A Yearning Heart's Journey

At our house of prayer, we long to create a place in our city that goes on 24/7 by filling all 168 hours of every week with raw, passionate and creative worship and prayer. Every now and then I get asked, why we do what we do. Why 24/7 prayer and worship? What drives us is that it impacts God's heart, what sustains it is that it impacts our hearts, and what excites us is that it impacts our region.

The subject of speaking and praying in tongues is one of much controversy in the Church because it's widely misunderstood and because personal opinions often outweigh sound biblical teaching. The Bible, however, is pretty clear about what it is and how it works. In this article I demonstrate that it's actually not as mysterious as many think it is, give an overview of the various types described in the Bible, and present practical tips on how to activate them.

Seeking God at night is a very powerful biblical principle that can revolutionize our relationship with God by loving Him in an extravagant way. In the Scriptures there were many people who consecrated their nights for the pursuit of the Holy One (Samuel, David and other psalmists, Anna the prophetess, Jesus, Paul, ...). And it was in those hours that many powerful God-encounters took place.

These are thoughts that have been moving me for some months in a very special way. The more I meditate about it, the more I believe that this topic is a very crucial key for our relationship with God and our whole existence. I believe it's just the very beginning of a truth that has the power to radically transform our life and I feel like I've not even reached the outer courts of it. I hope and pray that your heart will be enlightened by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation as you read these lines.

All of us have experienced seasons of inner, spiritual dryness in which things get harder, God feels far away and nothing we do seems to change anything. It's crucial that we understand the meaning, purpose and necessary response of those seasons in order to not miss what God wants to release to us through them.

The Moravian Revival is like a goldmine for today's church and especially the prayer movement. As a forerunner, Zinzendorf realized in a small town in East Germany what today, almost 300 years later, God is establishing world wide in an unprecedented intensity: 24/7 prayer that fuels a new, emerging missions movement. Thus, studying the Moravian Revival is not only extremely exciting, but can also help us understand God's heartbeat and plans for this age.

One of the biggest problems that keep us from spending time with God is that we often have no clue what to do. That's why we quickly get distracted, bored and often don't even start doing something with Him. But there are so many different things you can do with Him. Having a list of what to do broadens our perspective, helps us stay focused and brings creativity into our time with Him. This fights boredom and distraction. As you start using this list for your inspiration, you might find that your daily time with Him is not long enough to really do everything you want to.

One way to significantly increase your time and pleasure with the written Word of God is to start praying it instead of merely reading it. Instead of reading it for information or to fulfill our bible reading plan assignments, we actually take it as God's personal word to us and use it to feed and guide our conversation with Jesus. We take the Word and pray it back to Him. Simply taken, it means having a conversation with God using His Word. This is called "pray-reading the Word", a technique I learned from Mike Bickle (IHOP-KC).

Sometimes in worship, we sing choruses or phrases over and over again, sometimes for 10 to 20 minutes or even more. For some that might be boring, strange or even annoying. Once in a while, I am asked why we do it. Here I want to give some answers.