Called to Be an Intercessory Missionary

Called to be an Intercessory Missionary Session 2: Who -Full Time Ministers in His House

I. Night and Day Prayer Centers Requiring Full Time Missionaries: In the last session we talked about the necessity of there being night and day houses of prayer that will fill the Earth with the praise that Jesus is due. In this session we are going to look at who it is that will staff those places that are uniquely called to carry perpetual prayer and worship. To start with for a prayer center to become an ongoing permanent reality it takes a great deal of effort to pull off. That effort cannot realistically come solely from volunteers for a number of reasons. Below we will look at some of the requirements that being perpetual in nature demands. A. Increased Measure of Excellence: A major part of the difficulty is that sustaining something of this magnitude (live worship that is open to the public) in a on going way (24/7/365) necessitates a certain level of excellence and appeal that even a month long prayer initiative can get by without having in place. People are willing to put up with more when they know that it is temporary in nature but to retain people long term things have to be set up differently. Below are a few example areas that require more attention when running a night and day house of prayer. 1. Need for considerable amount of ongoing infrastructure. 2. Need for an enjoyable atmosphere to keep people coming. 3. Need for singers and musicians in addition to intercessors. 4. Need for those singers and musicians to have a level of skill.

B. 24 Hour Need for Worshipers: There must be actual people in the prayer room at all times worshiping Jesus and/or interceding for His Kingdom objectives. This means coordinating people’s busy schedules in order to fill 168 hours every week, week after week with multiple people in the room before the Lord at all times. According the purposes that the Lord laid out this means that there must be people fulfilling a variety of worship related roles.

“He appointed some of the Levites to minister before the ark of the LORD, to make petition, to give thanks, and to praise the LORD, the God of Israel: (1Ch. 16:4).”

1. Worship leaders. 2. Singers. 3. Musicians.

For more resources available from The Prayer Room or to schedule a TPR teacher to speak at 1 your church or event please visit our website at ThePrayerRoomDFW.com 4. Prayer leaders. 5. Intercessors in the room.

C. Gatekeepers are Essential: Having people committed to be in the prayer room is only one category of the workforce necessary to run such a ministry. There is also a need for those who help keep the prayer room in order and the facilities running properly. These gatekeepers are essential if the house of prayer is to be maintained for the ministry of the Lord. There needs to be positions established and staffed to keep the place running; I’ve listed modern day examples.

“Their fellow Levites were assigned to all the other duties of the tabernacle, the house of God (1Ch. 6:48).”

1. Section leading. 2. Ushering. 3. Cleaning the facility. 4. Set up and tear down. 5. Security. 6. Greeting people.

D. Administrative Labor: The above list is specific to those workers who will serve in the room but there is a tremendous amount of additional behind the scenes administrative labor that is required in order to keep things going around a 24-hour house of prayer. This includes a long list of roles that people might not at first think about as imperative to the maintaining of night and day prayer.

“the four principal gatekeepers, who were Levites, were entrusted with the responsibility for the rooms and treasuries in the house of God (1Ch. 9:26).”

1. Those who hand the finances. 2. People to follow up with visitors so that more people will get involved. 3. Those who are in charge of communicating with the staff. 4. Administrators over the prayer schedule.

E. Leadership Must be in Place: On top of all the roles and tasks listed in the above sections there must then be those who will give various levels of leadership to the house of prayer for all of this to flow smoothly.

“Hilkiah, Zechariah and Jehiel, the administrators of God’s temple…and…the leaders of the Levites (2Ch. 35:8-9)”

II. God is Raising Up His Priesthood:

For more resources available from The Prayer Room or to schedule a TPR teacher to speak at 2 your church or event please visit our website at ThePrayerRoomDFW.com While it has not been something that we have historically given much thought to in the Western Evangelical Church it is very much on God’s heart to establish a functioning gentile priesthood within His Church. A. He is Gathering an Honorary Priesthood: God has long desired and prophesied that He would gather a priesthood in the last days that is made up of Gentiles from across the nations. These honorary priests would be brought by God into His temple ministry in order to worship Him so that He may bestow joy to them in the house of prayer. He is in the process of gathering that priesthood now.

“Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely exclude me from his people”…the LORD says: “To (those) who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant—to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters…foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD to serve him, to love the name of the LORD, and to worship him…I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” The Sovereign LORD declares—he who gathers the exiles of Israel: “I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered (Is. 56:3-8).”

