Prayer journey through South Korean 24-7 HouseCarla Harding - 7 Feb 2011

“Located 2 hours south of one of the most hostile, and tense places on the planet some Christians started a prayer room. Located on the Korea Nazarene University campus, KNU International English Church took a chance and devoted a week to 10,080 minutes of solid prayer. Each of these 10 thousand moments changed us.”

When Michael Palmer offered to write up his thoughts on his church’s recent 24-7 Prayer Room I gladly accepted.  The heart, description and attitude to prayer I read in his email moved me.  I thought I should share it with you all. Get a cup of tea, settle down and discover creativity and depth in the experience of our Korean brothers and sisters…

“As a church, we participated in a 24-7 Prayer Room once before, but we wanted this time to be different. In July we hosted the prayer room in a single 12x12 room in one of the classroom buildings on campus. This time we hoped people to act out a journey towards Christ. As believers we are always moving. There are moments of power and beauty, and times of darkness and sacrifice. Each step is difficult and challenging, but at the end we see a clearer picture of who God is.

In hopes of making this journey visible, we used a guesthouse on the campus instead of a single room. The layout of the house was perfect for letting us set it up. There was a long hallway with 2 rooms on the left, a kitchen on the right and the hall ended with a room.

The three themes of the house were:

1. People were lead to self-examination and confession, and frustration over unanswered prayers.
2. Creative prayers and thankful prayers.
3. Concluding in silent gratitude towards our father.
   

Highlights of the house included:

• To enter into the house you had to pass through a curtain. The beauty of this was that you physical entered into the presence of God.
• We had a room that took on the theme of repentance and unanswered prayers. Inside was a bowl of water and rocks to signify sins and forgiveness. You would confess a sin, take a rock and drop it into the water. Forever burying it in the grace of our Father. 
• In the art room we hung a string around the entirety of the room for people to hang their paintings.  This allowed the person to walk in a circle and pray as they looked upon the works of art. 
• We experimented with a journaling station. The purpose behind it was to have begin a record of the prayers of the people. It would serve as a way for us to see how God moved in previous prayer rooms. It was a huge success and we hope to include this journal in all future rooms.
• Another new addition was a play-dough prayer station. It gave a tangible prayer element for people. By the end of the week, the play dough table was decorated in many different powerful "molded" prayers.
• We made prayer slips available for all who wanted to ask for prayer from those who followed. The requests were then taped to all the doorposts of the house.
• In the final room, the conclusion of the journey had a cross, wrapped in wire and prayer candles that people could light when they prayed. These were a visual representation of the prayers of God's people.
  

Hope of the room

The difficulty of prayer is that, so often, it is communicated as a destination; stagnant, cold and only filled with good memories of the past. This style of prayer means the one praying has to silently sit and be still. While there is a time for such prayer, more times than not, I feel like a little kid in church; pleading to be able to move, act, talk, and be expressive. The freedom I pleaded for is what these creative 24-7 Prayer Rooms offer to people. They offer an outlet, a platform for expression, and when that platform is utilized, the people's prayers ignite and God moves.

Prayer isn't a moment. Prayer is a journey. Our hopes for the house were that we could help people to see the reality of a full, expansive journey with our Savior. We wanted people to be able to enter and exit rooms and stages. We hoped that people would see that prayer, when viewed holistically, is all encompassing in our lives. It starts when we take our first breath, and ends when we pass from this reality to the next. We pass through stages in life, and prayer. We walk through doorways, into creative, fertile times one moment, then into dark and dry moments the next. The beauty in all of this, and what we tried to express with the house, is that of all these moments ultimately end with the Cross. Our journey is always focused on the hope Christ offers, and His life-giving sacrifice on the cross. These things are our “true north.” If our prayers don't lead us to self-sacrifice and death of will, it is futile. We built the whole experience around this notion.”

If you’ve been part of a 24-7 Prayer Room we’d love to hear from you.  How did you pray?  What was it like?  What did you learn?  What did God say?  Email us and we’ll share testimonies from around the world here on the 24-7 Blog.