Calling 24-7 Prayer Back to... Prayer? by Carla HardingCarla Harding - 22 Dec 2006

I remember the moment I stepped into the first 24-7 Prayer Room with clarity.  My immediate encounter was stumbling upon a woman on her knees, a look of intensity contorting her face.  I turned, afraid I’d interrupted something intimate and walked dazed through the room.  The scrappy handwriting on the wall, the pigeon poetry, the stick men and murals all caught my eye.  As my fear and intimidation dissipated my curiosity grew and I found my ten-minute exploration turn into a two-hour face-to-floor session before my creator God.  

I caught the bug.  There was something or someone in that room.  The same someone who travelled at the heart of the Israelite’s desert camp.  The same someone that resided in the ark that Uzzah touched.  The almighty presence that descended on Mount Sinai in earthquakes and lightening.  Our smelly, but charming, little prayer room was a bucket, a bucket that contained the presence of God.  

As anyone who’s read Red Moon Rising knows the first prayer room multiplied and spread through friendships, word of mouth and Internet intervention. We now sit in the seven years of fruit that first bucket-like prayer space spilled out over the planet.   The vision of a generation leading prayer dependent lifestyles intent on transforming the world is becoming more tangible year after year.   

Many of you reading this will have similar stories of what brought you to this website and to this article.  Your experience may have differed in location, style and outcome but all of us experienced the unfathomable impact God’s presence has on the human heart, mind and soul.

There are few things more moving than reading the prayers of my peers painted on walls: honest confessions, intimate love songs and frantically scribbled celebrations.  I keep one teenagers prayer stuck to the back of my travel-sized Bible.  It’s a daily reminder of why I sit in an office and type emails to people hoping they’ll catch on to the potential of prayer.  This scrappy thank you on a prayer room wall reads:

“We need you, it all starts here with prayer… becoming a Christian this weekend was amazing and I want everyone to see your love.  I have faith in you Lord.”   

Simple, undramatic and sincere.  This prayer has been echoed through many prayer rooms throughout the Globe.  We have registered 3000 prayer tabernacles and estimate that 150,000 people have walked into an hour focusing on the person behind the power.  We started to pray because we didn’t know how to.  In many languages we’ve learnt and as we’ve expanded our vocabulary, we’ve seen God move.  Each time He plants another brick of His Kingdom we brag about it and a raft of new people become inspired to spend more time with Jesus.   

Isn’t that the key?  It really doesn’t matter what you call yourself or how you do it, as long as you give Jesus the chance to change you through prayer.  We’re not the only regiment in the army; prayer is rising on the agenda of the Global church.  Whatever the bucket, be it 24-7 Prayer, IHOP, Jericho Walls or the Global Day of Prayer; the key is what it contains.  For our family, bursts or rhythms of night and day prayer in creative environments have helped us to pray.  For others their tools may look different but who they are speaking to is the same.

I feel like God is calling 24-7 back to talking with Him, waiting on Him.  Let's remember that we are "24-7 Prayer" not "24-7 Prayer Rooms".   Prayer Rooms are a great bucket, but the container in and of itself is not sacred.  Don’t fall into the trap of believing that a quarterly 24-7 week takes care of the prayer in our lives. 

Prayer Rooms should be powerhouses, an oasis in the dessert, trampolines that catapult our spiritual lives into new momentum.  If we develop a model, and restrict ourselves in it to the exclusion of all others then we’re in danger of missing the contents of our construct.

Want to explore with me?  I’ll still give away the idea and resources of prayer rooms everywhere I go, but this year I’m challenging myself to find new buckets, to take the vision of 24-7 and give it new skin.  Not to satisfy some need for a new buzz, but to keep my focus on whom I’m praying to and not how or where I’m doing it.  Try it, tell me what works.  If God uses something, we’ll give it away to the 2 million people who read these pages every month.  I’m excited about the diversity the coming years could bring if we would all pitch in and re-discover prayer together. 

Because of my life changing experience in 1999 I want to give away a great thing.  I want to give away time with Jesus Christ: the Saviour we’re celebrating, the reason for the season.  I want to develop in myself, my new husband and my friends a prayer dependent lifestyle that makes my attempts to, “act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with my God” more effective with each step I take.