B. Every Believer is a Called to be a Priest: Peter walked with Jesus for 3 plus years and then became one of the primary voices in the New Testament Church; he helped to establish doctrine and the practices of the early Church. According to him the entire Body of Christ has been brought into a new priesthood that is to stand in place the old one. This new priesthood offers spiritual sacrifices in the form of prayer and worship.

“chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ…you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light (1Pe. 2:4-9).”

C. He is the One Calling Watchmen: He is also posting watchmen who will serve Him through day and night prayer and worship. These priests are called (collectively) to never cease to calling out to Him until He returns to rule in Jerusalem and so makes her the praise of all the nations. He is the one who is setting full time priests in their place.

“I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth. (Is. 62:6-7).”

For more resources available from The Prayer Room or to schedule a TPR teacher to speak at 3 your church or event please visit our website at ThePrayerRoomDFW.com D. Those Who will do this as an Occupation: He is calling this whole generation to come into His house of prayer to minister to Him and receive from Him. The majority of the Body of Christ will be gathered to the house of prayer in a very limited capacity (amount of time they can be there) but there are those that will do this as their full time job.

E. Knowing that You are being Set: People always want to know how they can be sure that they are being called to do this as their job. The simplest way to know is to identify if you feel His tug to give yourself in this way, because that’s how you know. As American’s discerning His call to be a full time priest is pretty easy because with all the options available to us this is the most unusual thing you could possibly want to do with your life. For a person to be feeling a inner tug on your heart to give yourself in this way you can that this is a tip off that God is beginning to set you on the wall. Ask Him to continue to make it clear to you by sustaining and increasing that tug in order to confirm it to you.

III. Being Set in Place to Love Him: The Lord is absolutely after a workforce that will meet Him in the place of intercession and pray for His expressed purposes but He is far more about empowering hearts to loves Him through a lifestyle that is conducive to giving ourselves fully over to Him. He longs for friends who will draw near to Him as their primary activity. Look how jealously the Lord speaks about those who He set apart for Himself to be full time priests before Him.

“You shall anoint them, as you anointed their father, that they may minister to Me as priests; for their anointing shall surely be an everlasting priesthood throughout their generations (Ex. 40:15 NKJV).”

“In this way you are to set the Levites apart from the other Israelites, and the Levites will be mine…they are to come to do their work at the tent of meeting. They are the Israelites who are to be given wholly to me. I have taken them as my own (Nu. 8:14-16)”

“the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi…to stand before the Lord to minister and to pronounce blessings in his name (Dt. 10:8).”

A. Call to Long and Loving Hours: The Lord established the role of full time priests to minister to Him; their job is to be His and to spend lots of hours standing before Him ministering to Him. This is a call to long hours of focusing ourselves on God and telling Him that we love Him. Intercessory missionaries are now being set in place all over the Earth by God for God. They are called to the

For more resources available from The Prayer Room or to schedule a TPR teacher to speak at 4 your church or event please visit our website at ThePrayerRoomDFW.com ministry of spending exorbitant amount of hours before the Father ministering to Him.

B. Called to the Greatest Commandment: God wants for the whole Church to embrace Him deeper and love Him more fully; to love Him with all our heart. These full time priests are the ones who are carrying the torch not only for their own hearts to love God in an extravagant way also to help the Church of their regions embrace the greatest commandment together. By giving themselves full time to establish and maintain prayer centers they are helping to create rally points for the Church to gather and express the greatest commandment together as the corporate Body of Christ.

C. Call to Corporate Perpetual Adoration: The Father wants His Son worshiped night and day; and it is right for Him to want this. Intercessory Missionaries are at the point of the arrow to fulfill this holy purpose in God’s heart; through their own time spent in the prayer room and through their labors they are creating places of perpetual adoration, which as we have discussed already are one of the rarest things in the all the Earth. Their full time commitments to see the house of prayer established create a context for others to partake in lifting up unceasing praise to Jesus. This is perhaps the most noble occupation under Heaven’s esteem though it is near completely unrecognized by man.

