NEWS – FEBRUARY 19

Steve and Heather Oliver and the RB Global Team met in Athens from 28th January until 1st February to pray, seek God and plan for the future, especially focussing on our upcoming celebration in Marathon in April.

Leaders from the USA, UK, South Africa, India and Australia joined Steve and Heather in Athens for their first global team meeting of 2019. Seeking God in prayer was the top priority from the start, as Steve encouraged the team to remember that it is God’s presence that makes his people distinctive:

Exodus 33:15&16 Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

During their time together, the team were taken by coach to Marathon so that they could see the venue for our RB celebration in April. Currently the hotel is undergoing a refurbishment, but they were able to view the facilities available to us and plan meetings and sessions accordingly.

They also had the privilege of visiting Mars Hill, the Areopagus area where the apostle Paul stood and preached to the ‘Men of Athens’ (as told in Acts 17). Dino Roussos, the team’s Greek guide, spoke the words of Paul powerfully in the original Greek.

Bryan Asay (Bozeman, USA) led a devotional time based on this passage and the team prayed for the city of Athens, the Marathon gathering, and the many ‘Regions Beyond’.

Praying into prophetic insights

Over the years, there have been some specific and significant prophetic words brought for Regions Beyond as a movement. One of our value statements is that ‘We have been shaped by the prophetic gift and believe that prophetic input is crucial in providing ongoing direction and encouragement to us as churches and as a movement.’ For your encouragement, and to fuel your prayers, here are two of the prophetic words we are carrying at the present time for our upcoming gathering in Marathon, Greece:

Rodney Haggar (Worthing, UK) told Steve about an unusual dream he had experienced while the global team were meeting to plan for the RB event in Marathon:

I dreamt I was at a global RB conference and Steve was speaking. The audience was massive, more like the numbers we saw at Stoneleigh than at Fusion.

It was like we had experienced huge growth as a movement from where we are now – we were a much larger movement. And in this gathering were world renowned business men and women, people of large corporations, names that the average westerner would know. They were really successful business people. And the phrase God had written over the conference and over our movement was ‘Remarkable Favour’.

Mike Irving (Sydney, Australia), who was present at the global team meeting, encouraged RB leaders to be bold and expectant in this season as exciting times are ahead of us.

Franco Lonappan (Mumbai, India) heard God speak to him whilst he was standing on Mars Hill. He felt that God showed him that Marathon 19 would be a time of recommissioning; a place where people would be recognised and released to activate their God-given gifts.

Let’s continue to pray into these significant prophetic encouragements as we look forward to gathering together in Marathon in April.