The Process of Monday Nights: Trying to Let God Lead

I always get questions about Monday Night Prayer at Experience Life.  Here is a common one "is Monday Night Prayer led by God or do you plan it ?  My answer would be yes and yes.  I have found both planning and flexibility on the evening to be valuable in hearing God and allowing this prayer time to be led by God.

About every six months I develop a prayer template to use for Monday nights.  I pray and ask God to lead me in developing that template.  I also am attentive to what God is saying to our lead pastor, other pastors and staff, and key prayer leaders within the church.

Currently, we have a general topic of focus for each of the four weeks of the month that we pray for.  If a month has a fifth week I use that week to be creative.  Week one the focus is on vision, week two on specific ministries of the church, week three missions and the city, and week four is for revival and intimacy with God.

Beyond this focus, I have four key areas to focus on each of these nights.  I use the ACTS prayer model for these.  For the A (adoration) we have a musical set with some variation.  We may read a passage of the Bible to begin prayer with and then sing three songs.

After worship we try and listen.  We take a moment to hear what God is saying to us as we have connected with Him in our worship.  Part of this process is I have a core of people with a heart for prayer that help put Monday night together.  These 10 people are listening to God and when I have us wait on God, these guys know they can approach me with a direction for prayer or an inclination they have of something that needs to be said.  Many times during this time we try and have a time of C(confession).  I will initiate people asking God if their is anything that they need to confess and ask for forgiveness about.  A bulk of this would be initiated by a certain passage of Gods word.

Our next step is T (thanksgiving).  We share how many people committed their lives to Christ the previous week and some answers to prayer.  We try and capture both individual answers and corporate answers to prayer the previous weeks.  Many Mondays we will have someone share a story of how God has impacted them.

After thanksgiving we move to S (supplication).  This is a time we are corporately praying for various prayer topics.  We might have people who have been asked to come up and pray beforehand over specific things.  There are nights we will have an open mic, where people are invited to pray paragraph prayers about topics such as missions, revival, or people getting saved in our city.

We follow supplication with ministry prayer.  We will have specific needs stand for prayer.  We might pray for a certain segment of the marketplace.  After fathers day we might pray for all the fathers.  At other times we pray for various ministries of our church and the people there that night who represent those ministries.

Having said all of the above, there are nights when some topic will be strongly on my mind during worship or one of our prayer team will come up and tell me something God is speaking to them.  At this point we may change a little of the night up or a lot.

I really like something Jim Cymbala says in Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire "The format of a prayer meeting is not nearly important as it's essence ------ touching the Almighty, crying out with ones whole being. ... The atmosphere of the meeting may vary, what matters most is that we encounter the God of the universe not each other."

Newly added in June
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We have added a small intercessory time each week 15 minutes before prayer.  A group of our Monday night leadership team people gather at the front of the building by the stage and join hands and pray over the service each Monday night.  They will also pray for me or anyone else leading that night.  This time of prayer is led by our prayer intern: Matt Martin.

Prayer: Part of our Identity

I was reading through Galatians 5 this last week and it dawned on me, prayer is a core part of the dna of our identity in Christ.  Galatians 5 is about the battle of the old sinful nature and the new reborn nature we have when we commit our lives to Christ.  God has given us some catalysts to walk in this new nature.

The three core catalyst I think of that help us live in this new nature is being in Gods word, spending time with Him in prayer, and  worshiping Him.  These catalyst of the new life promote our awareness of God.  These three illumine our minds to ways that are not our natural bent.  They also awaken our hearts to what is on Gods heart and they strengthen our resolve to pursue God.

With that in mind I realize even more how powerful corporate prayer is.  Chris Galanos, our lead pastor, says "closet prayer changes individuals while corporate prayer changes cities".  It dawned on me that if individual prayer is a catalyst that illumines our minds to Gods ways, awakens our hearts to what is on Gods heart and strengthens our resolve to follow Jesus, then corporate prayer illumines a communities mind to Gods ways, it awakens a communities heart to whats on Gods heart and strengthens a communities resolve to follow Jesus.  Prayer is catalytic to the community and the community becomes a movement.  They are a people on mission empowered by God.

