Wednesday Night Prayer! HEAVEN! 3/11/09

Wow! The Lord once again blew us away! Its like we are not even heading into a prayer meeting anymore. We started off with silence. We put away bibles, journals, all reading. We just sat there and asked the holy spirit to come as we listened to him. We started just letting out words that the Lord gave us. The main one was that of Isaiah 6. Were the seraph touches Isaiah's lips with the coal from the Alter. We felt the Lord was going to touch this body with the hot coal from the alter. He was going to touch us as a whole and individually. So we started off with that and then the Lord changed directions and said get everyone to start repenting for a lack of faith. And if they cant repent for having a lack of faith, then to ask for more. The bottom line was when we walked in we felt the Lord say "if you can imagine what I am going to do tonight or in your mind if you can comprehend how I am going to show up then repent.” Im not really sure what happened next. Everyone just got hit with the sound of heaven. Everywhere I looked people were getting prayer over, crying, or getting knocked out. Seriously getting knocked out in the spirit. Girls were in huddles praying over each other, then they were all laying on the ground just weeping. People were prophesying over each other and left with powerful affirmation and encouragement. I don’t think I have seen anything quite like it. This was the sound of Heaven. This next part was the biggest thing that happened in the prayer meeting. Earlier in the week the Lord gave me a vision that he would be gathering wood. And later in the meeting he would take the wood and light it on fire with the Holy Spirit and it would be a holy and pleasing aroma to him. He said that an actual burning aroma would fill the room. He then told me that we would be the wood. When everyone stopped praying, weeping, getting knocked out IT HAPPENED! I smelled the burning aroma. And that very second, Aaron Thomas ran to me from the opposite side of the room and asked if I smelled the burning aroma. Then about 5 others came and asked the same thing. I couldn’t believe it. A literal Holy aroma filled the room. I immediately turned to Isaiah 46 where it says that trees will be ablaze and water will boil at the coming of the Lord. It was unbelievable. I started to cry. IT WAS PHENOMINAL! The Lord fulfilled the vision he gave me. We then went into worship for another hour. It was like the Holy Spirit was causing a hurricane to blow through. The Lord held us in Worship until 12:30. No one left. Then everyone just laid on the floor all together. The Lord said to me after the holy storm passes through that he was going to bring the dew of heaven just like a morning after a storm. It was that. The dew of Heaven was in the room. Everyone laying around, laughing, with the peace of heaven all around. It was INCREDIBLE! What a night! What a night! GOD I AM OVERWHELMED BY YOU!

PRAYER LEADERS :)

Hey Prayer leaders!
#1 Just wanted to say thanks for loving Jesus and being willing to allow him to work through you! I am confident that he delights in each one of you and that hearts are being affected and changed through each of your obedience and humility to the plan of our Father! Isn't it awesome that Jesus empowers us to love to obey Him!

I have not been to a meeting in awhile so I just wanted to write to say Hi and share with you my thoughts as well as hopefully see how God is moving in you. Regarding prayer meeting I feel much more peaceful, confident, and secure during prayer meetings because Jesus has taught me that I am hidden in the rock. One could say I felt a lot like Gideon in Judges who was chosen by God to do something awesome but felt unequipped and insecure about the word and will of the Lord. He was afraid that what he had to offer was not enough and in all reality what we have to offer God is never enough, we always fall short of His glorious standard! In our flesh we can never fulfill the word of the Lord, but that's why Jesus left us his Spirit who equips, trains, and guilds us to do the work and will of the Lord. Thankfully we have a kind and generous God who knows the weakness of our frame and in our weakness gives us strength and courage to press into and believe upon his promises. Thus prayer was never about striving in my flesh to accomplish the word of the Lord but patiently waiting upon the Lord listening for his will and then proclaim what His spirit revealed. Prayer is neither a preformance nor a ritual manipulated by the will of man but an encounter with Jesus and evidence of the generousity of the mighty king to be glorified through his humble people. Prayer is evidence of the goodness of God and his desire to fellowship with man! So let us believe that those who wait on the Lord will not be put to shame and that we need not be discouraged nor disappointed when things dont go our way, because we are not the way He is our way!
What I have been thinking about...
All day long I am surrounded by words, from friends, family, coworkers, strangers, teachers, tons and tons of words all day long! Yet my heart has the privilege to hide the word of the Lord which lasts forever which does not fade nor is cancel by circumstance! How quick am I to receive the word of the Lord as real truth and promises for me?! Am I more willing to trust in the voice of my flesh, the voice of the professor, the voice to the preacher, the voice of a close friend, the voice of the devil. Who's voice am I listening for and not only who's voice am I listening for but who's voice do I actually believe? Its great to hear the word of God but do I receive it in my heart as truth? Or is their knowledge that has built itself up again the knowledge of Christ? Search my heart and know me Lord discern if their is any evil way, or wronkthinging concerning you, within me. For you are a majetic God able to finish the work you started so prepare your bride Lord for your return and cause us to be united and knit together in love as you have asked that we may bless you and love you like you love us! We love you Jesus.

