PRAYER

There is a tremor of heavenly veritas echoing up from the catacombs of the Western Church culture - largely coming from young adults where entrance into the church enterprise is low, but zeal for encountering God is high. In small communities as well as large, the Holy Spirit is raising up vital expressions of New Testament Christianity composed of believers whose nuclear center is the pursuit of the power, heart and presence of God. Many of these expressions identify themselves as a “House of Prayer”.



7 Reasons Why I Believe God is Raising up Houses of Prayer
  1. It's PROPHETIC. It’s been established as a “bright and shining lamp” (John 5:35) for this season - and it knows the mandate that God has given it as a prophetic sign to the breathless church. It has prophetic precedent. It’s present identity is derived in large part by a prophetic, forward gaze toward the destiny of the Church, ordained to stand with Jesus as His mature Bride at His second coming. It is also, presently producing prophetic messengers calling for zeal and repentance within the American Church culture.

  2. It puts the PRIMARY aspect, “Relationship with God” in first place within the organizational structure - and minimizes professional “pastoral” and institutional mediation of that dynamic. The structure that it does have, is geared to encourage and empower each individual believer in primary encounters with God first, administrating Kingdom ministry second, (if at all) - empowering individuals for any number of specific ministry endeavors that the Holy Spirit directs them into. 

  3. It's PREPARATORY - cultivating what Jesus yearns to have during the end-time; an oil-filled Bride without spot, wrinkle or blemish. It is the incubator for the watchful wedding party (Matthew 25:1-13) that is sufficiently prepared for the return of the Bridegroom; establishing companies of believers who are fulfilling 1Peter 4:7 “But the end of all things is at hand; therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers.” and are capable of testifying to His beauty through the shaking, judgment and end-times trials that are soon to come. 

  4. It is EMPOWERING believers to true, faith-filled, Spirit-filled, love-infested, resurrection-power Kingdom praxis, where obedience is wholehearted & mature: so that Godly character and fidelity to Jesus is motivated out of passionate and prolonged encounters with His heart, rather than out of principled duty, or fear of punishment. 

  5. It's PREVAILING while the institutional Church is Failing. The Western Church is in a state of spiritual crisis. The spiritual maladies that are neutralizing our ministries are real, specific and consequential. Jesus has specific remedies for individuals and organizations that are mired in a human-powered "industry mind-set" to Church. Houses of Prayer are one way that the Bride is responding to revelations of her (Revelation 3: 14-22) poverty. Add to the fact that Houses of Prayer are reproducing themselves & multiplying throughout the western world, all the while institutional Church entities are struggling to maintain their numbers. 

  6. It is PRAYERFUL. While the power-starved, conventional church is wrapped up in the “business as usual” pursuit of politics, structure, techniques and discussion groups the House of Prayer movement is fasting and enriching itself in deep, focused communion with the author and the builder of the Church Himself, Who is ordaining them to bring up the presence of God to the people of God that they may be greatly empowered to do the work of God. 

  7. It’s PERSONAL: both in it’s ORGANIZATION and it’s DYNAMIC.  a.) Organizationally, it is a “grass-roots” movement that is being established, not by the will of some ecclessial authority, or because of some grand, administrative strategy, but as the Holy Spirit draws any group of INDIVIDUALS, educated and ordained or not, to pray & seek God. b.) The House of Prayer DYNAMIC is also PERSONAL. In the activity of prayer and worship the “countenance of the Lord” shines and examines the heart of each individual believer (Psalm 11:7) whereby we yield ourselves to God’s very personal process of taking out the heart of stone and putting in the heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 11:19,20)

JSB • May, 2011


JSB • May, 2011
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• 25 REASONS TO MAKE PRAYER OUR PRACTICAL PRIORITY •
1. PRAYER and Focused Solitude with the Father was Jesus’ Lifestyle
2. PRAYER was the Pattern of the Early Church
3. Massive Individual & Corporate PRAYER is the Pattern of EVERY Revival throughout Human History
4. Intimate PRAYER is where the Spirit of Daniel 11:32 is Produced in the Human Heart.
5. The Harvest that Jesus longs for will ONLY come as an initiative from GOD to a Church that’s crying for it!
6. PRAYER Produces the Oil of Intimacy; Which is the Nuclear Center of Our Testimony.
7. PRAYER is where the ONE THING that is necessary takes place in our “distracted on- the-run” lives.
8. PRAYER is the One Strategy the rich American Church can’t buy or produce in it’s strength.
9. PRAYER is the way of Humility, Weakness and Death.
10. PRAYER is folly of TIME within the FASTED & TITHED LIFESTYLE.
11. PRAYER is the Steady dynamic that Keeps our Anxious and Man-pleasing Hearts Tender, Submitted and Fastened to the Will and Beauty of the King.
12. MUCH PRAYER actually PROMOTES and PERPETUATES MUCH Zeal for True Kingdom Ministry.
13. PRAYER is where our Heart is FIXED to pursue the PRAISE of GOD (2 Cor. 4:5) rather than pursuing the praise of men.
14. PRAYER guards us from glorifying ourselves through our ministry activities, restraining us with humility, so that God alone is glorified. (Rom. 1:21)
15. PRAYER helps spare our ministry activities from the fultility of human thought & action.
16. There is a complete absence of scriptural support for “prayerless” ministry, or “prayer- on-the-run” ministry.
17. Apart from relying on Jesus through PRAYER, all of our ministry activities are mere acts of humanitarianism.
18. PRAYER sets us free from obssessive ministry, reminding us that we are not primarily called to serve the needs of men and women, but God.
19. PRAYER is about weak, needy human beings submitting themselves (and their agendas) to the God of love Who is returning to fully restore His order to planet earth.
20. PRAYER is Jesus' priority for the (Revelation 3:17) rich, naked American Church.
21. Engaging God in PRAYER is what lifts the veil of blindness on our own eyes, as well as the eyes of those we minister to. If we long to see the light of Jesus utterly and supernaturally transform the heart and soul of individuals, then let us give ourselves to the Biblical practice of prayer!
22. The Father chooses to govern the world through PRAYER precisely because PRAYER "constrains" self-reliant men and women to interact with Him - and yield to His heart.
23. PRAYER is the PATHWAY of true MEEKNESS that liberates us from "forcing our own way".
24. PRAYER reminds us that what is “ultimately” on the Father’s heart for all of human history, is the preparation of a Bride who reigns alongside of, and under the authority of His Son; our Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.
25. Prayer TRAINS us to function in agreement with the manner in which Jesus governs His own Kingdom - through the agency of the Father's will. A million years from now, Jesus will still be administering His Kingdom as an intercessor, through the will of the Father.
JSB
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