There it is.  The reason so many people are coming to our prayer gatherings is that there is a movement of God that is empowered by coming into Gods presence each Monday night and realizing that this empowering by God is the key to the wondrous way God is moving at Experience Life.

Monday night we reached another threshold, as our attendance was around 475 people in the rink and that doesn't count children that we are teaching about prayer in classes.

We prayed portions of Galatians 5, especially about walking by the Spirit and not walking by our sinful nature.

We had the privilege of having Andy Hurst and some of his family join us.  Andy is the new pastor at St. Lukes Methodist church in town.  We spent time praying over Andy and his family.

We spent time praying for our lifehouse leaders and life transformation group leaders.  We had people who were ending something in their lives stand and we prayed for their transitions.  We had people stand who were beginning something and prayed for Gods favor in that beginning.

We ended the night praying for anyone who wanted to hear God in a clearer way, so basically we prayed for the whole crowd.  And then we had people available up front in our prayer teams to pray for any other needs at the end of prayer.
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Some things that worked well for us tonight:

• Many more people are coming up to our prayer teams at the end of the service.  I thinking it is becoming an accepted part of our prayer culture on Monday night.
  
• Using the Jesus Culture DVD "Where you go, I'll go" during our pre-prayer time seem to get people ready to worship and pray.
  
• Having three leaders come up and pray over people who were beginning, ending, and wanting to hear God more clearly worked well.  We had two mics and just passed them to those praying over the crowd.
  
• Having Band begin to play, but also having someone encourage people to prepare their hearts for God tonight before worship kicked off worked well.

A Move of God Only Comes Through Prayer

The last Monday night of each month, we are trying to take more time for intimacy with God and spend time asking Him to send the power of His Spirit that we can fulfill his purposes.  We recognized this monday night was right in the middle of the Pentecost season.  Pentecost was when 120 ordinary people were encountered by the power of the Holy Spirit and were used by God to launch the church age.

These 120 again were just ordinary people who had gathered together for prayer.  The answer came as God equipped them and gave them a mission.  The first fruits of that mission happened then and there, 3000 were saved in one day.

With Acts 2 in mind we began to pray.  For us prayer begins with adoration.  We had a four song worship set.  One great song in that set was "Dance with Me".  This song quotes many verses from the Song of Solomon which is said to be the greatest love song ever.  Sometimes it is called the Song of Songs.   It is obvious, the people at Monday night prayer love to worship.  One of these nights we are going to have a night of worship for all of prayer.  It's funny because every once in while someone will say to me "Why do we sing on Monday nights, doesn't that take away our prayer time ?"  I get the opportunity to share with them how much worship through singing is prayer.  Prayer at its deepest core is relationship with God.  What better way to be in relationship with Him than to let Him speak words of love and adoration to Him.  I have found that this is the avenue that takes us to the place of His heart and He lets us know then what is on His heart to pray.

We opened mics tonight and let anyone with a prayer for revival or asking God to fill us come up and pray.  We spent about 15 - 20 minutes here.  I was so encouraged that many in their teens and college years were the ones praying for God to move in our city.

Prayer that stayed in my mind for the night: A prayer for another great awakening like the second great awakening, a prayer that we would seek revival not just for one hour a week at prayer but that we would have lifestyles of revival and another prayer for God to bring His light in dark places within us and our city.

Parker Foster shared about being a college senior and how he got sick and was out of the loop for over a year.  He talked about how he was broken in a good way.  God dealt with pride in his life.  He told of how he began to have a real relationship with God and not just a hobby of God. 

The hour went much to quickly.  We had our prayer teams come up and saw people waiting to be prayed for.

We do understand that a move of God can't be generated by us, but that we can call out to God and ask Him to move mightily among us.
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12 people committed their lives to Christ this past week.  That is why were here.  Sharing these numbers never gets old.

