Why would God desire to build a house of prayer when every church should be a house of prayer?

Insights and observations from a Redneck Mystic


In our modern view of the world we tend to think more of the Church in terms of organizations and buildings. It is quite natural for us to drive around town and judge a church according to a building, grounds or even location in the city. Based on physical observations we make spiritual assessments. As you journey across Peoria you may be amazed by the 250 plus churches that already exist and wonder why do we need one more?
But if you looked at the Church as the body of Christ and wondered what God was doing with us, we might come to some different types of conclusions, if not revelation. All across our area the people of God are joining together for evangelism, food pantries, worship celebrations and teaching conferences. Numerous church bodies have community special events, special times of united focused intercession, and neighborhood ministries of mercy or discipleship. Even among the numerous local churches, God is collecting and connecting people together beyond their local expression and mission.
Turing to the House of Prayer question, we need to ask if God is calling people in this region to work together in a House of Prayer. Sure each body or church should have a healthy and expanding life of prayer. But can any one organization be and do all that God is doing in the city or region? Was the local church supposed to be a self-sufficient organization or was each organization to be a vital part of God in the city?

Well here is by expanded bullet list of what I think God is doing.
• God is establishing specialized prayer centers so that people can be discipled at a quicker pace. Whenever we specialize in an area in the body or church it is to assist others more rapidly. This has happened in the past with the roles of teaching, worship, children’s ministry, youth ministry. When God calls people to give their lives to an area it is not just for a “personal calling” but for a building up of the body.
• Unity, in all the walks of life, is a manifestation of the regional body seeking the Lord together. The people who gather together for intercession need a place to work through their differing views and expressions. Personal desires need to be lovingly separated from the will of God. The reality of seeking the Lord together is verified by our actual love toward one another in everyday life. Much of what happens in a regional house of prayer is the Cross being applied to a person’s life who is actively seeking God.
• God can use a local community House of Prayer or Prayer Room to validate prayer in a region. Just as church buildings, Christian recreation centers, hospitals, food pantries and shelter all witness to the city that the people of God care, so too can a public place of prayer proclaim God’s heart for the region to be prayed for and for the city to know it. Just as the 40 days of Prayer witnessed to our city that calling on God is a viable solution. So too an ongoing house a prayer can be a witness and solution for those with sickness, disease, unemployment and all the pains of life. Just as a food pantry can help minister to the region, so can the community prayer room.
• A house of prayer in the city also serves to remind us that we are made up of different parts. This is not a pride in the part we are but humility that we are only a part of what God is doing. We all should love and be devoted to our part as well as prefer and honor the other parts as better than ourselves. I believe that out of the context of a corporate prayer room a people of God will emerge that love others as much as they love themselves. I mean that the people of prayer will pray for, cover, bless and intercede for those in the market place, in the arts and media, in teaching and education, in government and church leadership just as intimately and passionately as they pray for themselves. This intercession will be for saved and unsaved, our nation and the enemies of our nation; love will abound as real intimacy and unity develop in the place of prayer.
• I also believe God is being tricky, or wise. A part of the regional house of prayer is offering to a community an alternative on how to spend our time. Sports, recreation, entertainment all have a community that supports those often “individual” efforts. A person of prayer or praying has often been an isolated endeavor. Even if you go to a prayer room and pray in private, doing that in the midst of others is encouraging. Isolation and loneliness can be confronted by community.
• My final point here is this. The house or dwelling of the Lord that God desires to be called a house of prayer for all people, is people. We, the people of God are His dwelling place. Deeper than all the organizational and institutional efforts, our Father is seeking a resting place within each of us that results in a transformed life living out His ways on the earth. Even if we have all the stuff we want, the right building, sound system, musical equipment, media links…all that stuff is only as effective as the people who serve in the place of prayer. We, the people of God, must become desirous of an identity that includes prayer. This identity is not at the expense of any of God’s callings, but rather to the blessing of them all. This identity is not so that we are esteemed by the world, but so that the whole world is esteemed through us.

Endurance

It is hard to finish hard matters. Sports have a season. Life however has no off season and being hated or mistreated can last a life time. God, a loving Father, calls us to prepare our hearts to deal with a life time of hate. I got this from considering the Matt. 10:22 passage. Why did Jesus give such a hard word to such good followers?

Matthew 10:22
Everyone will hate you because of me. But if you remain faithful until the end, you will be saved.

“Everyone”, really everyone! Why not just be hated by a few messed up people. Why prepare our hearts for total rejection? But if I consider the original hearers of this message, I can understand better. These guys (people) in the text are betraying their ancient religion, they are deserting their family traditions, and through their actions they are boasting that Jesus is the right way. These actions imply that the old way is not longer right, somebody is wrong. So they broke with culture, business, family and faith. They were hated men.

Have you ever given in, compromised on some issue that God has called you to stand for? Have you ever given in on a purchase, or yielded to a choice that you knew was wrong? Yet enduring in “easy stuff”, stuff that should be easy to do because in the big picture it is not all that important, is still hard. Sure there are seasons of wisdom from God where we yield in love and restoration. Sure there are many times when we don’t make an issue of everything. But do we still have an enduring faith? Are we willing to be hated?

The hatred of our time is very crafty. It belittles in small crowds, mocks through “innocent humor”, shames through self-promotion and worships success. Hatred in our day neglects the needs of others, avoids the awkward and fails to listen to the broken and wounded. Hatred in our time does not want to totally cast you out, but rather keep us just close enough to keep hurting you. Even if, by the world’s standards you are a great person, criticism, judgments and ridicule will be ever present in your life. Gird yourself up.

There are two places (maybe three) where words are said that help us endure long. The most important place where words of endurance are spoken is in the garden of our inner man. In this place the Lord meets with us and prepares our life for living. In the inner place, eternal words and thoughts begin to reach the heart and a person advances from contemplation to transformation. What happens in this secret place is foundational to what we do or say. Abiding with God is critical for our personal endurance.

Secondly there is the place of family – both biological and spiritual. Family is the secret place in our society and culture. It is a garden dwelling where truth and accountability knock on our heart of behavior and mindsets. True the family is often a battle ground or rejection and hatred, but God’s heart is to restore family, not avoid it. Building a good family, both spiritual and biological, is like building a garden dwelling that will have years of fruitfulness.

Prepare your life to deal with hatred and rejection. Not by building a fortress to hide away in, but a garden to delight in. One is a prison of protection, the other a public display of eternal beauty.

Following Jesus – Changing directions

Following Jesus – Changing directions
The direction of our life can also be called our “order”. When we get up each day and know what we ought to do and how we ought to do that, we feel order and feel like we have direction. Yet in life, many times we are called by God to change the direction we are going. This change in direction is not a diversion from following Him. In fact it is one way He works in the world so that we continue to follow Him rather than just trust in our own understanding.

Yet changing the order of our daily life often brings with it insecurity and thus an aversion to change. We enjoy the confidence of doing what we have been doing. Even if we know we are not getting enough done or if we are avoiding some important aspects of our life, just having the internal comfort is often is enough to keep us from doing different things.

So now in my life is a call of God to go a different direction. This new order will require that I work through the security of where I am and the insecurity of what I will be going. This in itself is growth and an increasing in my faith in God. What makes this difficult is that I am on the same path but now walking on the path in a different way. As the “what I am doing” of daily life changes, it is tempting to evaluate by what I was called to do in the past. I must prepare myself to love those who will want to relate to the Rod of the past and try to get me “back there” so that they know how to relate to me and how I integrate into their life and calling. This pressure of relationship often brings depression as we who have not figured everything out ourselves feel pressure to explain it to others. We get confused.

The pressure, the relationships, the insecurity are all a part of God’s plan for us. We are growing, breaking into new things, advancing. Have you ever had someone tell you that they were going to the next level but nothing changed? That is because while we may be called to go to the next level actually going there is not so much about what is around us, but about our internal transformation.

The path of life is not an interstate; it is a narrow way across a great wilderness.

How to be loved by God

John 14:21
"He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him."

