On Friday night, Kaz and I went to a Yokohama church’s Alpha course at the invitation of David Littler (a British Vineyard friend who is planting a house church in Tokyo) for the part of the course on healing. We went along to help pray for folks.
This was our first time to an Alpha meeting, despite the fact that I attended the church where Alpha was born when I studied in London in college.
Hopefully sometime next year, our church will be able to host one of these sessions. Usually they provide a meal, and last night we enjoyed taco rice and chocolate chip cookies, thanks to dedicated volunteers.
Anyhow, after watching the video, we had a short time to give out words of knowledge as they came to us – in preparation to pray for healing for any conditions that God would reveal. The very first word given was that of a “red door being opened.”
Instantly, my mind leapt to the image of the room that we have been praying for as a building for Pearl Vineyard. It is on the 5th floor of a building, served by an elevator that opens out straight into the room – not into a hallway or anything. And the color of that elevator’s door is red! I mean, come on, how many doors in Japan are red?!
So later in the evening, we said we thought that word was for us and we received marvelous prayer that this place would be opened up for us by the hand of God. It really felt like a divine appointment. We helped pray for others, for various things, emotional and physical healings, and enjoyed our time there greatly. Still, this word had us pondering, because we pray for this particular place every single day, but there has been no perceptible movement, no sign from the Lord, for months.
Then, this morning, when we got up, there was a letter from the NW region overseer for Japan asking us how they could handle donations to help us get the key money (the thank-you money you pay to move into a place in Japan – in this case, something to the tune of $20,000. This is just to begin renting a place.) They had an inquiry from a church about how to get some money to us! Wow – I don’t know, but maybe the Lord is up to something here. Please pray with us, for the release of a place we can rent to hold our church meetings and our school and to reach out to the community where God has placed us.
The Actual Red elevator door