Pray and Never Give Up

Luke 18:1 says "One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up."

This was the theme for Monday Night Prayer this week.  Pray and never give up.

Just coming to pray encourages us.  There is something that happens every week at our corporate prayer times.  People come up to me afterward and say something like "I came in tonight feeling blaaa and now I am pumped up again, or I was feeling so discouraged and now I have hope or I was dealing with this "thing" and now I know God is going to take care of it."  There is an element about people coming together with expectation and meeting with the King of the Universe that changes us. 

We pray for others, we pray for our services, we pray for missions in other countries, we pray for our own families and in the midst of all of this God changes us.  For me it is like coming to the well and getting a drink and being refreshed.  Connecting with Jesus in prayer and taking part in this divine relationship does something in us as well as through us.  Another picture I have of prayer is that it connects us with the river of God.  We begin to know what He is interested in and how he wants to handle various situations.  We are not relying on our own solutions.  We are encouraged to find God solutions to our lives.

Disciples should always pray and not give up.  There are hopeless situations we find ourselves in or our friends in.  Jesus encourages us to always pray.  When things don't immediately change we can have a tendency to give up.  We say often, prayer puts Gods super into our natural.  Sometimes that takes time and at other times exact timing is involved. 

After a moving worship set by the Elife Band, we moved on to pray. We prayed for Keith Beasley who was in an accident last year and has been in a coma since then.  His wife and son are left to carry on without Keith with them.  An impossible situation but God can use in great ways.

We also prayed for marriages last night.  Gods grace is not just for some marriages.  God will give his grace in any marriage situation.  We prayed that God would put His super into every specific natural situation of marriages.

We prayed for those who had walls up and could not sense the Fathers love.  Those that struggled with self hate.  We prayed God would break down any of those walls.

We also took time to pray for various missionaries on the mikes tonight.  We had about 10 - 12 people come up and do that.

We believe we are changing history one prayer at a time.
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17 first time commitments this past weekend.  God continue to bring people into your kingdom.

Adoration: Giving Prayer the Right Focus

On Monday nights we try to set up an environment that is conducive for prayer, but even more than that we try and set up an environment that is conducive for the human heart to encounter God in prayer.

Worship is at the front end of prayer.  About a year and a half ago we added worship time to the front end of prayer.  For us this usually means 3 or 4 songs that lean more toward intimacy.  There were a few comments when this happened that we were cutting down on our prayer time, but actually we were creating a time where the human heart could connect with God in Adoration and get in tune with who he is.

Many times prayer is begun from the vantage point of what we need, when in actuality the proper place to begin prayer is with a focus on who God is.  Recently I hear one of our missionaries say "Don't tell God how big your problem is, tell your problem how big your God is."  The premise of this is depending on God and putting our focus on how big he is.  We have found that at Monday Night Prayer, when we begin in worship we put our minds on how Big our God is and it brings the correct perspective to all else.

Another facet of starting prayer with Adoration is that adoration is a catalyst to connecting with God in real and tangible ways.  It is hard to fake telling God you love him.  An amazing thing happens as we begin to get vulnerable and intimate with our God, we begin to encounter His amazing love for us.  This is a place where people are truly changed.  They encounter a real love, not one told in stories, or one memorized.  It isn't a head knowledge of Gods love.  It isn't a belief that happens because of an intellectual assent to facts.  It is a true relationship, a true encounter with God.  This kind of encounter transforms us.

Another thing we have found helpful in preparing peoples hearts to focus in prayer is playing more intimate worship music before and after the actual prayer time.  The music creates an atmosphere of encounter that people pick up on as soon as they enter the building.  Again most of this music is adoration.  We have people who will come early and just sit and listen and connect with God before anything formal ever begins.

Hearing Answers to Prayer

Our Prayer time a week ago focused on a trip to India that some Experience Life people had gone on earlier this year.  We had our usual time of worship, went into some prayer topics for people to pray where they were.

