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"20 Hours with God" Finishes at State House

Tom Walker here and please allow me to offer greetings from the Indiana National Day of Prayer and now the Governors' Prayer Team in the name of our Lord Christ Jesus. A dear friend who has joined with me in the Governors' Prayer Team as State Prayer Leader for South Carolina, Doug Small (http://www.projectpray.org/) is coming to Indianapolis this Friday.

Doug writes… "20 Hours with God" is one of the Schools of Prayer offered by Doug Small's Alive Ministries: PROJECT PRAY. This school is experiential - believing that prayer is more caught, than taught. A 20 Hours with God event focuses on prayer as personal transformation! Spending time with a holy and loving God should change us. So, for a period of 4-6 hours, kids are challenged to pray, conversationally, with a focus on personal change. With Bibles open, these kids pray - that they will become like Christ.

Times are spent in prayer one for another. The "prayer chair" invites vulnerability and teaches the power of interceding one for another. The prayer experience may involve learning to pray scripture. Teachable moments are dropped into times of prayer - spontaneously.

After a night of sleep, the kids are taken to the streets of a city - in this case, Indianapolis. With prayer assignments in hand, they proceed to fulfill missions of prayer. They pray at places of pain and places of promise. Places that emit rays of darkness and sources of light. They pray at places of power and of weakness, at churches and bars. They invite the kingdom of God to break into a time-space world. They place their feet on the earth, and pray that heaven may descend and be manifest in some form. They pray for people to come to know God's love - and truth. They pray for revival and spiritual renewal in the city. Sometimes, they weep!

Crisscrossing the city, they may meet another team on the same mission, but a different route. They may begin or end at the city center. They may pray at the corners of a downtown region, or the outskirts of the city boundaries. They may circle the city in symbolic action. Wherever they pray, they believe that they leave a deposit while in his presence. That they mark the spot. Angels may visit that place saying, "This is the spot from which the request came! It is here that the most sincere requests we have ever received ascended to the throne, asking for the Father's intervention, requesting his audience and attendance to the affairs of the city!"

We can never fully know the power of prayer. Perhaps, prayer is like a door we both set up, and open from our side, inviting the likes of angels and cherubim - indeed, of God Himself, to break into our city life. We do not want him outside, knocking of a closed door. We, by prayer, want to create multiple portals for his entrance into the life of our city.

20 Hours with God - begins with a heart focused worshipfully on God, with a mind open to transformation into His likeness. It ends with eyes open to the city, with a missional edge, and a reminder that having been with Him, we are to carry the fragrance of His presence into the city, and give the gift of prayer to others.

So many have never experienced prayer as worship, much less, prayer as a mission. Prayer in our culture has become a narrow and selfish thing. We should never stop praying for our needs or the needs of others. And nothing is too small for prayer. Indeed, the spirit of effective prayer is utter dependence upon God. But, prayer that is only about us - is not Kingdom praying. Prayer should begin with God, in his glory and radiance, in his splendor and unutterable glory. And it should end with others and our responsibility to them - especially toward the lost. The heart of prayer is worship, and its edge mission.

In the streets, praying for the city, so many kids in the 20 Hours with God experience will have their first taste of missional prayer. Hopefully, it will change them forever.

Thanks Doug...The Day finishes at the Indiana State House this Saturday at 12:30 pm where the students will be praying for leaders. Thanks to all the staff at the State House for your help.

TCW

posted by Rev. Thomas Walker @ 11:07 AM