South African Prayer Room: Best Week of My Life!Carla Harding - 2 Sep 2009

"It was such a wonderful week, for so many reasons, I don't even know where to start..." writes Becky Robertson from Brackenfell, South Africa.  "We filled all the hours, just about, with a few hardcore pray-ers filling up the early mornings, but we found that although the week looked pretty empty at the beginning, each day, the people who came to pray would sign up again for the next day or the day after that, and so by the end of each day, the next day was always full. Basically, almost everyone who came loved it and wanted more!

We had people in from around six or seven of the churches in our area, all different denominations, and quite a few people who haven't been part of a church for quite some time.  One guy showed up, his friend having booked him in for the last available slot of the week, who told us he hadn't spoken to God for 25 years!

For a few of the young people who came, it was a real turning point for them in their relationship with God. There were a handful of young guys with a similar story: they used to be on fire for God, but friends, uni lifestyle, girlfriends, and just the general mundaneness of life had made anything spiritual seem less real, less relevant. But their prayers on the walls throughout the week were just so honest, like they were remembering who God is, and who He's chosen them to be, and they kept coming back, sometimes twice a day, to be with Him. At the end of the week we had an evening of prayer and praise for anyone who'd come during the week, and a time to share with each other what had happened. One of these young guys told us that for the last six months or so, he'd just been drifting further and further away from God, til he hardly wanted to think about God anymore. The thought of praying hung over him like a burden he didn't want to face. He'd agreed to come and pray, reluctantly I think, and probably more to do us a favour than anything (!), but the thought of having to finally speak to God was not a compelling one for him. But in that room, something happened, and he said that as he left, he felt this burden just lifted from him, he felt free. And he came back, every day, twice a day, or more. He told us at the end of the week that it had been the best week of his life. Seriously, he actually said that!

There were several people who said similar things, about feeling some kind of burden being lifted from them. Especially people who hadn't felt close to God for a while.

And there was one guy who'd been unemployed for months who got offered not one, but two jobs that week! He and his wife came and spent an hour together just thanking God for providing for them what they desperately needed. 

There are so many more stories, but honestly, I think some of them are just a little bit too personal to share here, but trust me, God did some incredible, beautiful things. So much restoration, so much renewal, so much healing.

This was the first time anyone in the area had been part of something like this, so it was tricky trying to get across what it was that we were trying to do. People really had to experience it to get it, but when they did, they definitely got it! And I doubt this will be our last one."