Opening Doors and Floodgates

Author: Andrew Comiskey
March 10, 2010
London, where the waters of mercy had sprung up for me years earlier, became deep ground for Living Waters. Jonathan Hunter and I took one of our first international ministry trips there: we teamed up with new friends Reverend Christopher and Lisa Guinness who eventually became the Living Waters leaders for the UK. We met with other pastors, and took prayer walks throughout the city. (Two years later, London hosted the first Living Waters training outside the USA.)

We had received a word that God was going to open ancient doors for us in the UK; our prayer became: ‘King of Glory, manifest Yourself in Your English Church as the Healer of the sexually broken.’ (PS 24:7) ‘Lift up your heads!’ rang in our hearts as we entered St. Paul’s Cathedral at the center London.

While exploring the church, I spoke with one of the vicars of the pastoral work Jonathan and I were doing with the sexually broken, the HIV-infected, etc. A few minutes later, he took me by the hand and led me to a narrow spiral of stairs ascending to the preacher’s podium. He instructed me quietly to please lead the church in the noon prayer time.

I did as I was told. From another corner of the church, Jonathan ‘lifted up his head’, saw me, and almost blew a gasket. I gesticulated my bewilderment to him, and found my voice long enough to stammer a very ‘California’ prayer: ‘We love You Lord; we just want to thank you God for Your mercy today God…’

God was opening doors in His church. He was commissioning ‘ditch-diggers’ like Jonathan and I to find great people like the Guinness’ who might dig with us. God was intent on making a clear way for broken ones to be set free from bondage, for the healing of others.

Our next stop was Amsterdam. Our first host in Holland was YWAM, a young adult mission group centered in the Red Light District of that city. I was amazed by this land reclaimed from the sea, and its complex network of canals, dikes, and dams.

The city was a marvel of engineering, and a magnet for those intent on diminishing God’s image in humanity through all manner of perversion. It was clear to me that we were asking God to engineer a marvel of His cleansing love–right there in the city, where it was most needed.

I recall a deep weariness during one of the 5 trips I made to Amsterdam in that early season of digging. The charm of old Europe had morphed into a grimy bulwark of unbelief. I did not feel ’marvelous’, just tired of the perversion on every side–the depth of wounding and ‘darkness’ all around me–even in the Christians we were equipping.

I would go running in the dark every morning along the canals and other waterworks. On one such morning, I felt especially hopeless, seized with the immensity of the task and my own limits as a weak man.

An old man, a sailor, came out from nowhere and began to run slightly ahead of me, laughing and urging me onward. I picked up the pace but could not match his; he laughed a bit more, reached back and gently touched my shoulder then disappeared in front of me. I kept running, thoroughly renewed by my strange running partner.

An angel? Or a mere man disappearing into the fog? No matter: God was helping us to go the distance—to open ancient doors and release floodgates of His merciful, cleansing love.

‘As You have shown us mercy, O God, in the desert places of our lives, would You show mercy to the beleaguered state of marriage in the USA? As the Perry vs. Schw. case wends its way to the National Supreme Court, prepare for Yourself a victory. We shall render to Caesar what is Caesar’s but we shall prayerfully fight that what is Yours, O God. Prepare the hearts of each justice, especially Justice Anthony Kennedy, to uphold marriage according to Your merciful design. Remember mercy, O God.’
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