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Transformation Thurrock Prayer unites with the East Thurrock United Service
At 6.30pm this coming Sunday (16 May), the monthly East Thurrock United Service at St Margaret’s Parish Church in Stanford-le-Hope will double up as May’s Transformation Thurrock Prayer gathering.
From the point of view of the ‘TTP’, instead of being on a Saturday morning, it’ll be on a Sunday evening. We will be praying for Thurrock at this ‘interesting time’ in the history of the borough - as it becomes politically Conservative - and the nation. We are inviting all with a heart of intercession to come along and make 2 Chronicles 7:14 a reality - a repentant people, a forgiven community, and a healed land.
 Some of you will remember that back in January 2006 we held a gathering of the borough’s intercessors in St Margaret’s. Some 50 people turned up from across the denominational divides to seek God’s face on behalf of Thurrock at the end of a 24-7 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. There were a number of prophetic words which indicated the Lord’s favour. (These words were compiled on a CD called ‘A Lion At The Gate’ which is still available from Transformation Thurrock.)
That meeting proved to be pivotal, because out of it emerged a monthly intercessors’ gathering called ‘Gatekeepers of the Gateway’, which travelled from venue to venue around the borough up until the time the TTP gatherings came into existence in September 2008. TTP is the ‘son of’ Gatekeepers: it’s about interceding for the borough from the cross-denominational position of spiritual strength that is, as Ephesians puts it, ‘the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace’.
At this point some of you are saying, “He’s back on his ‘unity’ hobbyhorse again!”
Well, yes, I am.
That’s what my job is - to get you lot doing stuff together.
In love. In truth. In relationship. In partnership. In Christ.
If you don’t need reminding, the principle of unity is a constant stream of a theme running down through the Bible from the highland spring of Genesis to heaven’s ocean in Revelation. That’s because it has at it’s core the very nature of God - love.
Love is the water in the river of life.
Unity affects everything, because the power of God’s love is released every time believers gather in the obedience of togetherness (Psalm 133).
My old mate from Grays Pentecostal days, Malc Sullivan (now at Chafford Hundred Community Church), once did a sermon on the difference between two words that are anagrams of each other - ‘untied’ and ‘united’.
Which are we to be?
Malc also quoted this couplet from Longfellow’s Hiawatha:
“All your strength is in your union,
All your danger is in discord.”
If we don’t unite, we’ve lost the fight. We open ourselves up to attack.
So all that hates unity - because it knows the power of unity, because it fears the power of unity - does everything it can to prevent unity, to prevent God’s people from uniting. Then it can continue to have dominion in people’s lives through spiritual deception. So, in a sense, our religious pride, isolation, empire spirits and competition lets witchcraft, new ageism and the masonic off the hook.
Look at how many psychic evenings there are in various pubs around the borough.
They have a power - but we’re meant to have THE power.
Thurrock’s history and geography is a divided one. As someone said recently, ‘Thurrock is very parochial’.
The central and west art of Thurrock was in the ‘hundred’ of Chafford (which extended into parts of Havering and Brentwood), while the east of the borough was in the Barstable Hundred (what is now mostly Basildon). This has its echoes down through the years to the present day: we may have one council, but two parliamentary constituencies - Thurrock, and East Thurrock, which appropriately connects with South Basildon. The ‘dividing line’ is approximately down the A128 (but not exactly). The central and west of the borough - some of which lies within the M25 - tends to look towards London, the Thames and Kent, while the east tends towards Basildon and Southend. There’s even a community radio station called ‘Gateway’ that serves Basildon and East Thurrock.
These differences may seem trivial on one level, but they have a spiritual resonance that adds another level in the struggle for the 'complete unity' Jesus prayed for in Gethsemane (John 17:20-23). That’s why we try to hold the TTP in the east as well as the central and the west - to break those invisible divides.
If the church of Thurrock can consciously work towards establishing true Christ-centred unity, then imagine the spiritual implications for our borough.
 A saved people. A redeemed community. A healed land.
Filthy water out, freshwater in.
Thurrock transformed by Jesus.
“If my people... then will I heal their land.”
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Tim Harrold, 13/05/2010 |
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