Step 5 – Share the vision with your church pastor
When you and your prayer partners sense the time is right, please share with your pastor the vision of building a House of Prayer. Getting your pastor on board is crucial in transforming your church into a House of Prayer.
Acts 6:4 tells us the two priorities of the apostles were to give themselves “continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”
Pastors need to champion the value of prayer, preach on prayer, lead all major prayer gatherings and lead at least one weekly prayer meeting. This models the priority of prayer and helps pastors remain faithful in their calling to be praying leaders.
Tell your pastor about the upcoming 40 day prayer initiative PRAYING 4 H.O.P.E. (Houses of Prayer Everywhere). Pray that God will put it on his heart to join and also encourage the whole church to join.
Additional Reading:
“Igniting the Flame: Building Houses of Prayer” – by: Martin K. USA
Matthew 18:20 – “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
A. T. Pierson makes this insightful observation, “From the Day of Pentecost, there has not been one spiritual awakening in any land that has not begun in a union of prayer. Though only among two or three; no such outward, upward movement has continued after such prayer meetings have declined.”
Revivals are born in prayer and sustained by prayer. The same can be said for Houses of Prayer. It is very important to begin a daily prayer call when building a House of Prayer.
Our church has a morning and evening prayer call where members meet via phone. We are now getting ready to begin a second prayer call in the morning at 6 am because there are too many who join at 5:30 am.
These are the simple steps to starting a daily prayer call:
1. Pray! Pray! Pray! Go forward on your knees remembering that when man works, man work. But when man prays, God works. The devil is not happy about prayerless churches becoming vibrant and Spirit-filled houses of prayer. He will fight tooth and nail to make sure you fail. But if you move forward on your knees, God will work for you and send the praying, Spirit-filled laborers that are needed to accomplish the work.
2. Give a copy of the PRAYING 4 H.O.P.E. to all your members including your pastor.
3. Ask the pastor or church board for permission to have a meeting during Sabbath lunch or afternoon to meet with the members who share the burden of building a House of Prayer.
4. For one week leading up to the meeting, pray that God would send people who will be willing to join you in paying the price for revival. I spent a week praying together with a brother that God would send us 20 individuals. I felt very blessed to see 25 people show up for our meeting.
5. At the meeting pray together and remind them about the importance of starting up a daily prayer call.
At our meeting we decided to begin a daily prayer call that meets every morning for half an hour at 5:30 am and an evening prayer call that would meet for half an hour at 8 pm Mondays through Fridays. We also decided to open up the prayer calls to those in small neighboring churches that didn’t have the man power to begin their own prayer calls.
It’s such a blessing to unite with members to pray together. We have a few members who join every morning and evening. We have couples who lead out together where the husband will say the prayer and share the devotional and then the wife will lead out in the united prayer. We are seeing the Spirit of God bring healing to our homes and to our church as we unite in prayer. It is true that you cannot hate someone you are praying for or praying with.
We have now begun a Sabbath morning prayer meeting at 8:30 am. When we first began it, we prayed that God would bless us with 30 people. We only had around 15 people. But we were not discouraged. We continued to pray for 30 people. After a few weeks we had close to 30 people. We are not praying for more than 40 people.
It’s been said that “a family that prays together stays together.” It’s the same for the church. The church that prays together stays together. Our prayer is that all churches would become Houses of Prayer.