While all people of the earth, in fact all things created, are loved by God; there is additional love for those who love God. This favoritism is about relationship and not about elitism. If you and I want to encounter the love of God to the fullest measure, we are required to have a relationship with God. God is not a power source that can be contacted through meditation alone. Even the most insightful meditation will leave a person lacking in real encounter if that person is not doing the will of the Father. You can see this most any Sunday as people who did not love God so much as to obey Him throughout the week seek to encounter Him in a meeting.
Human emotions may run high, they may even boast about the presence of the Lord being there, but little, if anything of the supernatural occurs. There tends to be a lot of talk (positive meditation) with little manifestation. This is not to bring an accusation against these churches; my desire is to speak in such a way as to not have us sell out. We should not call human emotion the presence of the Lord. If we want the fullness of the Lord then we must not be satisfied with lesser things, even if the journey takes years and not minutes.
The real point I wish to proclaim is that any person, in any place, who is living out the ways of God for them, should be encountering the love of God. The business person who is in the meeting and does not intentionally lie or mislead may be filling the guilt and wrath of the business, but they should also be feeling the love of God for them. The man who treats women with respect and not lust should not only feel the rejection of other lustful people, he should feel the love of God for him. We have too long trained ourselves in knowing the rejection of the world and we have failed to mature in knowing the love of God for us. We must come to know this love in the heat of the battle. It is a blessing to be inwardly cherished by God even in the midst of outward rejection and condemnation.
God, who desires people from all people groups, desire business people, musicians, actors, teachers and politicians to stand in this world and proclaim, “I have no fear for the Lord loves me”. God desires the earth to be filled with His glory as in this dark day people are not consumed by the darkness that is seeking to overcome them. In contrast they live in darkness but radiate His light. These are light and salt of the earth. These are living stones, faithful witnesses of Jesus Christ. These are the ones God pours out His love to in the place where they stand and say “yes” to God and “no” to the world.
So why don’t they feel the love of God?
1. We are trained to see the dark, the evil, more than the light. Turn your thought more on things above and you will take a step in encountering the love of God for you when you are under fire.
2. The presence of God with you is not always euphoria. The most common manifestation of His love is peace.
3. You are living under tremendous projected spiritual conditions. Every time you seek to dwell under the shelter of His wing in the public world, you mind will be attacked through any doorway open to the enemy. Holiness is not an option of Christian maturity, it is practical living that allows us to stand and know the love of God in our day.
4. We love the approval of the world more than the approval of God. We love to have people honor us, respect us and we have pushed the approval of God back in our emotions to private places.
5. Compromise has so filled out lives that we fail to do the will of God In such a way as that it is real. We have mixed living for God with the ways of the world and even when we think we are living a holy life, we are still very far from it. I am not talking about immaturity. God has much grace for immaturity. I am talking about compromise.
The solution
Wake up tomorrow and start a new day. Do this every day. Use the gifts of God of new mercies every day. Forget the failures of the past, except to become wise from them, and press on to the mark of the high calling in Christ Jesus. Start each day with thoughts of things above, chiefly on God himself, and seek to practice His presence all through the day. I could give you a thousand things to do but if you turn to the spirit of truth indwelling you, it would be better for you (if you have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you).
One closing note. The ways of the Lord for us is usually easy to understand but impossible for us to do without Him. It tends to focus on the one area we tend to keep away from God, be it our sexuality, money, personality, and intellect, whatever. Even a 2% increase of obedience in that area tends to yield fruit 10 fold in encountering the love of God.

Bow Down

Genesis 22:5

Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you."

Worship seems like one of life’s’ easy things to do. I live in a church age when people love to go to worship, but I often wonder if there is much like worship coming from my life. Even in the posture of our worship is a lot of standing up and seldom a bowing down. Why did the ancient people bow down anyway?
The more I separate love and obedience, the easier it is for me to worship. But if worship is a combination of loving God and fully obeying Him, worship is hard for me. It is hard for me because of me. I enjoy loving and obeying myself, not another, even when that other is God. I mean I do try and trick myself by calling my will and God’s will the same. I do tend the think that God and I see things the same way. I even tell people that I know and hear the voice of God, so surly I must be doing the right things – right?
Maybe worship can be identified by what
• What we leave behind
• What we take with us
• What we take up the hill
• How we return to the place we left

I am in the prayer room right now. I think I am writing about worship so that I don't fell guilty about not worshiping! I think I want to be Godly but avoid the blaze of His gaze by doing stuff (writing, reading, prayer, sermonizing, listening to the music). As I write the above statement I fell compelled to change my tactic. Maybe I should compare myself to others, others who are not in the prayer room right now. Maybe those who I know (I consider) not as Godly as I am. Is there anyway to escape the trap that this is all about me?

NO.
It is the door of selfishness, once we are aware of, that we go through to encounter the one who transform our self into His self. I must be me before I can be transformed into His image. Pretending to be another me will not help the me that I am. I think I am going to love on Him now for His patience toward me. I might even do most of the things He has asked me to do (both in my thoughts and deeds).

The House of Prayer

With a great deal of attention on the Lord rising up houses of prayer all around the world, we can over look that they are for something. The House of Prayer is for all the people. Right now many are feeling the pressure to be a part of the prayer movement, and this pressure is good in that it aids the process of true refinement. But not everyone is called to the house of prayer for service. Most people are called to the house of prayer to be served.