:) Miss you all I pray all is well!
Lara

Monday Night March 30.

On Monday nights I always feel such a strong pull from the Lord to worship, to show our faces to him and give our best to him. The purpose of getting together as a group in a prayer meeting format is first and foremost to love God in worshiping in spirit and truth. So thats what we did for the first half and it was solid!

We then went into prayer for our generation. Matthew 5:13-14 was our main focus (being salt and light to the world).

On top of praying for our generation, I felt the Lord impress that it was our time to start really stepping out in faith with good deeds, generosity, and serving others. Its time for us to start walking with his power and anointing, and see friends get saved and healed. We prayed that we would have opportunities this week where we could give ourselves and serve others. James says to "Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do!"

I look forward to real acts of love spurred by the Holy Spirit! Its exciting to be a fully alive child of God!

-Josiah

Monday Night 3/16/09

How he loves us!

This night was real, simple and all about God. Tonight, I was so excited and honestly surprised by the worship that we engaged in. It was in spirit and in truth. Although the Casen Cruz band is always awesome, and I really mean that, everyone in the room was committed to worshiping God in truth. It looked like everyone felt warmth on their hearts as they continue to give to God praise. I love it when we really worship, when our hearts are connected and emotions are there because we feel and know more of the love of our God!

We then prayed Romans 12:1 "Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will." We prayed that we would walk this week in worship... our actions, our thoughts would all be our act of worship to God. On top of that, we prayed for faith that we not live conformed, and restricted by ourselves but that we would be obedient and full of faith!

I pray that the furnace would have opportunities to be broken, to serve, to love this week!

-Josiah and crew

Friday

Shalom (peace in hebrew) from Michael 'mishael' Knowlton. This is my first time posting, I hope you, theReader, get something out of and maybe even enjoy reading my posts about Friday night prayer meetings.

I'd like to start by saying that from here out I'm dedicating my posts to revealing Truth (that is, absolute truth) and the truth of how I see theFurnace;
also for that matter liberal use of parentheses (like this).
I'll try to keep my comments mostly free of spiritual jargon and capitalized words so that as you read it is clear and simple (sometimes I'll use them though, forgive me)

A brief background
I inherited Friday night leadership from Aaron 'Baby Shaq' Olson, who inherited it from David 'no consistent nickname' Perkins who inherited Tuesday night from me. This to allude to the fact that leadership is messy and inconsistent at times, if not always.

Here we go:
I'm a newcomer to Friday nights, and over the past bit I've noticed something that has been incredibly discouraging.

There
was no
prayer
happening.

Why do we call this a prayer meeting if nobody is praying?

I have been chewing on this issue for the past several months, and God revealed to me an idea.

From the perspectives of a Furnace graduate and prayer leader,
it seems like sometimes when we (we are the Church, brothers and sisters all) come to prayer meetings, we come expecting the prayer leader and others to provide an experience.

Now, reader, let me ask you,
Is this prayer?

Think about it... when you go to a prayer meeting, what is on your mind?

What happens to your heart and head?

Is it different than when you are outside of the chapel?

Why?



Should it be?



I think that what often happens when people pray at furnace prayer meetings is that we go in with a religious mindset, one that seems to say "oh, now I'm at a prayer meeting, I have to sit down, shut up, read my bible for the first hour, and when the prayer leader says to do something like pray on the mic, I'm going to let the people who are good at it do it." Either that or our minds are anywhere but on God, and we expect the prayer leader to pull us out of our mindfunk.

Where this comes from, I have some ideas, but where it leads to is the issue I'm talking about.

