It was the third Tuesday of the month, and the sanctuary smelled like cold coffee and old wood. The intercessors had been praying since eleven. She walked in at twenty past three, barefoot, carrying a coat she had not put on. I did not know her name yet.
She did not ask permission. She walked the center aisle and knelt down in front of the altar with her hands open at her sides, palms up, like a child waiting to be handed something heavy. No one spoke. The intercession did not stop — it deepened. The Spirit of the Lord moved in that room like a low wind over water.
What broke in her that night was not a single thing. It was a decade. A string of decisions. A family line. She told me later, sitting in the back office at six in the morning eating toast like someone who had just finished a long journey, that she had been carrying it all without knowing she could put it down.
“Deliverance is not a transaction. It is a homecoming.”
We walked her to her car at sunrise. She drove home to sleep. She came back the next Wednesday. And the next. And the next. That was four years ago. Last month she stood in our pulpit and led worship.
The altar is not a stage. It is a threshold. And it is open, every Tuesday at eleven, for anyone who needs somewhere to leave what they cannot carry any further.
Written by
Bridget Jones
Associate Pastor over discipleship and outreach. Carrier of an intercessor’s burden and a teacher’s clarity.
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