BY THETIME the Draw Near wrap-up celebration takes place this month at downtown Victoria’s Glad Tidings Church, a total of 36 churches will have been involved in an estimated 2,172 hours of prayer, over the 52-day period spanning Easter to Pentecost.

YWAM Victoria director Graham Jackson, coordinator for the event, has several stories coming out of Draw Near – and says, “I am sure I have not heard them all, yet.”

One pastor said he did not know if it was a coincidence, but “he was finding that preaching was much easier and the people were more receptive.”

And, there have been some reported “miraculous” healings – or turns for the better – in health situations.

One such, Jackson noted, involved “a woman who had been waiting for months for a double lung transplant, but no donor had been found.

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“Then, suddenly one became available – and the surgery took place.”

The woman is well on her way to recovery. Only a short time before, “she was to the point where she would not have been able to make it much further.”

In a story of a different kind, Jackson told of a 14 year old girl who went straight from a prayer room in a church to a sleepover with five other girls.

“At first, the girls were antagonistic,” he said. But the young woman reported that, by the end of the sleepover, “all five of them had given their lives to Christ.”

The stated purpose of the Draw Near initiative was to bring together the churches, with the objective of “drawing our selves, our churches and our city nearer to God” – to see what he would do as a result.

And, at Glad Tidings, 7 pm on May 10, the gathered will “celebrate what God has done,” Jackson predicts.

– Lloyd Mackey

May 2008