For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Brothers and sisters, I write to you today concerning the modern prayer movement. Many reading this may not understand, and many of those that do may not agree. Nevertheless, I am moved to write what I have seen and felt.
The prayer movement as it is popularly expressed is sadly off track. I do not say this lightly, or flippantly, nor is my intention to condemn it. But, it has, nevertheless, succumbed to many of the same errors it originated in, or, perhaps, never left.
These errors are not those indicated by popular ‘heresy-hunters’, ready to criticize anything other than their little circle. These issues strike at the root of the philosophy, leadership, and ambition of these men.
These are not recent errors, nor am I rash in my disclosure of them. I have been aware of the movement for some 15 years, lived nearby for a year, attended numerous functions over the years, and been in association with many who still love and follow it. These are issues that I have worked through in this time, have come to an understanding and knowledge of, and have seen evidence of, either in realms of discernment, or even incidental admissions of their own mouth.
A Seemingly Random Encounter
At a recent large prayer and worship event hosting 25,000 young people in a notable city in the mid-west, I sat down at a random table in the small space by the escalator, between the main auditorium and the book store. ‘Random’ never is, when prayer is involved. What came next was a short conversation from two sitting nearby.
The man was a HoP planter, she was a HoP director. He itinerated, helping to impart the culture of the House of Prayer to established organizations, and she was discussing where her HoP was at and what it’s level of viability was.
He listed requirements for visiting HoPs. It wasn’t size, it was […]. He said he wouldn’t even bother to go to others. They talked about finding the ones who could carry the culture they were trying to bring in. He talked about selecting out those who got a hold of it, and promoting them to the places of whatever leadership was appropriate, either be it section leader, small group director, or even speaking.
He was laying out how to establish the HoP culture into a new organization to fast-track them. She was in agreement, having seen this before, and as they discussed, the waves of nausea swept over my soul.
There was a deliberateness to it, a nonchalant-ness. You could call it a lack of reverence, a lack of insight. I might tend to say it was a way to get things done without any mention of the reliance upon God or prayer.
But, this is, as it were, at the heart of the matter. I do not believe most of the prayer movements are cults, that they are theologically off, or any of that. I leave that for the cult-watch ‘head-hunter’ sites. As most of these sites do not even acknowledge the baptism of the Holy Spirit, criticizing those who do, I usually do not care to pay them as much as a passing acknowledgment–even that is often too much.
But, if it is not a cult, what is it? It is an organization, and a religious institution. Effectively, it is a man-made structure, built in the modern concept of corporations, and lacks faith, meaning, it lacks eternal significance.
A Self Admitted Flaw
As I said, occasionally, these are confirmed in incidental admissions from their own mouths. The following is the transcript of a description of a prophetic dream encountered by the leader of a large organization.
I was speaking at a conference in a baseball park inside a large fair ground. About 40,000 people were present. Many leaders and their people (from many “charismatic” streams) were present. I saw a certain leader who was representative of other leaders in the Body of Christ who seek to walk in God’s power and who walk with an excellent spirit. We were enjoying warm fellowship together.
I preached on prayer, God’s power and end-time judgment. I spoke at two afternoon sessions. In the break between the sessions, some were debating on what I was preaching. Some […] people debated each other and some were speaking to believers from different ministry streams. They were debating in a friendly way about God’s power and His end-time judgment. There was no hostility, but only sincere dialogue with humility and love. It was enjoyable and intellectually stimulating but none of the different points of view stirred up real faith and revelation.
–Source undisclosed
It is the last line of this that is of our interest. In the admission of the director of this organization, the discussion and enjoyable debating were not producing faith. They were ‘dead works’, devoid of anything eternal.
Ultimately, the issue is pride. As above, no flesh shall glory in God’s presence.
This is the day of the corporate church. Church corporations were instituted in the middle of the 1900s, and began the trend towards each ministry being organized around a governmentally instituted and recognized corporation. Doing more than merely holding property, this structural realignment of the church removed the ministry from the hands of the leaders, and legally made the pastors and board employees of the congregation. Literally, they had entered “Laodicea”, mean, “ruled by the group”.
