Life Gathering

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Sometime in September 06, Marty, Pam, Catherine and I got together for a meal and to share our hearts with each other.  As we shared the meal and talked, we were strangely drawn to the knowledge that we were at a brink or revival and that we needed to hear the Lord more clearly.  A couple of weeks later on October 17, we got together again at the house of Todd and Linette Crelly to seek his mind again.  This time, Meagan was also with us.  As we prayed, the Lord spoke.  All of us present there felt the Lord saying that we needed to seek Him and come together to pray for a revival that the Lord is sending not only for us who were gathered there, but a revival that would affect the region and even beyond.  At this point, all of us there, drawn by the fact that we cannot but obey Him, agreed to come together to seek His face for 10 - 12 weeks.  Then, we decided that at the end of the 10 - 12 weeks, if we are not going anywhere, we will disband and go on to do whatever else.

How the Lord led us from that point of decision-making and yielding by us is truly amazing as I think back now.  Todd and Linette were led by the Spirit of God, to allow us to use their house to come together to seek His face, for the first few weeks.  From there, the Lord moved once again, He led us in such a way that we were 'forced' not to meet in any one place, but had to move from place to place.  We met in my home, Mike and Meagan's place, the Microtel Hotel in Springville, as well as in John and Nancy Hackemer's house.  The Lord moved my heart to share my thoughts on being a covenant community.  As I shared as to how everything that we do, how we come together and what we offer, has got to be examined under the light of the great commandment, "You shall love the Lord your God with al1 your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' (Mark 12:28 - 34)., everyone present was blessed to know how simple and yet profound the Truth is.

Week after week the Lord moved in powerful and different ways.  Jack and Rita Reiter, Jeff and Julie Bly, Bill and Lois Lowry, John Dan Hackemer, began to join us in these times of prayer. Everyone served everyone else in serving, praying, giving, prophesying, being a priesthood of believers who serve one another, as described in 1 Peter 2..  It was at this time, that I got to know Paul Fletcher.  As he was sharing his experience of how he and the people with him had moved from being institutional to relational, I knew in my spirit that we were meant to be connected.  Through Paul Fletcher, I got to know Paul Lafrance, Paul Fletcher's son-in-law and as I spoke with him, I felt led by the Spirit of the Lord to invite him to come and minister in our midst.  It was somehow planned that Paul and Paul would be with us on January 12 and 13,2007.

We decided to meet at the Microtel Inn on January 12, 07.  Paul Lafrance came with his wife, Janna and his daughter Glory.  Paul Fletcher was there with his wife Joani as well.  From 'get go', the place became power-charged.  The Lord began to speak through scriptures, through visions, through prophecies and even through the children. It seemed that everything the Lord spoke touched on 'new beginning', and 'life'.  On January 13, we met at Mike and Meagan's home.  Again, it was so amazing to see that the Lord had implanted the same thing in everyone's heart.  The oneness that everyone felt, was surely God.  The Lord spoke in parablytic visions about death and life of buffaloes, about bones in the valley coming to life, about a girl in a wedding dress, about a fawn being born, about pulsating lights, about timed bomb, about Lazarus' resurrection....But everything the Lord spoke, seemed just to speak about LIFE., but just in so many different ways.  It was truly phenomenal.  

I spent the next few days after the meeting, chatting with the Paul Lafrance.  We both just needed to seek His mind.  What I did not know then was that by the time, we had met with the Pauls, our set time of coming to seek Him for 10 - 12 weeks was up.  The Lord was speaking to us. Not in parables, but in a clear voice and with the voice of everyone present. LIFE is birthed.  I just felt that I needed to get together with Marty and Pam and say that we had truly given birth to something here.  

When Pam and Marty and Catherine and I got together on  January 18, 2007, we were as one.  I said to them that I really do not like naming anything as I feel that it restricts and inhibits, rather than liberate and set free.  But I truly felt the Lord speaking as I was thinking along these lines, "Ravi, if you had a child, wouldn't you name her?" I said "Yes Lord!"  The Lord again asked, "Why do you name her? To restrict and inhibit her or to give her an identity as to her purpose?"  A question which needed no answers. I truly felt the Lord calling us "Life Gathering' .  'Life gathering' not as an organization but as to what is available in us, 'LIFE'.  With Christ Himself being that very LIFE in our midst (John 14:6).