In just over 31 hours, we’ll be gathered at Swanwick to kick off our Weekend Away 2024! Maybe this will be your first time, or your thousandth, but I hope you’re as excited as I am for what God will do among us – it’s going to be a great weekend!

As I was thinking about the weekend, I was reminded of the well-known and -loved verse in Matthew 18, which says,

‘where two or three gather in my Name, there am I with them’ (18:20)

 but as I read the full section, here are the two verses preceding…

“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” (18:18-19)

What a gift that God has given us power, through His Son and His Spirit, to bind, loose, and set change in action, here on earth! This is my prayer for the weekend – that as we worship and pray together, things will shift, be bound and loosened, and many a prayer would be ‘yes and amen’, through Jesus, on earth as it is in heaven! There is so much power in us meeting together to worship as a collective church family, and powerfully pray into the things we want to see changed in our own lives, our church, our city and our world.