Charlotte247’s Weblog

� went to bed at 6:30pm this evening. woke up at midnight. ready for the new day. the week leading up to 24-7prayer is grueling & requires a lot of myself & the whole team. Like with those priests who had to carry the ark from Obed-Edom’s house back to their’s, it’s a focused, detail oriented, sweaty, rigorous time body & soul. same goal though… seeking out & bringing together the God-symbols & insprired accoutrements, praying & worshiping & sacrificing along the way, so that God’s own manifested presence is powerfully hosted in one specific set apart place in ways that hugely impact the people we wish to see Him manifest himself to. Hosting the encounter between God & the objects of His passion…the amazing 24-7prayer team.

Really good day. Time with the 24-7prayer team prepping to present 24-7prayer to a congregation on Sunday. Had a sweaty but fun time as we worked through the details & were joined by a group of Middle-Easterns who asked us to help them plant a 24-7Prayer room in Raleigh, & so graciously offered to help our team finish the 6 foot sign up sheet project we were working on when they came in. We were all sweaty & laughing, & worshipping, &  joking about whether or not the O.T. preists whose job it was to kill & cut the sacrifice during holy weeks actually felt ‘holy’ during those sweaty, physically exacerbating, & strenuous times spent covered in blood & surrounded by the smell of disemboweled animals.  The cool part of today… Jax, my son, alongside me the whole day. Eating cake. Playing with his train set. Coloring alongside the 24-7prayer team. Then just him & me grabbing dinner & coming home to hang out with pop. A good day. Will be up at dawn’s crack doing, well, ya know. Life pace will be insane next week… and then Prayer week begins. And then Jaxon & I are headed to the beach, just the two of us for a whole week. Can hardly wait to spend my days feasting on seafood & McDonalds, losing at monopoly, & playing in the ocean, just my boy & I. P.S. Thanks for a racially integrated day. Really needed that Dad. Thanks so much.

Within a 7 day period we were officially asked to help plant 24-7prayer rooms in both Raleigh & Winston Salem. I’ve aways known I had about a dozen 24-7sacred spaces in me. Good to finally get news on the conception of baby 2 & 3.

Drinking from the well the water that makes men thirsty no more. And though still under renovation, my soul’s chief desire has been satisfied in You, my one thing.  Now I drink & drink again not out of thirst but out of addiction for the taste of your heart mingled with mine.  

Over 200 passed through 24-7 last weekend. Whew!

Incredibly grueling & good day. Turns out grueling & good are not mutually exclusive. Up with the fam most of the night due to a power outage around 10:30 resulting from a car crash up the street. Kid screaming out in the dark, calling out for me to come. Later that morning I met with a lot of different people. Mentored church leadership, assigned God-Cafe & Social Justice Film Night leadership to a 24-7 volunteer, vision casted with a new church partnering with 24-7, initiate conversation to hand off Justice Project’s Mini-Extreme Home Makeover Team to an able & amiable woman who would lead it well, if she accepts the position.  Also had an altercation with a sexual predator & ended up calling the police. Felt a wide range of things today that my face did not reflect; courage, wisdom, excitement, and even moments of exasperation. My best moment? Listening to Karen confess that she prays for me everyday.. My worst moment? Realizing I had missed an opportunity to hang out with Tim. I think he may require groveling in order to give me another coffee date. For 24-7 the day was top-heavy with various Pastors hanging out at the site throughout the day & evening. Go figure. Here working at Caribou, finalizing details for a Justice Project, I had something really good & freeing happen. What a great end to a good day.

Recently, our Charlotte 24-7 Prayer room is filled with young people most every night now. Staff having to stay sometimes past 10pm so as not to interrupt what God is doing in those young hearts sprawled out in personal prayer.  There’s no sermon, except the one God is preaching uniquely to each heart. There’s no worship band, except the best the world has to offer in worship music wafting out of the ipod hooked up to the stereo, which is helping to set the stage for the divine romance filling the spaces with the sound of faces on floor, & paces on the floor, & prayer ascending. Yeah, hosting the encounter between God & man,,, this is why we exist.