PRAYER ROOMS
Tuesdays (online only today)
- No 7:30am Prayer Room
- 9am – Zoom Room
PRAYER GUIDE
30 Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come here to me.” They came to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord, which had been torn down. 31 Elijah took twelve stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, “Your name shall be Israel.” 32 With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs[a] of seed. 33 He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, “Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood.”
34 “Do it again,” he said, and they did it again.
“Do it a third time,” he ordered, and they did it the third time. 35 The water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench.
36 At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: “Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. 37 Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.”
38 Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.
39 When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The Lord—he is God! The Lord—he is God!”
1 Kings 18:30-39
In times of spiritual decline, such as that Elijah faced in Israel under the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, what the mass of the people needed was to see God. They needed to see His Fire fall from heaven in order to repent from their apostasy and idolatry and return to the Living God.
It is no different in our own time. Our culture has turned away from the LORD. But what will bring people back to the LORD? Is it clever strategies for marketing? Is it our clever words? Is it free food? Is it anything we have to give them at all? No.
What people need is God’s own presence. And in times of revival, this is what they feel, when they come into the house of God…or even when they don’t. During the revivals of the early 1970s, I had a friend at a former church who met Jesus on an acid trip at a rock concert. God doesn’t just show up in church, but what people need is for God to show up.
But when does God show up? Like he did in Elijah’s time? God shows up when Elijah built an altar and called on him. As Jon Tyson says, “God comes where he’s wanted.” Building an altar, as Elijah did, is an outward and visible sign of a deep and painful level of longing for the living God to manifest his presence and glory.
We can’t make fire fall from heaven, we cannot cause God to show up. But what we can do is what Elijah did. What men and women have done before every great and glorious revival in the history of God’s people. We can build an altar. An altar is a space and a culture of extraordinary, Kingdom focused prayer (and worship). Where we set aside time and space to seek God for his presence and will.
On the one hand, building altars of prayer and worship feel like an incredibly non-strategic activity for a Western Church that is hemorrhaging members. Couldn’t we do something ‘practical,’ like plan or research best practices, or raise funds, or something? And yet, if we look at the scale of the problem we are facing, there is only one answer, friends. It’s time to get busy building altars, like Elijah did on Mt. Carmel. It is time to build a landing pad for the Holy Spirit. To create spaces that are hospitable for God. Where Jesus is welcome to come in all his fullness and be and do exactly what He is and does.
For Prayer:
As we press deeper into the fall, let’s pray for altar-building in the Western Church and in our own local church.
Let’s pray for spiritual hunger to develop in our own hearts and among God’s people. The awareness that “there is more” to God than we have seen. Let’s stand in the gap for sleepy and apathetic believers (which we all have been at one time or another)…asking God to stir and awaken our spirits to love and long for him.
Let’s pray for faith to put weight on this Biblical principle that “God comes where he is wanted.” James 4:8 says “draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” Let’s pray for the priorities of God’s people and our church and our lives to shift around to make room for creating spaces and cultures of extraordinary, Kingdom-focused prayer and worship.
In Our Time 