The Houses of Prayer that God is raising up are not just little prayer meetings without power. They are leading into fervent outreach where lives are transformed by God’s power. God wants to give us revelation—He wants to change our lives—He wants us to care for the lost. When day and night prayer meetings begin to take hold of us, and when God actually begins to arrest our attention right in the middle of the prayer room, we will be dramatically affected in our lifestyle. We will begin to see the world as God sees it.
The world is in desperate pain, and it is time that we die to our own plans and get in the center of the prayer room long enough to hear His heart. I don’t know about you, but I desperately want to have the heartbeat of God for the world. The prayer room will lead to works of justice in the city. This includes taking care of the needy, orphans, widows, the homeless, and feeding the poor. It also includes helping to alleviate the oppression of poverty, abortion, racism, and so much more.
Read this passionate testimony of what one young man named Pete expressed at a prayer gathering regarding his anorexic sister. It’s a challenge to all of us:
“But God’s been challenging me to feel my sister’s pain, because that’s actually what it means to truly intercede. I also believe God is challenging us as a movement of young people to dare to feel the pain all around us. To move from praying ‘for’ people from the comfort of our own salvation to interceding ‘with’ them from a position of need… Here’s the question:
‘Will we allow the things that break God’s heart to break ours too?’
It’ll mean more tears, more listening. It may even be the reason why so many of us struggle with our own personal burdens and heartaches—God is allowing us to feel the pain, to be weak and broken so that our prayers have power. Intercession means weeping for the earthquake victims in the news right now; and for the anorexics, the drug users, the sexually abused, the friends who don’t know Jesus. And God says that if we will stand in the gap in this way, bridging the ravine between a hurting generation and a healing God—we will see breakthroughs, a new level of effectiveness in prayer… But what if the call to pray is a call to bleed as well as receive blessing? Maybe we’ll run out of words in the prayer room and just join the Holy Spirit in praying with ‘groans that words cannot express.’ Maybe our passion will consume us until we actually live out our prayers in practical action. Will you carry this cross? Can you receive it?”
From Red Moon Rising, Peter Greig
By Debbie Przybylski
Intercessors Arise International
IHOPKC