Today we prayer walked the Triangle again but this time we reversed our direction in order to both mix it up and give us a different perspective as we prayed. Once again, it was an amazing day filled with so many opportunities to thank God for the area we live in and want to see transformed over the next 100 years and beyond. In today’s post, rather than it being very similar to yesterday, we want to tell you a little bit about one of the towns that is a part of the Triangle area and what we believe are some of the things we think that God has released and is releasing here.

Today we want to talk to you about Coleraine, the biggest town in the Triangle with about 25,000 people, and it is the original market town of the area. Coleraine is also the town we live in, and it has an incredible spiritual history.

• The area around Coleraine is considered to be one of the earliest settlements discovered in Ireland. According to the archaeologists, who I’m never sure are totally accurate 😂, it’s a place where people were living in organized communities many years before the birth of Jesus.
• In the 5th century, St. Patrick was given permission to start a church in Coleraine. It was around this time that the place was named Cúil Raithin (meaning nook of the ferns), which later evolved to Coleraine.
• Around 200 years later, Coleraine was established as a notable religious center where many bishops and abbots served.
• Jumping 1000 years on, John Wesley, the great Methodist preacher, taught in Coleraine a couple of times over a 5-year period. He said this about the town: “the whole town is different from all that I have seen. There is no hurry or noise, but all is quiet and still, both by day and by night.” He preached to large congregations, noting that the people seemed more intelligent than most (I would have to agree 😂), and that many received the gospel of peace and “brought forth fruit unto perfection.”
• Then in 1859, the Ulster revival arrived in Coleraine through a local primary school where the presence of God captured the whole town, with thousands meeting Jesus in the centre, and many were laid flat out in the Spirit. The newly refurbished town hall was used to lay people in overnight. The local paper had to put out this statement “We are in the midst of the most marvelous and exciting events which ever took place in Coleraine – events such as may well appall the hearts of the stoutest among us. We have seen scenes, and taken part in some of them, during the past few days, that have entirely incapacitated us from collecting our thoughts on any other subject.” On another occasion, the paper had problems printing because many of their reporters were laid flat out in the spirit!!!
• In more recent years, we and the church we were a part of, saw hundreds and hundreds of people make decisions for Jesus over a period of years. We saw many schools open to the gospel, with hundreds of pupils responding to Jesus. We were also part of a ministry called Healing on the Streets, which was launched in the town centre, where people received prayer every week for years. There were many, many miracles witnessed during this time.

We believe that a place’s spiritual history is not simply consigned to the past but speaks to its future as well. It’s like God puts something in the soil that is absorbed, stewarded, and produced over the generations to come. These spiritual marks characterise the place. Many cities in the Bible were named after their spiritual significance, e.g..Jerusalem, Bethel, Gilgal. The Bible also talks about the fact that certain cities would have evil spirits that would live in those places, e.g.. Babylon and Nineveh. That means that places are not neutral; they are a part of the Kingdom of God, and how we pray for them is about more than simply praying for the people that live in them.

Coleraine is a town that we have prayed for many, many times over the years. We believe Coleraine is a place that has pioneering in its soil. It is a place where there is peace and an openness to hearing the gospel. We believe it is a place where young people will meet with Jesus in incredible ways. We believe that it is a place where freedom and holiness will be the mark of the people. A place where we will see the ‘Cultural Reformation of Beauty for the City’ to borrow a prophecy from a friend of ours. We have been praying for the regeneration of this town for many years, and we believe that through theonehundredyearsproject alongside other churches and believers, this will be a significant place in the Kingdom of God for generations to come. The Lord has given us many words for this place that we will continue to steward and pray through.

Anyway, here’s some photos from todays walk!