To our dear friends,
We are so grateful for your support in our vision for prayer. There are few who understand that prayer is the ONE THING NEEDED. So thank you for your faithfulness to stand with us both in your prayers and financial support.
he more we enter into the Place of Prayer, the more we hunger after God’s presence. We are discovering that there is nothing in this world that can compare to knowing Him. Every day we cry out for wisdom and revelation to know Him better. We long to know His heart and pray in HIS will.
Evangelistic Prayer
We have been building relationships with other churches in Charles City and just recently we have seen the fruit of those relationships. Just after Easter, we began to invest in an every Wednesday prayer group led by Peter Bauer, pastor of the Peace Hill Church nearby. Peter is the president of the Charles City Clergy Association. As such, he has been developing a plan to go out to the most troubled neighborhoods of Charles City (as identified by the police) in door-to-door evangelism. This is the kind of cooperation we had hoped to develop in Richmond—between spiritual warfare and police work.
Discerning that we McMurrys had moved to Charles City to labor in prayer, Peter asked us to lead intensive prayer during this evangelism, which happened two weeks ago. The evangelistic teams returned with encouraging stories of how God moved in divine appointments with needy and unchurched people.
Since that event was so exciting, Peter is talking with us about leading some training in prayer for more people in the area, to prepare for the next outreach day in September. to see the Church of Charles City work together for the advancement of God’s Kingdom—this is, in itself, an answer to prayer.
www.TheClearing.us
We now have our own website! Scott Bowen, our son-in-law, who designs websites as his business (NetParadigms), gave this to us just to bless us and promote our vision. You can go to www.TheClearing.us and see what we have been building for the last 4 years. More and more, we will be transitioning from our newsletter format to a blogging format communicating out of our website. If you would like us to send updates to your e-mail, there will be a way to do that. Just let us know by subscribing. We promise not to flood you with unwanted emails.
On the website are articles about our vision, products we sell (mostly Doug’s books), some devotionals you can print free, photos of places and events, and a blog site to update you about what’s happening. We are trying to squeeze ourselves into the 21st century, but it ain’t easy. Bear with us if we make mistakes or are a little slow.
The Forgotten Awakening
My (Doug’s) biggest news this summer is that I am finally publishing a novel I’ve been working on for 23 years. After getting rejection slips from about two dozen publishers, God resurrected hope last fall, and I sent my manuscript in to a contest for first novels. I figured that in a contest, someone will at least have to read the manuscript. Well, they did. And it won a prize! And the automatic promise of publication!
My novel will be called The Forgotten Awakening, published by Deep River Books of Sisters, Oregon, a town not far from the region where much of my novel takes place. My desire is to show how God, in his sovereignty and love, was reaching out to the tribes of the Columbia Plateau prior to any white people showing up there, during the 18th century—through tribal prophecy pointing to Jesus. This prophecy gave those tribes a profound hunger for Jesus, and an eagerness to get Christian teaching. I show how this played itself out, creating a widespread Christian awakening in 1828-30. It also led to the famous Nez Perce delegation to St. Louis in 1831, to request Christian missionaries.
Though it is a novel, the story is entirely historical, based on years of research in the original diaries, letters and journals of trappers, missionaries and government employees, century-old interviews with aboriginal people by ethnologists, and written tribal histories. The Forgotten Awakening should come out next March and will be available on our website, as well as the other usual channels like Amazon. I hope to show God’s love for the tribes of this continent during the years of the Second Great Awakening. As I wrote this book, it changed my life.
A Prayer Chapel
Our vision for building a full-fledged prayer center here is moving forward to another level this summer. We sense that it is time to begin to get serious about planning for a prayer chapel–a House of Prayer for all Nations. At least, we are announcing it and creating a way for people to contribute to it. This would be a separate building down the hill from our house. We want a place that is exclusively devoted to the work of ministering TO the LORD. Also, it will be a place that is free of denominational narrowness, and racial exclusiveness. It must be “for all nations.” It must reflect the breadth of God’s love. Prayer can be a meeting point for Christian people from different traditions.
Here is a possible plan drawn up by our friend, Mark Evans, a couple of years ago. We keep it on our wall as a constant reminder:
Pray that God will make a way for us to move forward on this key piece of our vision.
Come On Out!
It has been a long, hot, dry summer. But the beauty of the fall season is fast approaching. Carla and I believe this is the most awesome time of year here at The Clearing.
We have been doing a lot of work getting our guest apartment ready for fall retreatants who want to “get into the clear with God.” The prayer stations are built, as you can see in the photo gallery on our web site. These are great places to take a Bible and a prayer journal and just stay in God’s presence for an hour or three.
Just give us a call (804-829-2203) or email us ([email protected]) if you would like to come and be our guest for a day or three. We offer this ministry on a donation basis. Please note on our website the description of our facilities.
If you wish to donate to our ministry, whether for on-going prayer ministry or for our building project in the future, route your donations through The Timothy Project. We appreciate Eric Samuelson for keeping this service available to us. The Timothy Project is still at: 12518 Stagfield Rd., Ashland, VA 23005