This was strengthened by the institution of the ‘tax-credit’ for religious organizations (of which, churches were automatically exempt before, anyway). As they say, government favors are often received quicker than government mandates, although the outcome is often the same. But, the result was that the local pastor no longer ran his church, but was subject to the dictates of the congregation. For the most part, gone were the day of hard and direct Bible preaching, because the pastor could be removed and replaced, should the ‘owners’ (the congregation) deem his message too hard. Considering all but 12 walked away from Jesus in John 6, imagine what the outcome would have been today!
But, the problem only compounds from there. The organization of the thing spells its sure death, spiritually, for, that which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of Spirit is Spirit.
At issue is that, unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor, labor in vain.
When we come to the issues surrounding the prayer movement, those that would ‘fast-track’ the culture of the House of Prayer have done nothing but what modern corporate thought has done. That is, they look for a ‘company man’. As one famous individual put it, they didn’t want anyone working for them to merely ‘have a job’. They insisted, rather, that the job have them.
The philosophy, values, attitudes, language, and, indeed, entire culture, is intentionally being transplanted from place to place. Based upon externally visible characteristics and credentials, whether or not the spiritual substance of the reality of heaven is anywhere involved is completely irrelevant.
A Vision of Prayer
Consider another example from the House of Prayer. I have, on occasion, had very specific and direct prophetic insights and revelations come unprompted and unexpected into my mind. Each man’s gifts are different, and while others may flow more or less in this gift, it has appeared in my life on occasion. In one instance, I had the opportunity to be prayed for by the current section leader of the prayer room of the man who had the dream above. I had thought, perhaps, that certain things might be brought about by this, and that it might be expedient for some particular obstructions I was having in my personal walk.
Upon the man placing his hand upon my shoulder, however, I was immediately shown a vision of him. This man, who oversaw a 6 or 8-hour shift in the prayer room, who was looked up to as a leader by man, I immediately saw in a vision to be a mere babe. He talked confidently, he looked normal on the outside and well-put together, but he had no spiritual substance more than an infant. I knew, immediately, that there would be no more help from him than there would be from a newborn could help me do housework. There was no condemnation anywhere, but it was simply what it was.
And, this is the condition of the prayer movement. People are promoted on externals. Those viewed as capable are placed in positions of visible leadership who have no business being there. When Stephen was appointed, he was deemed as a man ‘full of the Spirit’. This is what qualified him to lead in the house of God.
As mentioned above, the problem with the prayer movement is a pride that relies and recognizes the external, outward things of man, rather than the heart. It is mindset esteems the visible, which always diminishes the invisible.
Only that which is truly birthed by the Spirit is of any use for God. The exporting of a culture is simply that, and it is what corporations, and worldly institutions do, in an attempt to create a group mentality, and to establish a consensus of human reasoning. Nothing could be further from the way of God.
God’s way is always in the hidden.
How God Builds
Establishing a culture established upon the soulish understanding of how to behave and how to act is the antithesis of true religion. It is the bane of the church, and the byproduct of a church culture gone wrong. Mere obedience, without a heart-change, means nothing. It is faith that matters, and it is the cultures and values endued through the written Word of God that impart life.
This makes what the current House of Prayer movement is doing to be grossly in error. While a true church would simply sow the seed of the Word and let that produce in the people the fruit of righteousness, establishing right programs and procedures within that context for the improvement of all the saints, the current prayer groups are, rather, substituting man’s ideas for this, and calling it God.
This is not at all to say that what they are doing is in itself wrong. None could argue that prayer, even 24/7 prayer, is what is needed, and that to have a room and a place and singers and musicians are the way to go and how to go about it. But, the issue is the system behind the system, the ‘machine’ of it. Maybe not on every level, but on enough, the ‘machine’ is failing, because it is a machine.
At issue, then, is not necessarily what is done, as an expression of Christ is not being called into question. What matters is the mind behind the expression which insists upon uniform conformity in matters unspecified in the Word of God.
This constitutes man’s ideas, man’s agenda, and is not the culture of heaven, but of earth. It is earthly, soulish, and, ultimately, demonic, as it is overtaken by the fleshly arm of man, and is devoid of God’s power.
No one argues with prayer (or, at least, they shouldn’t). And, we should be grateful when any organization increases the level of intercession in the Earth. These are good things, and I am not disagreeing with that.
But, the primary export of these institutions has not become the business of prayer itself, and of faith (as the above revelation of their own organization admits), but it is a model. It is based on human reasoning, it is based on one groups reflection or interpretation of their understanding of Christ, and it is not Christ Himself.