IV. Different Ways His Setting Can Look: As we are in the process of identifying if the Lord is in fact calling us to be a missionary in this sense we also have to work through where and how this will look. If you haven’t ever given this much thought there is actually quite a bit of variance in the answer to that question. The Lord has specific purposes for us and so there are a number of factors that we need to weigh. A. Monasteries or Houses of Prayer: While we are fairly well acquainted with the concept of houses of prayer and how they look and feel as western, predominately protestant Americans. But the idea of night and day prayer centers has deep roots in other traditions as well (Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Anglican) in the form of gender specific monasteries run by nuns or priests. There are still hundreds of these in existence today, many with long and rich histories.

B. At Home or at IHOP-KC: Even if a person decides on a house of prayer as opposed to a monastery they still need to hear from the Lord where they are supposed to serve Him; either in their local context or by moving to Kansas City to join the International House of Prayer or some other city. As little as ten years ago if you wanted to be a protestant intercessory missionary you had little choice of where to do so, but now there are an every increasing number of places where one can serve the Lord full time in this way. The

For more resources available from The Prayer Room or to schedule a TPR teacher to speak at 5 your church or event please visit our website at ThePrayerRoomDFW.com Lord’s primary (though not only) way to fuel prayer centers around the Earth will be to raise up people indigenous to the region in order to establish and maintain night and day prayer and worship. As these prayer centers sprout up across the Earth more and more people will be joining the house of prayer in their local context.

C. Part or Full Time: There is a place for both full and part time intercessory missionaries in the house of prayer. Once someone feels a call to do this as their job they need to seek out what the Lord is speaking and leading regarding how significant of a commitment this is to be. Full time staff probably won’t have another job and this is where they will pour in the majority of their energy and strength but many will do this part time and their part is just as valuable though their time investment may be reduced. Being part time however affords a missionary the capacity to have an additional job to supplement their income.

D. Short or Long Term: Not everyone who feels the Lord calling them to be an intercessory missionary will do it for the rest of their life. Most, in fact, will probably only do it for a season of time that the Lord plans to strategically use in the person’s life and development. It is not uncommon for people to be called in this lifestyle for a year or two before the Lord moves them on to something else according to His plan. There are also those who will give themselves in this way for a decade or even the rest of their life.

E. Now or Not Yet: For many the Lord will speak about becoming an intercessory missionary and it’s His purpose that the individual will begin the process of joining staff in that immediate season. But it has been my experience having done this for a while now that there are season of life that the Lord wants us to pay attention to. But sometimes a person will hear a message like this and while they will know in their heart that the Lord is calling them it is still for a later date. A great example would be a youth who feels the calling of God but needs to wait a certain number of years before they can give themselves in a full time way.

V. Responding to His Call: As a house of prayer that is called to have full and part time missionaries that will do this as their occupation it is very natural that some of you who have found yourselves here in our midst will begin to feel yourself being set. A. If He’s Calling You: I want to invite each of you to process whether or not this is something He is speaking to you about. While this calling will only account for a small percentage of the total population there will be a much higher percentage of people around this missions base that feel called to it because the Lord drew you here to begin with. Right now about 1 out of 6

For more resources available from The Prayer Room or to schedule a TPR teacher to speak at 6 your church or event please visit our website at ThePrayerRoomDFW.com people around here is currently an intercessory missionary and more than that feel called to join staff eventually where the number in most places may be more like 1 out of some 100s.

B. Trusting Him: For the Levites after the time of King David this lifestyle became an established part of life, but for us taking this step requires a significant measure of trust because of how outside the box it is for us. We have to believe that if He calls us to do something He will then empower and guide us and supply for us to do it.

“The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it (1Th. 5:24).”

“being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion (Php. 1:6).”

1. With your life: This means possibly laying down your life and the objectives that you had for yourself that will not be congruent with this lifestyle. 2. With your future: To say yes to being an intercessory missionary means trusting God with our future because it so clearly sets our path and limits our opportunities. 3. With your finances: If He is calling you then He will also provide the money for you to be able to do this. We will discuss the process of partnership development more in the next session.

C. Follow the Process: In the final session we will address what it actually looks like to be an intercessory missionary here on our missions base so the below is not intended to be a description of the lifestyle but of the process of what responding to the Lord and coming on staff here looks like. 1. Say yes to His call. 2. Do an internship. 3. Embrace the process of partnership development. 4. Set a date to officially join staff. 5. Plan to work hard and to grow a ton. 6. Continue support raising to sustain the call of God.

For more resources available from The Prayer Room or to schedule a TPR teacher to speak at 7 your church or event please visit our website at ThePrayerRoomDFW.com