It leads to stale, burnt out, unparticipatory prayer meetings.

And I'm sick of leading ones like that.



As to what happened on Friday night, I wrestled with this idea of not wanting to be part of a prayer meeting where people come in and pray to themselves. The purpose of prayer meetings is something far greater than checking a box, having a live worship quiet time, or feeling holier.

About 40 min into the first hour I got up and shared something along the above lines. Then I asked everyone to think and meditate on why we pray, what it means to pray, why we are here, and why we came that night.

The word of God says that scripture does not return void (that is, without result). I had everyone turn to and read Psalm 86 (a prayer of David) and then answer these questions to themselves and God.

We then came together as a whole, as a body of brothers and sisters, and sang to God for about 20 min.

Then we let Jesus speak for himself about what it means to pray, what we should pray. In Matthew 6 Jesus is instructing a group on how to pray. We listened to Jesus as he spoke to us through his word and prayed "the Lord's prayer" back to God.

When people came up to the mic to pray, I had not seen them so full of eager expectation. We were so ready to tell God who he was (v.9), ask him to send his kingdom (10), admit our brokenness and neediness (11), ask for forgiveness (12), and declare his victory over our lives (13).

Brother after sister came up to the mic to pray with each other, and as we did so, God moved.

May you, reader, come to the full knowledge of what it means to pray.
May we all become a people who live lives of prayer.
God does not delight in the prayer of the wicked (the religious, the pharisee who looks over the plight of the truly broken) but delights in the prayer of the righteous.
May you be righteous as Jesus was, admitting your weakness and God's strength, asking for forgiveness, declaring his victory, and living in such a way that though you are accused of unrighteousness, his kingdom is coming through you.
May you be excited to come together with your family and talk to God.

May
you
be
changed
by the truth
that we come before a Father
who is
full
of
Love.



Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.

Sunday Night Prayer Meeting

As I opened up the prayer meeting on Sunday night I challenged everyone to really take ownership. I felt like I was supposed to be more of a prayer manger than a prayer leader. I asked each person to listen to the Lord and ask about what we were supposed to do. To be honest, if no one came to me I was prepared to have God-time for the whole two hours. I didn’t want to just go through the motions. About halfway through the prayer meeting I received a note about Psalm 52:9, “I will)give You thanks forever, because You have done it, And I will wait on Your name, for it is good, in the presence of Your godly ones.” We all gathered up front and began waiting on the Lord. We were silent, no music, no voices, just waiting and allowing the Lord to focus our attention. Out of that time we began to simply declare the things that God was revealing to us about himself. I loved this. It went on for nearly half an hour, still no music; just people taking turns declaring things about the Lord. This led to a time of powerful worship. I loved it because it felt so focused on God. We were not going through the motions, we were worshiping the Living God!

Saturday Morning Prayer :)

This morning we enjoyed the snow and crisp winter air as we entered the prayer center building! IT was wonderful and made me feel like I actually live in Colorado!

The majority of our prayer time was focused on lifting up the soldiers in Iraq and those who will be sent to Afghanistan. I am very thankful for the sacrifice that these men and woman make so that we can live in the evironment that we live in today.

To make a long story short, this past week I got to encounter some of my neighbors and learned about their family situations. It was amazing! During this time I learned that a woman who lives very close to me is married to a man in the armed forces who has been absent for many months fighting in Iraq. In his absence this woman has walked through many hard months as she is pregnant and preparing to see her child while at the same time missing and desiring to see her husband. The homecoming of this soldier was this past week and the date of the baby's delievery was the day of his return! I know that the child, a boy, has been born and that his Dad has arived home to see him! What a great sacrifice to leave and risk your life with mother and child back home! There are so many stories like this im sure and some do not have as happy ending. Though pain is present in this world it leaves us not void or absent of hope. Hope triuphs over all, endures all, and believes for all even the unseen things that seem impossible. Therefore, I long for the return of the Lord, but also believe that in this age the blood of Jesus is more powerful and can extinguish the anger, rage, malice, envy, jealousy, and thirsty for power that exsists naturally in the human heart. As the bride of Christ, we can be restored and purified so that all authority given to the son can be made manifiest through us, that we may proclaim the exceptable year of the Lord and through words establish the kingdom and will of the Lord through total dependance upon the Holy Spirit. Jesus is ALIVE!