You Can Tell How Popular Jesus Is by Who Comes to Pray !

"You can tell how popular a church is by who comes on Sunday morning.  You can tell how popular the pastor or evangelist is by who comes on Sunday night.  But you can tell how popular Jesus is by who comes to the prayer meeting." (Jim Cymbala).

It seems Jesus popularity is growing.  This month we have averaged about 430 people at our Monday night prayer gathering.  People come expectant of God showing up and being present as we seek Him in prayer.  It seems our expectancy is met with Gods faithfulness.

This past Monday our logistics people were scrambling as we added a ton of chairs in the rink to make room for all who came.  The back story to all this is that at the end of last year and the first of this year we had an attendance at prayer of about 140 people.  We sensed God was leading us to pray that by the end of 2010 we would have 300 in attendance at our corporate prayer gathering on Monday nights.  We are about 1/2 way through the year and God has done abundantly more than we could ask or think.  Attendance is not our goal.  Seeing Gods kingdom extended on the earth is our goal and we know that the more people are involved in prayer, the more we are inviting Gods influence into our existence and He will lead us to extending His kingdom.

One of my favorite times each week is getting to adore God.  It is an aspect of prayer that is easy to miss.  Too often we think of prayer as asking God for things.  The basis of prayer is being connected with God.  Now asking Him for things is part of that connectedness but only one aspect.  There is something about singing songs to God that connects our hearts with His.  I remember reading a book by Jack Hayford on worship.  He says that worship invites and invokes the presence of God.  I believe this is true.  Something about worship connects our hearts with Gods presence and opens our humanity up to the realities of God.  Adoration this past week was sweet.   You could sense Gods presence being a part of the praises of His people.

We prayed for two groups of people this past week.  The first group was people who someone in their past speak some type of discouragement to them.  "Your stupid", "You'll never amount to anything", "Loser", words that are far from Gods truth for us and have been planted in our minds and hearts can plague people and keep them discouraged for a lifetime.  The challenge was for people to be able to accept the truths of Gods word like "you are children", "God loves you", "you are the apple of His eye".  People who struggled with this stood as others prayed for Gods truth to be strengthened in their minds and hearts.

The second group of people we prayed for were those whose past was influencing their future.  There was something in the past they were having a hard time letting go of and it was hindering them pursuing Gods best for their future.  We gathered around those as they stood and prayed for God to help them move on.

I then shared some definitions of revival such as:

Revival is when the Spirit pours out to those in the church and then it runs over to people in community getting saved.

True revival is that divine moment when God bursts upon the scene and displays His glory.

We cannot organize revival, but we can set our sails to catch the wind from Heaven when God chooses to blow upon His people once again.

I also shared on story of Duncan Campbell and the revival at Bernaray.

We then let people come to the mics and pray paragraph prayers asking God to send revival to us.

We all prayed together over some various corporate prayer issues.  And we ended the night by gathering around the rink (we meet in a skating rink).  There were enough people for three circles around the area.  I kept thinking "Our circle or prayer" is growing.  Our lead pastor Chris Galanos prayed over everyone to finish the evening.

At the end, as we always do, prayer teams were around the edge of the front to pray specifically for people.

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Elements that worked for the evening:

Having someone read a verse to begin prayer with and then pray for our time.

Ministry time went really well as probably 75 people stood for prayer.

I ask that noone who often prays on the mic come forward tonight and that new people would pray.  we had 10 people who don't often come to the mic pray.

Having two of our prayer team members stand at the open mics to help people be organized and be there if anyone starts to pray way too long.

Keeping lights low during the devotional prayer time that proceeds the actual prayer service.