Christ alone is the image of the invisible God, and He is the exact representation of the Father’s being. We see in part and know in part, and what we make into the likeness we see, exporting that rather than the Son, diminishes the body, instead of edifies.
The problem in the house of prayer movement is that this is what they have done, and this is what they have always done.
A Problem’s Legacy
Now, I want to tread carefully, because what I need to touch on is a matter of controversy. Moreover, I do not in any way agree with much of what I will bring up, but need to bring up the incident in general, to make a point.
In the early days of the ‘Kansas City Prophets’, a man named Ernie Gruen released a report against a segment of the current prayer movement, listing what they called “Documentation of Aberrant Practices and Teachings of Kansas City Fellowship (Grace Ministries)”. Now, understand, this was one of the greater attacks of the spirit of the ‘accuser of the brethren’ against this organization. It was not wholesome, it was not righteous. In fact, the man who wrote it later was found to be having an affair with his secretary, and died in disgrace.
But, several of the things that were pointed out in the document were abusive, were too far. And, were the exact same spiritual reality going on now, albeit in a greater form. In the document, it showed that several churches were told that they would either be closed by God or the leadership would die unless they handed their churches over to the emerging prayer movement. Some of them did give in, and some did not. Those that didn’t neither died nor closed. Other heavy-handed approaches such as this were documented. And, while I myself have made plenty of foolish, immature mistakes while ‘growing in the prophetic’, it is the root that is the issue.
At its core, was the pride of man that thought they saw a vision, and wanted to carry it out their own way. Much like Moses killing the Egyptian. He was their deliverer. He would oversee the slaughter of many Egyptians in the red-sea. But, it was wrong for him to carry it out that way. Right intent, but God had to humble Moses 40 years on the back side of the desert before he could truly deliver Egypt.
But, it is this same influence at work, in today’s prophetic prayer movement at large.
There is no faith being imparted. People are promoted more upon their human leadership capabilities, rather than, like Stephen, as one full of the Spirit. And, a human-observable culture is being intentionally seeded into the mindset of the youth, so that what is produced is not the ‘church’, but the ‘House of Prayer’. Don’t get me wrong. The parts that are from God’s word are absolutely fine. But, the parts that aren’t, aren’t God just as much. And, it is the mixture that is the problem.
Organization is the Essence of Dead Religion
A merely human-inspired organization can never produce eternal fruit. And, those who can simply carry the culture show no reflection on who will carry the anointing. And, this is evident in the current organizations.
They are merely well-oiled machines. Capable of getting ‘stuff’ done, but not God’s stuff. They are, of course, filled with often sincere believers, and what the faithful do, in the right Spirit, always produces fruit, so there are bound to be testimonies, on an individual level.
But, as an organization, it is a dead work. Or, at best, a dead husk around a living kernel of hope.
And, while the importing of a ‘culture’ of the House of Prayer is done more-or-less ‘in the background’, it is the foreground that is what most people see. While at the outset, a prayer room, and constant prayer, and a growing and unique culture are actually paramount to the movement that God wants, employing human strategies and methods from corporate America, and using team-building and consensus building techniques are the ‘strong arm of the flesh’, when it comes to God. God does need these things, but the only way His culture is built is through prayer, through fasting, through Bible reading, and through discipleship.
But, understand this. This is not the primary motivation behind the ‘movement’ we see. These are talked about, but primary in the current House of Prayer network is the movement itself. And, this is why things like deliverance, counselling, discipleship, pastoring, and all the like are always around the house of prayer, but are never actually integrated into it. Auxillary programs, those added on, can just as easily be added and removed and interchanged, but they are never part of the substance of the movement. How can it be? God’s church, as represented by the individuals, is never the object. The ‘movement’ is. While individual members of the prayer communities may have a passion for these things, they do not find their way into the actual indivisible fabric of the whole, and hence, are not truly a part.
I struggled to see, for a long time, where inner healing was found in the Bible. Deliverance and healing were quite simple to locate, they are right there in the text of the New Testament. But, I have found, through much struggle, that the inner healing, in the right form, actually *IS* the New Testament. The healings and deliverances, while also a part, are merely signs pointing the way to the heart of Christ, to living in love, and to loving within. As 1 Peter 1:22 says, “Having purified your souls by obeying the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love each other fervently from the heart.” Ask any aged preacher which is more important, signs and wonders, or a pure heart. The latter is always the case. And, the signs, the miracles, and all the rest, while important, at their best, point to the Word, and living like Him. With a restored heart, in peace, and in perfectness. Inner healing is what happens when you finally live life fully upon the rock, after having ‘dug deep’ (Luke 6:48) beyond all the dirt, or earth, or old man of your soul.
