Read the below together with our full March e-mail news circulation: click here

---

Thoughts from Chelmsford 24-7 leader, David Gilbey

Whilst at one of our Prayer Spaces last month in Chelmsford Cathedral, l wandered around the wider building to look at some of it’s wonderful artwork and artefact’s. It was a beautiful sunny morning.

On one of the walls in the chancel hangs a large but thin and simply styled silver metal cross, (looking to me rather like a knight of old’s ‘broad sword’), and as the sunlight streamed in through an elevated arched window opposite, the outline, slightly fuzzy and out of focus, was projected onto the cross. However, the cross sat on the wall a little higher than the shadow, and glistening in the light, seemed to be resolutely rising out of it.

Reflecting on what I had seen, I felt that God spoke to me.

The window and it’s projected shadow represented religion. Not a good form of religion, but one that is narrow and restricting, only half the truth, a distortion, even a counterfeit of the truth of the Gospel of Jesus. I felt that over many decades, centuries even, a spirit of religion has entered and pervaded our City.

Just as when Jesus walked the earth, breaking religious traditions and upsetting religious sensibilities, bringing healing and new life to all he encountered, I felt that the rising silver cross on the wall was a picture of how God is slowly bringing renewal and revival to the Church in Chelmsford. The focus is coming back onto Jesus, His death and resurrection.

The cross lifted high spoke too of unity and right from the outset, when in August 2014 God spoke to me about starting a prayer movement in Chelmsford, He said that it was to be all about unity, relationships and love, through His Cross.

Jesus is the Light of the World and just as the sun rises each morning, the Cross also represents a new beginning, a new dawn. I believe that as Christians continue and in even greater numbers meet together and pray, the ‘Cross’ will continue to rise over our City. That we will become a ‘City on a Hill’ that shines out to this Nation for Jesus.

A new day is coming over Chelmsford. Will you join in to see it happen?