Back to the Bag! 🙌🏼

Last month I told you about three women living in a handbag for three days and then I never told you what happened. Let me put that right.

The handbag was a big one — a storey and a half tall, standing in the open ground the town uses for horse riding events, and you could see it from the main road through Fintona. That was rather the point. People were talking about it. The weather stayed largely good, the town no busier than usual, but you could feel the curiosity.

Inside, the three women lived, day and night, for three days. They took interviews in-person and with ‘call-ins’ and texts arriving directly and through social media, from people all over the island of Ireland and from many in other time zones who could join in ‘live’, because the conversations about Jesus and His Word never stopped. John Edwards, whose idea the handbag was, dropped in each day and gave some marvellous personal testimonies of God at work.

What surprised me was myself. I could not pull away from it. Neither could a good number of others, who expressed being drawn in, watching and listening, hour after hour. Part of that was the sheer quality of what was being said: biblical, practical, deeply relevant content, shared in such an honest way—all from three women fairly young in the faith. I was thrilled with the teaching and the counsel they gave to many over those three days.

At least 58 people responded clearly to the Gospel. Others were deeply impacted, and there was healing. When the handbag closed, several people said they felt a gap in their day, because they missed it so much.

There was enough response that the handbag was revived again and moved down the road to Omagh the following week, where a five-day evening tent outreach was already running, and it was resurrected there to stream for several hours each day.

A big red handbag in a horse field. I don't think any of us would have drawn it up that way. But the LORD blesses obedience to sometimes unusual prompts (like using a handbag with people inside to share their faith!), and keeps using what He is given, and He is not fussy about the shape of the container.