on the river.  God is good!

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