Lauren and I have lately been getting stronger and stronger leadings that what we need to spend more time doing is praying for people. And, we feel a lot of spiritual attack whenever we talk about it, so I’m pretty sure that is the direction we need to head in.
To that end, in the new year, I think we are going to refocus some of our energies in the following ways.
1. Take time we used to spend at church doing stuff, and try to interact more with our community around us. – Particularly, we think we live in a pretty neat neighborhood, and we would like to get to know people in our block better. And it is hard to pray for people you don’t know, so I figure this will give us more opportunity to pray for our neighborhood a little more directly. We had drinks with the neighbor next door to us Monday night and she is really cool, and definitely worth having over some more. I think that will be a good place to start.
2. Set aside some time on a specific day in the next month or so to do some “healing room” type of thing. – I liked some things about the healing rooms and I didn’t like some other things. I liked having a room for a person, with two or three people praying for that person, and that being all that went on in that room. Also, I would like to adopt an attitude of greater faith but without the ‘faith as a requirement for healing’ position. I think Kingdom theology being at the center of the pray-ers would produce a little more room for compassion, and I find the 5-step model a better jumping-off point for prayer than what was outlined in the training for the healing rooms (but I’m biased of course). Also, I would really rather have some opportunity for people to worship and soak while they wait (borrowed that phrase “soak” from Toronto) instead of watching a video on why healing is for today (which is what plays in the lobby of the healing room while people wait). I figure if healing is for today, and people come to check this thing out, they will do just fine by coming in and getting prayed for. I really respect the healing rooms, and I think I learned some valuable stuff, and I will probably still work there sometimes, but I don’t flow really well there because I feel restricted by some of the differing ideas of how prayer and healing work.
3. I want to spend more energy encouraging others in crazy prayer-stuff. – I’ve been talking with people about some of my ideas about praying more and I’ve noticed that most peoples ideas are crazy bold and require a lot of energy. I want to put a lot of prayerful consideration into throwing my time and energy behind some other people’s ideas this year, ideas that I may not have previously got behind. This means putting less energy behind some other things I’m sure, but I think that will be OK, as long as I make personal time to pray about which things to work on.
4. Host, or participate in, some long-hour prayer sessions for revival. – I’ve been reading revival history, and one thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of time is spent praying to experience more of Gods presence. It has been a while since I did anything like that, and some friends of ours seem pretty interested in doing some 24hr prayer thing, so that should all play out fairly nicely I hope. Also, I’ve been re-focusing on praying more for city-wide stuff again, like revival while praying alone and with Lauren.
5. Finally, I would like to get involved in some training for prophetic stuff. – I think this would help my wife more than me, but I would like to find some place that is operating a little more effectively than I currently am in the prophetic, and then glean more knowledge and experience from them. I feel like I’ve been more accurately distinguishing the voice of God from the voice in my head over the last year, and I think spending even more time focusing on getting better at that could pay off huge dividends in the future for just about everything in my life. And, what better way to do that than find people who are particularly gifted at it and hanging out with them.
I think the biggest theme underlying all of the ideas I’ve hit here is obedience. I feel like I’ve lacked in the past in being boldly obedient to what I think God is saying. Almost all of the great stories I hear about God doing great stuff start with someone doing something fairly nutty because they thought God told them to. So that is my main goal from here on out – do better at listening and acting on what I hear. Or to borrow a phrase from John Wimber, be ready “to give it all up again to buy the pearl.”
Barnabas says
Charles Finney is a great revival leader to read about. I remember as he was leading a revival in a certain town it was particularly strong. He started asking to meet the old woman who had been praying for revival for so many years. At first they weren’t sure what he was talking about. It took some searching, but he found a woman who had been faithfully praying for revival for decades. Charles could tell by the strength of the move of God how much prayer had gone into it.