The India team shared about the warfare that happened at the beginning of their trip, how God honors true obedience and how God is stirring in them a heart for peoples of the world.

As time has moved on at Experience Life we are getting to see answers to prayer we prayed in times past come to fruition now.  We have prayed that God would use us in reaching nations.  And going on two and a half years of age as a church, we have seen people go to China twice, India twice and Southern Mexico.  This year we have more trips planned to Mexico and Guatemala.  We pray that we can serve the gospel in other countries as well as our own city.

Another area that we see prayer making a difference is the number of first time commitments to Christ.  Since before Christmas the number of people that are taking that step in their lives has almost doubled from the norm before that.  It encourages us to continue to pray.  Individual prayer changes us and corporate prayer changes our cities, regions and even nations.

Our prayer target this year for Monday Night Prayer was to have over 300 in attendance.  The two previous weeks we did that.  We aren't focused on numbers, but we get excited that people are hungry to pray and seek God.  Great revivals always begin with prayer.

Awakened Hearts

This past Monday night I would characterize as a time of awakened hearts.  People are coming to our prayer times with expectant hearts.  You can sense the expectation of God showing up and moving among people.  And we are hearing tons of stories about God changing people and encouraging them in their walk with Him.

I don't know how often I have thought that a Monday night or even some of our weekend services were completely amazing and unsure how they could be topped and then to have this feeling again and again.  Monday night was one of those times.

People connected strongly in worship this past week.  Someone handed me a note and I thought it was appropriate for the service.  The gist of the note said "Tell them not to seek me for what they can get, but to seek to know me.  I desire to be a father and a friend".  We prayed that we would check our motives and be there to know Jesus more.

We prayed for our lifehouse and life transformation group leaders.  We shared how God had saved many the prior weekend and we prayed for the coming weekend.  One of our mission partners (Greg & Michelle McClanahan joined us from Chiapas Mexico.  Greg came up and shared briefly what God was doing in the ministries of Harvest Evangelistic Association.  Greg also shared about how God called him out of his own comfort zones, how he was an ordinary guy that God called to do extraordinary thing for God.  He shared about hearing Gods voice and being obedient to that voice.

We then added on this night an extra 20 - 30 minutes for people to come and call out to God.   I invited people to come up and kneel or to find postures of submittedness to God as we are calling out for revival in our city and our region.  The band came back up and led out with "Fire fall down".  Our prayer teams were on the sides to pray for people during this time.  Many came, of all ages and kneeled or prostrated themselves before God.  There was a powerful sense of His presence.  Many came and were prayed for.  It was hard to leave Monday night.

We broke our record attendance as we had 336 in the service and then probably another 60 - 70 in our children s area.  Numbers aren't what we are looking for, but when more come to pray we get excited because we know that God is faithful and will answer people who are hungry and seeking Him.

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Giving Thanks for:

27 first time commitments to Christ

Thanks: A Right Heart in Prayer

Psalms 95 pretty much sums up what our Monday Night Prayer looked like this past week. 

  ¹ Come, let us sing to the Lord!
      Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
 ² Let us come to him with thanksgiving.
      Let us sing psalms of praise to him.
 ³ For the Lord is a great God,
      a great King above all gods.

We came into the evening with thankful hearts.  We prayed, we prepared and God moved greatly upon us for an off the chain Easter.  We had over 4500 people with 124 first time commitments that we know of.  So many people were moved as we shared the story of "the" ultimate fighter, Jesus Christ.He also enabled us to go into our community and serve the with over 3200 man hours this past week. 

So we celebrated by spending 20 minutes in worship and then we allowed people to share God stories about Easter and Servolution.  We had about 10 - 15 people come to the mike and share with us.  We spent some time appreciating the many volunteers that gave so graciously of their time this past week.

Thanksgiving is a prayer that is often overlooked as prayer.  It puts our hearts in the right place before God.  Thanksgiving recognizes it is all about Him.  With thanksgiving we are reminded how God is the giver of life and grace and peace.