Tonight we....

... spent several sweaty hours at a meeting.

The guy speaking had far too little to say and took much too much time to say it. There were little gems buried in the mire, but he seemed much too fond of his own voice to stop sooner.

The POINT of the meeting was to spend time receiving from God. This ended up being relegated to the fag-end of the time (7.30 start, praying commenced around 9.45) rather than the focus.

Despite repeated (many times) assurances to the contrary, I wonder if people like this are actually scared that if they move aside God won't turn up. I got quite cross several times, not because he was being challenging but simply that he seemed more an obstruction than anything. Maybe someone there needed to hear it (again and again) and he was really hearing God in this?

I don't know.

We almost took friends, and I'm REALLY glad we didn't.

I'm almost convinced what we need is times for worship and prayer, and if anyone is inspired to bring a word during the meeting then they are given opportunity if there is time. That way our focus is on God, and not on completing the religious format before He gets a look in.

Roger, someone we've known a long time from OCC had been somewhere interesting, and we were expecting him to talk about that. Instead he got no chance, and all we heard was the dozen + times Mr. Speaker had been to Toronto so he could bring it back and how Cheshire was God's own country.

2 hours after we left I'm still cross.

It WAS good to pray for various people, and I believe that a breakthrough took place in at least one person from our housegroup. Maybe a couple of hours of discomfort and boredom are a small price to pay.


*edit*

This morning I can remember some good things he said, so maybe it wasn't a dead loss. I STILL wish he'd got on with it though, and don't retract a single thing above.