The Inner, not the Outer
And so, so long as performance trumps perfectness, there is no prayer movement. It is merely a show of man, and will fade in a generation. Individual works within may or may not be eternal, depending upon the faith of the individual, but organizationally, there is no more to it than a prayer meeting. Christ simply died for more than that.
And, so, many speak of current houses of prayer, referring to them as cults. They are wrong. There is nothing cultish or binding about them, to lock one in and keep one from leaving, as is typical with the current connotation of ‘cult’. They are, however, quite wrong, quite controlling, and quite religious.
They are wrong because God’s desire is a prayer movement, not their vision of what that should be. Even as their own testimonies represent, it is sometimes the unspoken prayer, that God Himself prays within our spirit, that He hears. It isn’t the meetings, it isn’t the gatherings. It is faith, purity, and hope.
They are controlling, not in the sense that they keep people there, but they keep people out. Their way, or the highway, as it goes. Which, again, isn’t that far off the mark from how any congregational body should be, on some level. Each house is directed by a human, and each part of the body has a different function, for sure. But, they are not ‘the prayer movement’. They are one expression of it. And, what should be exported is not the culture. It certainly isn’t their model, for sure. And, it isn’t anything of the external.
And, they are religious, because it’s simply a dead work. And, this spirit permeates what they do, so that even the ushers move in it (you know it when you’ve seen it). It covers over the truly spiritual by giving a form of it, without typically tapping into the power of it. All the more deceptive is that they do, occasionally, encounter faith, power, and substance, but write it off as ‘good meetings’, with no expectation of continuation. They make doctrines for their lack, justifying compromised lives. Not all, but enough. Some are simply immature. Others are experiencing more regularly. But, as a whole, excuses are merely our personal fig-leaves for not walking in the fullness of Christ. As a body, we have many parts. But, if we lack a hand or foot altogether, that is not diversity, that is ‘maimed’.
What they do get right, is that it is about that burning coal of love in the heart.
The Kingdom of Heaven
Jesus said the Kingdom of heaven was like a seed, which planted, produced the whole tree. A seed contains the entire plant, and the only thing it takes is a little watering. There is no additional information, simply nutrition. This is the way of the Kingdom inside of us. It is simply faith in Christ, nourished by His Word, that makes the entirety of the Kingdom of God within us.
Nothing else is needed, honestly. One thing. To dwell in His house, gaze upon Him, and inquire. Psalm 27:4. In what they have done, they have exported that. And, if that was what they had stayed with, the life within others who heard and received that message, in whom it prospered, would have produced the movement God wanted.
But, you can make a tree do a whole lot of things God never intended it to do. You can braid trees together so that when they grow, they grow twisted. You can chop the bottoms off two trees, graft them together, and make an ornamental something-or-other, so it’s roots above and roots below. You can break the tops off some trees, and cap them, and make them small potted plants. You can even continually cut off the branches of the tree and do what’s called a Pollard, with many smaller branches to create a different effect.
You can manipulate a lot of trees to make them into many things they would not have been before. And, you can like the way they look, and how they decorate your lawn. But, God planted trees in the woods pretty well, and nothing quite grows as big and strong as just letting the trees grow on their own.
Keep supplying the water. Keep letting the Son shine in. But, stay out of their way. And, by all means, if you need to cut a diseased one out to save the rest, I’m right there with the axe, as well. But, not all trees are pines, and not all trees are oaks. And, not all prayer movements look like IHOP Kansas City.
A Possible Remedy?
To correct all this, one might even suggest gatherings of solemn assemblies, but after 15 or more years of such, they have created yet another culture of solemn assemblies, and too few broken hearts.
But, of the broken hearts it did produce, even then, it was not what God was after.
God called for solemn assemblies in the days of old. And, not to say that God doesn’t honor them today, but it isn’t what He was after in the first place. Why should we expected God to do something He has already done? Why should God be obliged to answer our cries for help when we haven’t been faithful with what He has already given us?