The Peoria Prayer Center is a place were people of prayer can serve the body of Christ and the societies of the world through intercession. We are in the place of prayer so that others can be in the place of their callings and not be alone. We want to befriend and cover others. In the past where the people of prayer walked in this ministry of service those people served became demanding. The intercessors became worn out by the constant requirement to pray for this thing and that think while many others lived lives of entertainment and rest. Envy snuck in and people called to intercessors want to be preachers, teachers, leaders and most anything else. It was like a virus of “you can be it all, have it all, don’t need anyone else” had invaded the church.

Weakened by this situation and failing to have deep wells of refreshment to drink from , the people of prayer slipped away from the place of service and continued to pray on their own, in their own way and without the needed connections of responsibility and accountability. The prayer movement became invaded by pride as each one sought to do what was best in their own sight. Presumption and boldness joined with this pride and intercessors were proclaiming to spiritual leaders directions, truths and actions they should be taking but failed to do. A little jealously and a few wounds of rejection started to grip hearts as conflict and competition arose in the body of Christ as to who were the true spiritual people, who were the ones hearing from God, who had the real authority.

All the conditions of this previous cycle have not yet been healed and resolved. God is still sending out His call to build a house of prayer and there are still numerous issues surrounding it. Spirits of elitism, triumpulism and rebellion are still around and open to anyone who is open to having them influence their life. What I am saying, in short, is that opinions and ideas about a house of prayer are a varied and diverse as people you will talk to. These ideas are used to build camps of division, isolation and separation. Knowing that they exist will help us keep on turning to the Lord for their redemption.

I am writing this mainly to the people who serve with me at the Peoria Prayer Center. I want them to know and be at peace with the nature of the calling I think we are to labor under as we build a community wide house of prayer that endures for 100 years. We are still digging out for the foundation. But the time will come when we reach the bedrock of Christ Jesus alone and then we can start to build a lasting foundation on that. This is not a “vision statement” to which I want you to ascribe. Relationships will last far beyond what we can see and we want to build on relationships, not gifts, callings, talents or abilities. Loving God and others is that which will not fail.

Here is a bullet list of issues I encourage you to take to the Lord.
• The call to intimacy with God is not the same call as to the prayer ministry. God’s call to intimacy is for all people and not so much a call as a life of authentic relationship.
• From the place of communion with God the people of prayer are to pray for all people, all nations. We are to intercede for business, media, art, education and numerous other issues. The Kingdom of God is within people and people are taking it into the world.
• No calling of the Lord is better than another. The spirit that says ministry is better than business or that prayer is better than media is not of the Lord. “Apostle” means “sent one”. Sent people, people called of God are going to take the Kingdom to the world.
• True holiness can serve in evil places.(RE: Daniel, Ezekiel, Paul)
• Some callings are for a lifetime and some are for a season. God doesn’t take back a calling, but that is different than a calling lasting forever. (A person could be called to be single, then called to marry, then called to be a mom, then called to remain single again later in life after the death of their mate.)
• While each of us is to be a dwelling (house) of the Lord, having organizations that serve the Lord in equipping and discipleship are also a part of His ways. People are the church, yet we build buildings and have organizations we call churches. To say we don’t need literal houses of prayer because we are all called to be His dwelling place would also be saying we do not need churches because we are all called to be the church.
• Time was made for man, not man for time. You and I have the time we need to live the life God has called us to. While we seek to make the most of every opportunity, we do not need to hurry, be anxious or be opportunist. We have time for love to mature. We have time for character, wisdom and knowledge to grow. We have time for God and time for others.

Mark 11:17 And He began to teach and say to them, "Is it not written, 'MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED A HOUSE OF PRAYER FOR ALL THE NATIONS'? But you have made it a ROBBERS' DEN."

Isaiah 56:7 Even those I will bring to My holy mountain And make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on My altar; For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples."

The Crafty Trap

There is a crafty trap in life
It’s set for those who care
In that to which you are called
The rap is set right there

It seeks to capture passioned souls
It blocks their loving work
It hides in appearance management
And in busyness lurks

It loves for you to do your call
As long as you do not
To avoid the very things it’s self
By endless management

And in the end ten thousand souls
Fail to do as one
For the very thing set out to do
Is the very thing undone

If you want to do something, it must get done.