Month: Jun 2010

Welcome to Shekinah: 24/7 prayer center

Beth Gray - blogger, coach, consultantLeave a comment

Thank you for visiting Shekinah 24/7. 

I had some serious doubts as to my sanity and whether or not I should even think about establishing a 24 hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week prayer center.  In fact, I wondered if it wasn’t just fanciful thinking that I should organise an ecumenical group of volunteers (and a place) to pray.  Just the over-whelming size of the task is daunting.  I will admit, the moment I voiced the idea, thoughts starting plaguing and bombarding me with reasons why it couldn’t be done. 

The next day, when I was searching for why I shouldn’t do it, I read Haggai 1: 4-8.  And there’s the answer I didn’t want to receive: 

Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin? Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways.” 

“You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough.  You drink, but never have your fill.  You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”  This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways.” 

“Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honoured”, says the Lord. 

So, I guess I have to stop procrastinating and make this 24/7 prayer room a reality.  I thought about naming it the Prayer Closet, since Jesus (in teaching us how to prayer) tells us to go into our room, close the door and pray (Matthew 6:6), but the idea of Shekinah is much bigger than that.  It’s about reviving all believers, irrespective of denominations.  It’s about recreating the revival of Zinzendorf in Moravia in 1727 and the 100 years that followed that revival.  It’s about the Wesley revival of the Methodist Church, and getting all of the denominations united in prayer for our country, for its leaders and for the needs of each man, woman and child in this country.

For more information about Zinzendorf, check out http://www.openheaven.com/library/history/zinzendorf.htm

special guidance, Holy Spirit, power, motivation, faith, spiritual discernment, prayer

24/7 Prayer closet

Beth Gray - blogger, coach, consultantLeave a comment

I need prayer for God’s special guidance and for a special dose of the Holy Spirit’s power: motivation, faith and spiritual discernment. I have been studying prayer, and was lead to look at Zinzendorf’s 24/7 X 100 year prayer room.
See: http://www.openheaven.com/library/history/zinzendorf.htm (thanks Maire). This catapulted the Methodist revival, among other things.

And i have been so touched by this that I really feel I am being lead to organise a “prayer closet” as a real physical space, where I organise people to pray 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, until Jesus comes again. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by the idea… I don’t know right now where to do it, how to do it, and all the technical/admninistrative details of how it will work.

But I am very confident that God wants us to pray.
I would like special enlightenment that this is God’s will and not me just trying to do something in the flesh… and that being God’s Will, that I will allow HIM to take the credit, that I will give Him the glory, that I will allow Him to use the poeple that He would have involved in it, even if it ends up being taken over by other people to be done; especially if I am only supposed to broadcast the idea and not run with it. That whatever the role is that I am supposed to play in this, that I will humbly bow to God’s will…

This would be an ecumenical prayer room – for all denominations (and I want to get volunteers from ALL of the churches in town, irrespective of denomination), so that we can have true unity in the Spirit.

I have felt really pressed to make 1 Corinthians 12: 12-13 come true in this place: “For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.”

I need your prayers to bring glory to God; to bring unity to our community, to impress upon all of our churches the importance of prayer and the outpouring of his Holy Spirit upon ALL of the churches due to this dedication to prayer.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays