Every Sunday evening we have our evening campus at Highway Church. It’s usually a small gathering, but definitely one of my favourites, just like every other Highway gathering.

I particularly enjoy the intimacy and the repeat message from a Sunday morning - it gives me a chance to really listen more deeply into the message.

But tonight, that didn’t happen. God cancelled church.

The way it began

This evening started with a slightly modified setup - we put in about 15 minutes extra into the preparations. We didn’t do anything different, apart from have a slightly more organised meeting before we did all our setup, reminded ourselves of why we have a Sunday evening gathering, and prayed before we started. Nothing special really - we do this every Sunday morning.

The gathering started as usually, a countdown, a welcome from our MC - Dave - and then some worship in the form of singing.

Next - the cancellation

So after worship…well…I guess you could say there was no after the worship. There was no doubt that this evening God had decided to rock some boats. We couldn’t stop praising Him. We sang our third song twice, basically cancelled the sermon, and just kept worshiping and praying all night long. God wasn’t gonna let us just go on with the program…at least not the way we had set it out! He cancelled our plan for church, and did things His way.

I can’t quite recall the sequence of events, but it’s really not that important. It’s best just to say that we were all very aware of the presence of God. Right there, in the room, with us.

We prayed, we prophesied, we went to war, we declared God as Lord and Saviour over everything. We just got carried away, by God. We deviated from our plans and went along with His.

What He said

Now, the point of all of this is actually that I want to share what God said, specifically to me. There was plenty of prophecy, and I’m not going to repeat it all, so I’m just giving you the three things that God shared with me.

Hanging by a thread

God gave me a picture of something hanging by a thread or rope of some sort. It was clear that the thing was us, and the thread was some sort of bondage, a lie, something holding us back. Something we needed to be rid of.

Then God said to me that cutting the string is easier when the string it taught, when the thing is hanging. But what this means, however, is that there must be a short fall before a hand supports the weight. God was saying that we need to have faith that He will catch us.

He also pointed out that if the weight was lifted, we would feel more secure, but the cut would be messy.

So trust God for the clean cut and catch.

For the one

When one thinks about us running an entire evening service for only 30 or so people, it seems a little bit pointless. And sometimes, having an incredible time with God, as we did tonight, can seem to change nothing. But God reminded me that if it changes one person’s life, that’s enough. God’s the one that needs to see the change, not us.

Scared shirtless

God gave me a picture of someone wearing a t-shirt. Then He said to me that we wear lies to bring us comfort. To hide who we really are from God, much like Adam and Eve did in the garden of Eden.

But the truth is, God sees through that. He knows exactly what we look like. We are naked before Him, no matter what lies we clothe ourselves with.

Then He showed me that when we pray for God to reveal lies, to shine the truth, to break strongholds; what He does is He tears holes in the shirt and it ends up in shreds, in tatters. There is nothing left and we realise that, in fact, we are as good as naked. He can see everything. He always could, but we’ve only just realised this.

So all that we have left to do is lift the remains of the shirt off and lay it at God’s feet. There’s nothing we really have to do. God does it all.

Well there you go!

So there you have it. Three things that God said to me tonight. I just wanted to share this so that:

  1. It's an encouragement to whoever reads this, and
  2. Just to document this, so that one day I can have a look back and remember tonight.

Tonight was the night that God “cancelled” church. It was a night worth remembering!

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