Thursday, May 15, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
10 days of day and night in the "tent of meeting"
view video
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Winter Update '07-'08
This has been an exciting season of the Lord opening doors for the gospel!
of the gospel into the mission field, marketplace, universities, and into houses of prayer. The interns graduate on March 30th and will restart with a fresh batch of interns on September 1st. To find out more about the program and what we have been doing you can check out some of my earlier blogs or check out the burn internship. I have posted our promotional video on my blog under Burn Internship Promo. Check it out!Bosnia and Israel
There are only about 1,000 believers estimated to live in the entire nation of Bosnia. This infant church was established in the late 90's after war and genocide tore through the land. We had the p
rivilege of ministering to the church in the capital city of Sarajevo. The team spent our days in "soaking prayer" (prophecy, healing and deliverance) over as many people as we could fit into the schedule. We had pastors driving van loads of their leaders over four hours to have our team to pray over them. In the evenings we had the opportunity to teach and preach as the churches from around the nation gathered together to hear. It was an honor to be able impart to this young church, by the Spirit, what the Lord has given us in the realm of worship, intercession, intimacy, and supernatural ministry. After every teaching session we ran an corporate intercession set, training the pastors and leaders of the nation on how to run corporate worship and intercession with their congregations. On the last night many of the main pastors and leaders brought their congregations and gathered together in the spirit of Joel 2:12-17 to cry out for their nation and for the Lord to pour out His Spirit. As we joined with the apostolic leaders of the nation of Bosnia, high praise and intercession began to fill the heavens over Sarajevo and a cloud of smoke (glory) began to fill the building where we were gathered. I believe that this was a significant and historic gathering for the church in Bosnia. Little did we know that a few months later that the nation would be caught up in the tensions of ethnic division once again.After Bosnia we flew to Israel. We wanted the interns to not only experience the sights of Israel but encounter the heart of the man who sits at the right hand of the Father of glory who is "exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion" (Zech 1:14) We spent the first half of our trip in the north of Israel - Galilee region. We stood at the Lebanonese-Israeli border and prayed for
the peace of Jerusalem and the middle east. The interns had the opportunity to spend a few days on the Sea of Galilee where Jesus spent most of His life and ministry. Then we traveled up to Jerusalem for the last week of our trip. The team had the privilege of serving Rick and Patti Ridings by running prayer sets at Succat Hallel a 24-7 house of prayer right outside the Old City Jerusalem. These watchmen have been faithfully standing on the wall of Jerusalem day and night literally fulfilling Isaiah 62:6. We also worked with Jaffa Gate Ministries, a outreach to the homeless and poor on the streets of Jerusalem. The Lord divinely connected us with a young couple in Bethlehem who are starting and Iris Ministry base therein the West Bank. The have been going into the refugee camps and building relationships with the Hammas leaders by and the Palestinians by radical acts of love and mercy; healing the blind, lame, sick and taking care of the widow and the orphan. Their vision is to buy an old hospital property to convert into an orphanage for Palestinians! The interns were profoundly effected by the their time in Israel and have been wounded with Jesus' heart for His people and for the situation there in the middle east.
Awaken the Dawn
Compassion/Justice. We are not at a shortage for conferences and events in America. Our aim was not to put on another "youth conference" but to gather together in the spirit of Joel 2 to fast and pray and cry out to the Lord for mercy on this nation. There have been over 53 million abortions in the United States since 1973, a a billion dollar pornography industry coming out of L.A. polluting the earth (which makes more annually than the NFL, NBA, and MLB combined), and our universities over-run with every lofty thought and philosophy that lifts itself up against the knowledge of God. We believe we are in an hour of crisis in the western world; impending judgement and consequently military crisis and our only hope is to heed the call of the prophet Joel to gather together in fasting, weeping and repentance crying out for mercy. We need a wake-up call to the hour we live in and Awaken The Dawn serves as a trumpet to this reality. About a thousand people gathered together in this "solemn assembly" to seek His face, hear the word of the Lord, and encounter Jesus as we rend our hearts. I encourage you to study Joel 2:12-17 and the Lord's response in 2:28-29. We believe that this is the call of the Lord for this hour. For more info click here.Saturday, March 1, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Encountering Jesus in the Word
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Night and Day Prayer in the 20th Century
In 1973 David Yonggi Cho, Pastor of the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, established a Prayer Mountain in night and day prayer. The Prayer Mountain was soon attracting over a million visitors per year, as people would spend retreats in the prayer cells provided on the mountain. Cho had a commitment to continuous prayer, to faith and to
establishing small discipleship cells in his church. Perhaps as a result, Cho’s church rapidly expanded to become the largest church congregation on the globe, with membership now over 780,000.
On September 19, 1999, the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Missouri, started a prayer and worship meeting that has continued for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week ever since. With a similar vision to Zinzendorf, that the fire on the altar should never go out,
there has never been a time when worship and prayer has not ascended to Heaven since that date.
