My Journey Back To The Prayer Room – Part 1 of 2
Yes folks, I am returning to the prayer room tomorrow after an absence of three years. When I refer to the prayer room, I am referring to the fact that I have accepted the invitation to take a time slot at All Nations House of Prayer in Grand Prairie, TX.
For those of you that are interested in joining me either Live In House or Live Via The Internet, you can do that Thursday mornings each week from 9-10am central standard time. The address for ANHOP is 2410 N Carrier Pkwy Grand Prairie TX 75050.
For those that want to join me via Live Web Stream, you can do this for free at the following web link: www.shadygrove.org/live
I do want to inform those of you that go to the Live Web Stream, availability of the stream is not within my control. If the sound is down or the live feed itself is down, I apologize in advance. If it does not work one day, try again the next time.
For those of you who don’t know, I joined the staff of ANHOP way back in April 2002 and eventually became the director of ANHOP for a several years. I spent almost 5 years doing multiple time slots in that place. Just so you know, this was a life changing time for me and I will never regret it. But I want to focus on why I have not been involved in any type of House of Prayer ministry for the past three years. Before I do, I want to say that during these three years I have obviously maintained a prayer life, I just have not included spending time in an organized prayer ministry as a part of my prayer life.
SO WHY DID I LEAVE, AND WHY AM I BACK? It will help to mention how I started in the first place. I remember the months leading up to April 2002 very clearly. I was working as a bank associate in Fort Worth, TX. I was going crazy because I knew very strongly that the place I needed to be was in the House of Prayer. I remember going to the House of Prayer when I could, and praying that the Lord would release the provision necessary for me to leave my current job at the bank in order that I could spend a majority of my time in the House of Prayer. I can still remember the longing and want that I had almost 8 years ago to get in to that place before the Lord. It was a pure desire and passion of mine to get into the place of worship and ministry before God.
Things started out that way, but things changed. I began to burn out with the House of Prayer when I noticed it started to become about two major things: 1- A systematic formula on how to both worship and pray 2- The never-ending focus of building towards the goal of a 24/7 schedule. Let me say that these issues were related to only a few in leadership and that those people are no longer influential leaders at ANHOP.
Let me address number one first. I want to first say that I believe that each one of us has something to release to the Lord that nobody else can. I believe that God wants to hear this original sound released from each person. When you put worship into the limits of a formula, you cause creativity and expression to diminish. This is what happened in 300 AD when the church confined worship to the expression of clergy and took away the personal expression of the body of Christ.
It got to the place where sometimes I was being made to feel guilty for going away from “The Model” of worship. Do you honestly think God wants me confined to a model, or do you think God wants to hear the genuine expressions of my heart? I 100% believe the latter is true. The only time models and forms are useful, in my opinion, is to train someone and to give them a form in which they will eventually BREAK as they begin to release their own expression as they grow. If you hold someone to the form, then you constrict the creativity and expression that God created in a person. I’m interested in what God wants. I am not interested in keeping form with religious practice to the point where I can’t be myself. If I can’t be myself here, then I will go be myself with God some place else.
If you think what I am writing sounds like rebellion, well then you may be correct. I don’t mind being rebellious when it pertains to religion. There is a difference between blatant rebellion against God and the fact that sometimes our personal beliefs and expressions don’t line up with the leadership of ministries. Sometimes people have to part ways when it comes to issues that have opinion involved, and I think that’s okay. Let’s move on to the second thing I mentioned, the goal of 24/7.
I will continue this post tomorrow in: My Journey Back To The Prayer Room – Part 2 of 2
Prophetic Sound Man 
January 13, 2010 at 10:50 PM
Hey Jason,
I think you have made some good observations about worship and some of the dynamics that were happening at ANHOP at the time. The purpose of any prayer model is to bring people into corporate unity in prayer and intimacy in encountering Jesus. The “model” should serve the team and the intercessors who are engaging in prayer to go further in experiencing God and not prevent creativity. As I am training our teams in our house of prayer we let them know the model is the starting place and should be the launching pad to greater creative expression in unity. I think it was hard for your personality and your overall calling as a prophetic musician to be confined to something as strict as you are describing. I think the main reason though that you and I or anybody burned out is not the model, or the labor, it comes from not connecting with God in what we are doing and doing the work and missing the encounter. You were doing a million different things in service and ministry and I think The Lord has helped you over time to figure out how you flow in ministry in a way that keeps you from burning out and enables you to connect with Him in the whole process of ministering with your gifts. I think you rock man!!!
January 14, 2010 at 1:11 AM
Wow man, thanks for the great comment… I love the whole concept of the launch pad… a rocket sitting on a launch pad is wasted potential man… Hope to be in touch with you more… let me know more of what is going on with you bro… J
January 14, 2010 at 1:14 AM
To start with….I’m a lazy blogger on my website, so I haven’t posted in a while. I relate to what you are saying 100%. I have ran into this formula thing over and over and over again in so many ways/areas in the church since I have been in leadership for over 25 years. I have been scolded many times for my style of worship, saying, “I just get too into it” and “why does it last so long”, and why “can’t we do it the way we used to”…..on and on. Same thing with the way I teach…..or lead a home group……I don’t stick to their formula! God does not use formulas and just because it “works at another church” doesn’t mean it will work at yours. Chances are if something works….it’s Jesus and the Holy Spirit doing the working and if there is some “formula” to it – no doubt it was given to that church from the throne of deep worship to a people without an agenda of their own. When will the church realize we are not God’s boss…..we are clay in His hands. Clay has no will of it’s own. The minute we put ourselves and our ideas into it…..the Holy Spirit exits.
Perhaps about the same time you left ANHOP, our family was checking out Shady Grove. We loved the worship and the church………until they moved to their new building. They left Someone behind in the old building and chose a form instead of a flow. I have heard that things have changed, I hope they have because I would like to try the Grove again.
God bless you!