"Blue Flame prayer meeting". When it actually came down to it, there wasn't much enticing that needed to be done. Getting me out of my small corner and into Blue Flame was not an issue - staying there - well, that was another story!
Blue Flame prayer meeting - I don't know who put the prayer meting bit at the end. I suspect it was me. Whenever I have been told about the meetings somewhere along the line the words "prayer meeting" get attached. If it was just Blue Flame without the "prayer meeting" then it is open to anything happening. It was sold to me as a prayer meeting, and I went expecting to pray. Maybe you are catching the frustration here - I didn't really get to pray - not the seeing strongholds fall kind of prayer, not the binding up of the strongman and plundering his treasures kind of prayer, not any of that - and that was what I was up for!
This is one case of my expectations being so far away from what actually took place! I so want to say that I really enjoyed myself - I wish I could get my tongue to twist around the words and just - say it! But it just wasn't what I was looking for.
I knew that things were not what I was looking for when I introduced myself to people as Melanie. I save "Melanie" for strangers and people I am not entirely at home with. Other people, the ones I instantly feel comfortable with, get "Mel". Silly really but it acts as my social thermometer! I was glad when Cliff Lilley arrived - he was a link to the familiar! I was even gladder when Mark arrived. I don't do strangers very well. For all my extrovert tendencies, I am quite a closed book when I feel out of water.
Apparently there is nothing predictable about what happens during the meetings. Some of them are very dynamic, others a little more introspective. Some have a definite direction, other just kind of drift. I think I hit the introspective drifting version.
I have done quite a bit of thinking about it and what the problem for me was. I have got it down to a lack of trust. I didn't know the people well enough, or the set-up well enough, to feel free to do my stuff. There were times when I ached to say something. I know the stirring of the Spirit. I didn't know if I could just pick up the mike or whether I had to ask someone first - so in the end I said nothing.
I could feel that there was a unity in the sense that together we had a power and authority that is not present to the same degree when we are alone. But we stuck with "comfortable" and just missed out on something that could have been spectacular.
The music seriously did my head in! It was good music but I felt it got in the way of the real business. It became a screen that we all hid behind. It just kept going. The times it almost stopped, they would just start up again. Running through my head was a kind of mantra - "I didn't come to wave flags, I came to throw spears". To some extent I would say that what the worship did was to ignite the arrows or spears. In the films when the enemy doesn't just fire an arrow, but lights the arrow and it does so much more damage to the enemy stronghold - that is how I felt. But I didn't get to fire my arrows anywhere - it was very frustrating!
Will I ever return? Have I been entirely put off? I don't know. Introspective drifting does not appeal to me. But then again, perhaps if I had let the Spirit do His stuff in me and stopped worrying about what I was allowed to do and just did it, we might have moved into the dynamic. Sometimes all it takes is one person to do the stuff the Spirit tells them to do and things take a different turn.
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