Photo credit: MojoBaer.

-Based on a prayer by R. Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810)

Ladies and gentlemen, this is my current jam whilst I am at work.  If you walk into my office and pay attention, you will hear prayer and worship as my background noise emanating from my computer.  So here, miles, and miles away, whilst diligently reading legal documents I partake of the fire of an altar that has kept burning for more than a decade.

Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’” - Matthew 21:12-13

I was reading these verses this morning and the reality and weight of these few lines settled very heavy on my heart.  MY HOUSE.........but YOU......

We often criticize and look around, spreading blame thickly among others, finding fault with all and sundry.  But these words return to haunt the heart.  It is HIS HOUSE....... but WE are making it into something else.  WE are changing it from a house of prayer to a centre of merchandise, a business, a commercial interest - anything but what it is called to be.  There is no one to look to, no crutch, no analgesic in order to unload and assuage the heaviness of these words.  I must simply embrace them, accept them.  WE have messed up royally.  WE have taken the Master's house, and converted it into a shopfront.

There is a call within these lines.  If we read them from back to front, we can sense a calling, a challenge, an admonition, to retake and reclaim our stewardship of the Lord's goods.  It is a mission that involves re- transforming the House of God from a den of robbers into a House of Prayer for all nations.

Let's get to it.

N. T. Wright is the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England.  He is a leading theologian that I am reading and learning to appreciate more and more.  In the above interview he offers the following piece of advice:

I want you to know your bibles, inside-out, upside-down, in the original languages, as thoroughly as you possibly can.

I want you to get on your knees and learn how to prayer, and not just five minutes here and there, but serious prayer for a lost world, for lost people…

I want you to learn how to love people…

If you are going to be a Christian leader …… The Bible, Prayer, and Loving people

 

So there you have it, wise words from a wise man.  Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

 

I have recently finished this gem of a book that had been lying on my humongous reading pile for too long.  I have been really impacted by the message, and the heart behind, this little red book.  For those of you who want to taste the DNA of a movement (as opposed to the structure of an organisation) this is a must-read.

Providing a slight monastic tone to the evangelical scene, it effectively captures the essence of what a "European Move of God" looks like.  I say this, not because it is confined to Europe, but really because it was birthed in Europe, and consequently carries in it much of the European Evangelical world-view, rather than its North-American siblings.

If you want to turbo-charge your prayer life and want to sign-up to a post-modern subversive resistance movement, check out Red Moon Rising - you will be blessed to read how this God-ordained "accident" happened.

Clowning in Rome - Reflections on Solitude, Celibacy, Prayer and Contemplation (By: Henri J. M. Nouwen)

Our cultures have pretty much put aside the values of solitude, celibacy, prayer and contemplation. As a result, we experience emptiness in our hearts and our relationships. Clowning in Rome will perhaps inspire us to risk to be touched by those in our homes and on our streets that we would rather put aside and forget. The homeless, belligerent, rejected, violent, lost, uncooperative, and vulnerable people are the prophets of today beckoning us to become clowns in the circus of life, where we foolishly squander our enormous energies of love and generosity. -Foreword (xviii)

... I [slowly] realized that in the great circus of [life], full of lion tamers and trapeze artists whose dazzling feats claim our attention, the real and true story was told by the clowns. Clowns are not in the centre of the events. They appear between the great acts, fumble and fall, and make us smile again after the tensions created by the heroes we came to admire. The clowns don't have it together they do not succeed in what they try to do, they are awkward, out of balance, and left-handed, but.... they are on our side. We respond to them not with admiration but with sympathy , not with amazement but with understanding, not with tension but with a smile. Of the virtuosi we say, "How can they do it?" Of the clowns we say, "They are like us." The clowns remind us with a tear and a smile that we share the same human weakness. -page 3.

The biblical text is clear, it teaches us to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thes. 5:17). Many think that this is not achievable outside of taking [wikipop]monastic [/wikipop]vows and living a [wikipop]cloistered [/wikipop]lifestyle. As for me, I believe that there is tremendous value in connecting regularly with the Heart of God, connecting several times a day - a rhythm of regularly stopping everything that you are doing and just concentrating on God's heart. Praying at fixed times during the day was by-and-large rejected by the [wikipop]Protestant Reformation[/wikipop]. A the time, anything that smelled of Rome was rejected, with it the monastic movement and its lifestyle of the [wikipop]Divine Office[/wikipop] - fixed-hour prayer. In my opinion the baby was thrown out with the dirty bath-water. However, praying at fixed times during the day was not essentially a Roman Catholic tradition, although the monastic tradition had championed it and modeled it for centuries. Fixed-hour prayer was a Jewish tradition long before it ever became a Christian one.

