The final week of the Wednesday night messages on our current Isaiah 56 focus is on how to respond when God prophetically reveals the dream of His heart. God sets a pattern for us in Isaiah 62 of how He shares His dreams and of what He calls us to do in response.
Isaiah 56 Focus – Week 8 – Responding to God’s Dream (59min, 16.9MB)
Week 3 of the Wednesday night messages on our current Isaiah 56 focus is on what that promise means related to the role of the Church in the earth as a sacred assembly where God dwells and where God releases His government through intercession.
Isaiah 56 Focus – Week 3 – Governmental Intercession (62min, 17.6MB)
Week three the focus is on the Church’s role in the earth. Again, there is some background thoughts and verses, and then passages to meditate on. Return to these as often as you like (our suggestion is every day during this period!), dialog with the Lord about what they mean to Him, use the questions at the bottom as fuel, and then pray it: God if that’s what’s in your heart than do … in me, and do … in my city and in the nations of the earth!
Week 3: The Central Role of the Church – Governmental Intercession
PDF Handout – Week 3 – Governmental Intercession
Background Verses: God’s prophetic decree that His house will be called a house of prayer for all nations also speaks to the role of the Church in the earth. Jesus, in the only two times He speaks of His “church”, describes her primary role as a governmental one – His church is to be a voice of authority that speaks of things on earth and things move in heaven and speaks of things in heaven and things move on earth. The word we translate church is ekklēsia and speaks of an assembly gathered to make governmental decisions. (more…)
For the next 8 weeks, the Wednesday night message will be tracking with the weekly focus for these 56 days of praying the promise of Isaiah 56 that God would raise up His house of prayer.
Week 1’s focus is on what that promise means related to the identity of the Church as a Royal Priesthood.
Isaiah 56 Focus – Week 1 – Priesthood (54min, 15.5MB)
Part 5 in a series on Foundations for Intercession.
As we finish this series on intercession, we’re looking at what it means to live in the authority that God has given us, again in the context of relationship. Our authority doesn’t come from who we are, but from who we are to Him. It’s not a legal arrangement that grants us authority but rather the way that God’s heart is moved over us and His delight in displaying His love toward us by backing the desires of our hearts when they’re in agreement with His.
Understanding authority gives us more than just confidence to pray bold prayers, it shapes our whole life into one lived expecting our Father to have our back. It reshapes our priorities when we truly believe that our created purpose and our way forward in all that God has put in our hearts, is to move the heart the God.
Foundations for Intercession – pt5 – Friendship: Authority (22.3MB 72min+ministry time)
Part 4 in a series on Foundations for Intercession.
As we continue to unfold what a practical life of friendship with God looks like, we move past inquiring and the searching out of God’s heart, to the issue of agreement and our call to walk in truth. God desires for us, as friends, to know His heart, and God desires for us, as friends, to honor His heart and stand for His heart and fight for His heart.
With the privilege of knowing God’s heart, comes the responsibility of stewarding God’s emotions. The Lord of the universe has chosen to make Himself vulnerable for the sake of love, so that He could have a bride who knows what He loves and values and chooses to love and value the same.
Holiness is not about following a set of rules but about honoring a heart. It’s about the glory of how God loves us that makes even the little things an opportunity to honor and bless Him and to move His heart.
Foundations for Intercession – pt4 – Friendship: Agreement (22.3MB 75min+ministry time)
Part 3 in a series on Foundations for Intercession.
In these next few sessions, we’re unfolding what a life of Friendship with God actually consists of. This message is about the call to “inquire in His temple” – to talk to God about His heart and to become a student of His emotions. As the identity of friendship becomes real to us, all of life reorients around a single desire – to simply come to know and understand our Friend. That desire, in turn, changes how we view day-to-day life, and particularly, how we approach Scripture.
Foundations for Intercession – pt3 – Friendship: Inquiring (21.3MB 70min+ministry time)
Part 2 in a series on Foundations for Intercession.
Our hearts can’t really enter into intercession, without first believing certain critical things about our God, our world and our crisis. We have to believe in an all-good, all-powerful God. Which means that we have to wrestle with the injustice and suffering that is so clearly present in our world and what it is that we’re supposed to do with that. The answer is found in who our God is and where this is all going.
Foundations for Intercession – pt2 – Worldview (19.7MB 59min+ministry time)
As we pursue growing in the spirit of prayer, we’re starting a new series on Foundations for Intercession.
This first session is about our foundational vision for what intercession is about and why God wants us to enter in to it. Intercession is intensely personal to God. It’s about more than just effective ministry. The best fuel for a life of intercession is an intensely relational vision for why we do it. It’s about our hearts connecting with God’s. It’s about God’s desire for friends.
Foundations for Intercession – pt1 – Vision (21.1MB 64min+ministry time)
Part 10 in a series on the Upper Room Discourse and Jesus’ teaching on: Simple Faith
In the final part of this series, we look at what Jesus’ teaching on asking tells us about how to develop a life of prayer. Jesus tells us a lot about what our perspective on prayer ought to be, what to be asking for, and how to be asking that helps us enter into a continual, joy-filled life of asking and receiving.
Burning Hearts Gathering – 10/17/12 – Asking and a Life of Prayer (20.0MB 70min)