The Only Solution
The prayer movement, if it will survive, must embrace the faith movement. Or, it will die.
They must have substance, and anointing on their prayers, or they accomplish little. God hears even the weakest prayer, and I discredit none. But, the kind of prayer that moves heaven is the kind that Jesus taught.
It is not gentle to hide truths from those who are hungry. It is not kind to teach the youth that these things are not the simply way things are.
In all of our attempt to be accommodating, if we step away from the full truth, we lead people into error, intentionally or not.
Prayer must be accompanied by faith, and either Jesus meant it when he said that nothing is impossible for Him who believes, or He is not God. And, the prayer movement needs to step out of what the current church culture demands, and step back into the Bible’s land.
Actually, it’s a laughable thought. Jesus said that with faith, all things are possible. The idea that a prayer movement could ever be successful outside a healthy Biblical understanding of faith as taught by Jesus in the Gospels is simply unBiblical.
Yet, this is exactly what they have done. Faith is now. Faith is the substance of what is hoped for. Faith is the spiritual possessing of a thing which is only promised, and hence, to have faith in something, Biblically, is to literally possess it, albeit in a spiritual capacity. The eventual effect is that heaven will respond and see that you possess in the physical realm what you already possess in the Spirit. This is faith.
You simply cannot pray without faith, and expect God to hear you.
Yet, from the preaching of the prayer movement, passages such as Mark 11:23-24 are relegated to ‘spiritual mountains’, and it is actually denied that these are physical ones, as well. To which, since Jesus was proving the ordinary by stating the extreme, to attempt to minimize the passage in any way to make the passage seem any more reasonable to the human mind is, frankly, nothing but a ‘mountain of doubt’. Unbelief. And, it is wrong.
There is no future for a prayer movement that does not pray until it lays hold of a thing. It is not what God wanted, it is not what He asked for. And, simply coming before Him in mass quantities to sing about how we don’t believe Him isn’t really all that impressive to Him. “Lord help my unbelief” is a concession, not a praise song. God will meet us anywhere we’re at, but we don’t need to makeit our confession, or we will never get out.
He is merciful, He does release wisdom. And, that wisdom is to bring us right back to the feet of Him who bought us, who teaches us, to believe.
The Root of the Issue
And, this is the root of the issue.
Faith sees the invisible (John 3:3,5). The modern prayer movement sees bodies in a prayer room.
Until this changes, there is no movement within the movement, no wheel within the wheel, and no real message in the message the speak.
Faith does something. But simply because you do something does not make it faith. But, when you have it, you do.
A prayer movement that cannot see is like an eagle without eyes. It can fly, and it can soar, but it can’t get anywhere, nor can it find its target and sieze upon it.
The Kingdom heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field that when a man found it, he hid it again, and for joy, went and sold all he had. Matthew 13:44.
Father Daniel Nash, intercessor for Finney, would have been thrown out of nearly every prayer meeting there is. And, while there are many today that probably should be for being disruptive, without the spiritual eyes to see the difference, you discard your best laborers among you.
The nature of the Kingdom is to see. When the man saw the treasure, that was when faith came. When the human spirit catches a glimpse of something of God, he appraises its worth to be above anything else he has. It is therefore for joy that he loses all, including reputation and even ‘good looks’, or physical possessions if need be, to procure the field, and make it his. Whatever the mundane thing you have to do to make the thing of value yours, you do, and it is always for joy.
A prayer meeting without faith cannot make the connection to the invisible, and obtain the treasure, because it cannot see it. Faith is that inward change that happens when you realize that you can possess it. Faith is the realization, the inward appreciation of the thing, where, when you have it, your face lights up with joy.
Faith is not the meeting. Faith is not the prayers. Faith is not the worship team, or the culture. It is the human spirit spotting a glimpse of the offering of God, and making it his. It is neither emotional, nor is it physical. It is a spiritual matter.
This, and this alone, is the prayer movement. The rest is simply ‘culture’. Worse than that, really, it is human reasoning and desire. This, when one connects to that living flame of love, is what changes nations, continents, and the world.
Anything that is not this, is not of God. It is merely men in a room singing pretty love songs. Here today, and tomorrow is thrown in the fire.
The B
ottom Line
Unless the prayer movement realizes this, and makes a change, it will simply fade away.