15

Chapter 15 ( I feel like I could have quoted the whole chapter)

"A prayer meeting without recognized answer to prayer ought to be an anomaly."

"The mark that there has been true united prayer is the fruit, the answer, the receiving of the thing we have asked..."

"They do not remember that Jesus has, by His promise, consecrated every assembly in His Name to be a gate of heaven, where His Presence is to be felt, and His Power experienced in the Father fulfilling their desires."


I loved this chapter because it lit me up again for our times of prayer as a staff and as a ministry. I never want our times of prayer together simply to be a slot on the calendar or a duty fulfilled; I long for them to be times where we not only sense the presence of God but see the power of God in answers to our prayers.

This chapter awakened in my a renewed expectation for the time after the prayer meeting. I want to somehow wait expectantly on God based on the very things that we just spent an hour or more asking Him for....somehow I want to be connected to the whole process and not just the beginning. Part of this is figuring out how to record and keep present our prayer requests, and another part is asking for real, tangible things.

Too often I will gauge a prayer meeting by how I felt, the room felt, the people responded to the leading of prayers and worship. However, this chapter was helpful in reminding me that the measure of the prayer meeting should not be how it felt during the time of prayer but what was the fruit after the prayer. That is good stuff.