Evening and morning and at noon I will pray, and cry aloud, And He shall hear my voice - Psalm 55:17

In the early church the tradition of praying at fixed hours throughout the day was continued to the point where we read in Acts Chapter 3 that Peter and John performed a miracle on a lame man when they were on their way to the temple to prayer "at the hour of prayer" (Acts 3:1). I have begun an experiment with this notion of praying at fixed times during the day. I am exploring whether this lifestyle can be pursued outside of the monastic tradition - more specifically, whether this is doable whilst holding down a job, having a family, studying for a degree and also Pastoring a church.  If praying without ceasing is in the book it is something that is not only doable but necessary. This puts prayer at the centre of life. Prayer now becomes something that cannot be appended onto a busy schedule but rather something that must take the centre and have everything else revolve around it. For this to become sustainable in the long term I need to add fuel to my prayer. For this I am taking a leaf out of the monastic tradition and [wikipop search="Lectio Divina"]using the bible as a prayer book[/wikipop] to mull over the sacred text, musing, meditating and savouring every word and then praying this all back to God. If you wish to look into this further, my message included below of 30th August 2009, "3 Things to Stoke the Fire of Revival" touches on this issue as well as the power of joy and the power of thankfulness. [audio:http://media.libsyn.com/media/livingwaters/20090830m.mp3]

Things have been a bit of a blur for me lately with so much to do and so little time to do it in!  So, in the spirit of this time lapse that I find myself in (Just where did the past three weeks go?) I want to share a little on a visitor/speaker that we recently had at Living Waters Church. Wytze Valkema is an awesome guy from [wikipop]Holland [/wikipop]who leads the Daniel Prayer Network.  What does this guy do?  He prays.  That's about it.  He prays.... day-in, day-out, 24/7.  He visited us during the second week in July and I can say that I am continuing to reap the benefits from his visit......big time.  Some of the things that he spoke on really resonated in my heart and continue to speak to me even now.  This guy is really anointed and speaks with an incredible authority that can only be obtained by spending time beholding the Lord in prayer. How has he impacted me?  Although I find it hard to put into words how deeply he has spoken into my life, I guess that he has come through at a time when I needed a deep word from the Lord to change me.  Some things are hard to describe - they need to be tasted.  And so I have tasted part of the message that he has brought and it has left me hungry for more. As a direct result of his visit we are starting to see some breakthroughs in how we do [wikipop]intercession[/wikipop], and prayer, and our weekly meetings in the prayer room have taken on a very interesting dynamic.  We are also now actively looking for premises that we could use as a prayer room - a prayer room without an agenda, where the only agenda is Psalms 27:4:

One thing I have desired of the Lord, That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord All the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord, And to inquire in His temple.

One really practical consequence of this focus is that I realise that if I am going after "One thing" I cannot have a multitude of "things" on my plate.  As a result I am taking active steps to de-clutter my life right now.  This is HUGE!!!!  I am weaning myself off SO MANY to-do lists, tasks, projects, inputs, media, information sources, entertainment, etc. in order to free my time to live a lifestyle of One Thing.  That's my big take-home benefit from Wytze's visit.  I encourage you to do a similar personal audit to see how many "things" you need to deal with.

Hi friends, just received this prayer request for Bill Johnson.  Please pray - thanks! ----------- Friends and family, This week we had a surprising health situation come up with my Dad, Bill Johnson of Bethel Church in Redding. So I am writing to give you an update and a target for prayer. Last week, Bob Jones called and was concerned about my dad's health. As a result of Bob's call, my dad went to the doctor to have some things checked on. He has had a hernia in the area of the abdomen that has caused some issues and discomfort. In checking out the hernia, the doctors felt a surgery was needed the next day to fix it and felt good about the recovery. In preparing for the surgery, they ran a routine blood test and had to cancel the surgery due to his being anemic. This set off another series of tests to determine what was going on. One of the tests involved checks for colon cancer, and it happened this morning. The results from this test show that his colon is in excellent health and he has no cancer. So, Yea GOD!! They are going to run some more tests to see why he is anemic. I had a dream last night and in the dream, my neighbor was standing by his barbeque and there were some pretty big flames coming out of it. I was concerned that the flames would start a fire on my property. So I went and talked to my neighbor, and he insisted that everything was fine. So I went back to my property, and the flames got bigger, and the wind started to blow the flames onto my property. Now I was really concerned, and I told him that he needed to do something about his barbeque, but he insisted that everything was OK. Then, out of nowhere, all these catholic nuns showed up on my property with rakes and shovels and they were making a fire line of protection around my property. Part of Bob Jones' warning was that the prayers of the church would be crucial to victory. So we are asking that you continue to pray for perfect health and life in my dad's body-that the hernia and anemia situations would quickly be healed and resolved. We are also asking that you pray from a position of strength and faith in the goodness of God for our family as a whole. Thank you. We will keep you updated as we know that so many of you are partnered with us in the goodness of the Kingdom. Blessings, Eric Johnson Bethel Church