We’re back after a little summer break. I hope that your re-entry into Fall has been filled with much grace. As you resettle into the rhythms of school, work, and other responsibilities, remember that you don’t have to take it on all at once. If you’re already feeling a bit overwhelmed, give yourself permission to step back for a moment, reflect, and recalibrate.
This week of Unbroken Prayer has been too marvelous to describe. The fixed hours of prayer where pockets of 30-50 people gather at a time have been unhurried, peaceful, and needed. Sarah and I were able to start off the 144 hours in the Prayer Room, and the time went too fast. I realized in that short hour that there was so much that I was carrying inside of me. I experienced what David composed in Ps 142:1-2 when he was hiding in a cave, “With my voice I cry out to the LORD; with my voice I plead for mercy to the LORD. I pour out my complaint before him; I tell my trouble before him.”
What an honor and dignity to have an audience with the Most High God.
This week has tuned me to the frequency of what the Spirit is doing in and around me. As I was explaining to a friend, it’s not that I’ve slowed down necessarily (I think that my pace and presence has been in step with the work of God.) Rather, I am experiencing a renewed sensitivity to his heart and his desires in my meetings, in my writing, in my leading. There’s a peace that is undergirding me…whether in prayers of gratitude or in travailing prayers that flow in tears.
What is Travailing prayer? Years ago, I was confronted with this question. I had just heard someone mention the term, followed by the bold suggestion, “God comes where He is wanted.” It was spoken in the context of an awakening movement of God in our day. I walked to the prayer room, and just sat and wept. I couldn’t put together words. There was a groan, longing for the Spirit to move in our church, in my life, in my world.
A day later, I fell upon a short little book by David Thomas, “To Sow for a Great Awakening: A Call to Travailing Prayer.” Thomas described travailing prayer, “a kind of spiritual posture found among some who were the catalytic core – a spirit of urgency and audacity, an attitude of brokenness and desperation, a manner of prayer that could be daring and agonizing…like the Holy Spirit groaning through them, like a woman travailing in labor. Travailing prayer is the expression of the deep longings and groaning within us, asking God to birth life, renewal, resurrection even in the broken and dead places of our world.
Another way to describe it: desperately pleading for God to send rain on a fallow and parched land.
Since that day, I have been praying, through my tears, for the marriages of our church. It has been, and continues to be, my travailing prayer for our church. Psalm 126:5 “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.” That is my deep belief. I have carried that over the Weeks of Unbroken Prayer in years past.
But this year is different. In Tuesday morning’s prayer time, I sensed the Lord inviting me to take my prayers out of my closet and to gather the faithful laborers and leaders who have been praying and working similarly. After taking the time to discern and sit in what I was sensing, I believe that it is the right step of obedience to call our ministry leaders and any and all who have been longing for God to move in our marriages to a time of concerted prayer.
So Wednesday night, we’ll gather after the 7:00 evening prayer time. That will finish at 7:30, and there’s always space to linger. Beginning at 8:00pm, all the ministry laborers who can make it will come together for a time to contend for our marriages and the marriages of Grace. I believe God has given me a specific verse from his Word to lean into. I’ll share it tonight. And we’ll pray until we sense the Lord releasing us.
If this at all stirs you, you are welcome to join us. I don’t know where it will go from here. I don’t have a strategic plan…just a travailing prayer as we ask God to do what only he can do.
We’re making our way towards Friday night, where we will gather to pray all together and give testimony to the God who hears, the God who sends rain on the earth. That starts at 7 pm.
This weekend, I’ll be kicking off a 3-week vision series on the journey of a disciple, the ways God leads us and forms us into the image of his Son. As well, it’s an all-family Sunday, so all the generations of our church will be gathered together.
If you haven’t joined in on a space yet, this is your invitation. It’s such a sweet and welcoming environment – whether you have been praying with Jesus for decades or whether you’re just starting out. I know God is welcoming you. Come be with us.
Praying for you…
Mitchel