At the same time in 1999, a movement of continual prayer erupted in Europe known as 24-7 prayer (www.24-7prayer.com). This movement of ceaseless prayer has seen 24-7 prayer rooms emerge in many nations. Right now the prayer and worship movement is reaching unprecedented levels globally. This is not hype, but a widely acknowledged reality being orchestrated by God for the salvation and healing of the nations. On the Global Day of Prayer over 250 million people gathered on one day to pray for global harvest. There are currently night and day prayer rooms in many major cities across the earth from Jerusalem to Seoul to Washington, D.C.
Now through a series of clear words from the Lord, the Fredericksburg Prayer Furnace is being developed to facilitate sustained, creative, effective prayer and worship with a missional focus in the Fredericksburg region!
Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians
A. Zinzendorf’s Early Years
The Reformation of the sixteenth century saw much needed reform enter the European Church, which also caused the closing of many monasteries that had become spiritually dead. The next great champion of Night and Day prayer would not appear until the start of the eighteenth century—Count Nicholas Ludwig Von Zinzendorf.
Zinzendorf was born in 1700 to an aristocratic but pious family. His father died when he was only six weeks old. The young boy was therefore brought up by his grandmother, a well known leader of the Pietist movement and friendly with the established leader of the Pietists and young Zinzendorf’s Godfather, Phillipp Spener. Growing up in the midst of such passion for Jesus,
Zinzendorf speaks of his early childhood as a time of great piety. “In my fourth year I began to seek God earnestly, and determined to become a true servant of Jesus Christ.”
From the age of ten, Zinzendorf was tutored at the Pietist school of Halle under the watchful eye of Augustus Francke, another leader of the Pietists. There he formed a school club which lasted all his life, The Honourable Order of the Mustard Seed. After several years at Halle, Zinzendorf’s uncle considered the young Count too much of a Pietist and had him sent to Wittenberg to learn jurisprudence, so that he might be prepared for court life. Soon the young Count was accepted in various circles of society in Europe. He kept these connections for the rest of his life, however his position in the Dresden Court and future plans for Saxon Court life as Secretary of State would not be fulfilled.
B. The Moravians and Herrnhut
In 1722, Zinzendorf bought the Berthelsdorf estate from his grandmother and installed a Pietistic preacher in the local Lutheran church. That same year Zinzendorf came into contact with a Moravian preacher, Christian David, who persuaded the young Count of the sufferings of the persecuted Protestants in Moravia. These Moravians known as the Unitas Fratrum were the remains of John Huss’ followers in Bohemia. Since the 1600s, these saints had suffered under the hands of successive repressive Catholic monarchs. Zinzendorf offered them asylum on his
lands. Christian David returned to Bohemia and brought many to settle on Zinzendorf’s estate, forming the community of Herrnhut, "The Watch of the Lord.” The community quickly grew to around three hundred. Yet due to divisions and tension in the infant community, Zinzendorf gave up his court position and became the leader of the brethren, instituting a new constitution for the community.
C. The Hundred-Year Prayer Meeting and Subsequent Missions
A new spirituality now characterized the community, with men and women being committed to bands or choruses to encourage one another in the life of God. August of 1727 is seen as the Moravian Pentecost. Zinzendorf said August 13th was "a day of the outpourings of the Holy
Spirit upon the congregation; it was its Pentecost." Within two weeks of the outpouring, twenty-four men and twenty-four women covenanted to pray “hourly intercessions,” thus praying every hour around the clock. They were committed to see that “The fire must be kept burning on the altar continuously; it must not go out” (Leviticus 6:13). The numbers committed to this endeavor soon increased to around seventy from the community. This prayer meeting would go non-stop for the next one hundred years and is seen by many as the spiritual power behind the impact the Moravians had on the world.
From the prayer room at Herrnhut came a missionary zeal which has hardly been surpassed in
church history. The spark initially came from Zinzendorf’s encounter in Denmark with Eskimos who had been converted by Lutherans. The Count returned to Herrnhut and conveyed his passion to see the Gospel go to the nations. As a result, many of the community went out into the world to preach the gospel, some even selling themselves into slavery in order to fulfill the great commission. This commitment is shown by a simple statistic. Typically, when it comes to world missions the Protestant laity to missionary ratio has been 5000:1. The Moravians however saw a much increased ratio of 60:1. By 1776, some 226 missionaries had been sent out from the community at Herrnhut. It is clear through the teaching of the so-called “Father of Modern
Missions”, William Carey, that the Moravians had a profound impact on him in regard to their zeal for missionary activity. It is also through the missions-minded Moravians that John Wesley came to faith. The impact of this little community in Saxony which committed to seek the
face of the Lord day and night has truly been immeasurable.
