The Road as a House of Prayer - Why The Road

It's time now for the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

How are you doing in your intimacy with Jesus?

Because nobody can take away your prayer time except you.

It could be in a car as you're driving to work.

It could be kneeling down beside your bed.

It could be in your office.

It could be taking that prayer walk during, it could be any time during that.

Nobody but you can take away that special time in your 24-hour day.

Welcome to another edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Steve is the head pastor of The Road in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

It's our vision to make whole-hearted disciples of Jesus Christ and to see you grow in the grace and knowledge of his love.

If you're in the area, we meet at Chapel Hills Church, located at 2025 Parliament Drive, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80920.

You can go to our website at theroad.org for service time.

That's thheroad.org.

Here now with today's message is Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

I want to talk about prayer tonight.

Liz and I really got introduced into prayer.

And we always prayed.

I used to cut my I cut my teeth on a guy named Leonard Ravenhill.

Anybody heard of Leonard Ravenhill?

Okay, talking about a guy that could make you, nobody could make you feel more guilty about your walk with God than Leonard Ravenhill.

And I don't know why I was obsessed with Leonard Ravenhill, but I guess because I'd been an athlete and I'd gotten saved and I wanted to be radically committed to Jesus, and I just looked around at all these flimsy Christians, and I just felt, you know, I don't want to be like them, you know, I want to be on fire.

And so someone handed me a Leonard Ravenhill book.

And as you read it, just like basically said, you know, you only pray an hour a day.

I mean, what's your problem?

We'd have revival in America if the church would fast and pray, you know, 360 out of 365 days out of the year.

I was like, yes, my kind of guy.

Kind of Olympics for prayer and stuff.

You know, you could make the, you get a gold medal if you read Lenaraven.

So I so we prayed, and we and I grew up in a ministry with Campus Crusade at University of Georgia where we prayed.

But really, where I learned to pray and where Liz and I learned to pray together was in Japan.

And Japan was a hard place.

And we would come together every Monday morning, and we'd pray for hours as a staff team.

And then we'd go out on the campuses.

And we had all night prayers.

I used to hate those.

It's like it was just brutal.

And we did it all wrong because we were trying to do it like Koreans do.

And Koreans are weird people.

I mean, they really are.

They're so zealous for the Lord, it just makes you feel like trash.

And I can't explain it except if any of you guys are into bodybuilding or you're around people who work out a lot, and then they want you to work out with them, and they just go hard for like a hundred hours, you know, and you're in there and you can barely like do you know 25-pound dumbbells, and they're doing like 75, like 150 times.

Like I the other day I looked in, I was just looking up, like, exercises for over 50 people.

You know, so that's me, okay?

So I look that up, and it's and it's like they take you to this YouTube.

Seriously, guys.

The dude is cut.

I mean, the the guy is ripped, and he's like a hundred or something.

And he's just like, mm, mm, mm.

And it's like 75-pound dumbbells.

He's ripped, and he's doing it, and he's like, 62.

And and he never ends.

It never stops.

He just keeps doing it, and that's what you're watching.

And I'm thinking, okay, at some point he's gonna drop them, and he's gonna go, and it's like, it's just something like 62-year-old doing curls.

And I looked at the bottom, and it's an eight-minute YouTube, and he never stopped.

I zoomed ahead, I checked.

And I, this is not motivating, not motivating at all.

So we start praying with these Korean Christians that are from Korea, and they're like, we get into the room, and here's, you know, we're all just like kind of, we're Americans.

You know, and Americans are that's us.

And guys, we don't, we don't know how to pray like they do.

They pray.

And so we'd be, we had three Koreans on our staff team, and they're, oh, and they're crying out, and they're not even charismatic.

I mean, these are evangelical conservatives.

God, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's in Korean.

So we started learning this thing called Korean prayer.

Has anybody done Korean prayer?

Korean prayer is where you scream as loud as you can in your own voice for hours.

And that's, and it's like God's deaf.

Seriously, it's like God's deaf.

And so, and so I remember thinking, God's not dead.

I really believe that.

But I don't believe God is deaf either.

You know, and so it was hard.

So we cut our teeth on that and we saw miracles.

I mean, I could go on for hours about all the miracles we saw God do because we prayed.

And I believe, I believe we were just kind of swept into this prayer faith of these Koreans, and they inspired me.

It's like being, how many of you have ever been in an African American charismatic church?

Ho ho ho! Man, that'll make the hair lift up on the back of your head for a week.

And I've never heard better preaching.

And I and I was a part of that.

You guys know in one summer in Watts, LA, for the whole summer, we were we were in the African American community, and uh, Liz and I, and we were in a with a living with an African-American family, and we were in there in the church.

Three-hour services.

But when you get around our black brothers and sisters in worship, it's passionate and it's powerful and it's zealous.

I love that.

So we cut our teeth on prayer and then came back to the States with what we had experienced with the Koreans.

And we went over to Korea, and we were at Cho Yungi's Church, which is the largest church in the world, and we prayed with those Korean believers, hundreds of them at times, and it was it was powerful.

I want you to turn your Bibles to Mark chapter 11, and there's a situation that's very, very interesting in the life of Jesus in Jerusalem.

Mark 11 · chapter mention

At the holiest place on the earth during the most holy festival of the year for the Jews.

The holiest place of the earth during the most holy festival of the year, we see Jesus do something that gives us an insight into his heart and his mission for the church.

And we can't miss this.

At the road less traveled, we we call ourselves the road.

God gave us the title, the road, for the seven words he gave us, the road less traveled when we were seeking him about planting a church.

And this is a road less traveled in the American church, what Jesus is about to do.

And in many parts of the world, this is this is the bread and butter of the church.

They build their churches this way.

But Jesus gets his most angry in this situation like no other place anywhere else in the life of the Son, the Messiah.

So they came to Jerusalem, verse 15.

And then Jesus went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.

And he would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple.

Then he taught, saying to them, Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations?

But you have made it a den of thieves.

Father, as we open your word tonight, as we've opened in worship that our God reigns, we ask you, Lord, to reign in this place, to rule in this sanctuary, to come, Lord, and may you anoint this message for your honor, for your glory, and for the equipping of the saints.

Father, we love your word.

We love, Lord, that you have given us instructions and guidance from your word.

It is inerrant, it is infallible.

God, speak to us about what you're saying to the road in this time in the 21st century as we look at our world in need of the gospel, but also our own country, struggling to figure out who she is.

Father, we of the church are called to pray and to seek your face.

And so, Father, anoint this time together in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

So Jesus, angry, maybe the most angry we ever see him in all of Scripture.

Jesus is zealous.

He's zealous for the house of God.

He cries out that his temple is to be a house of prayer.

Here's what's interesting: Jesus came into the court of the Gentiles.

Okay, so he didn't go into the holy place.

He wasn't allowed to, he wasn't allowed to go into the Holy of Holies.

Only the priest could do that.

He went into the outer court.

And the outer court is called the court of the Gentiles.

And the court of the Gentiles was set up when the Jews came back from their captivity in Babylon, because as they came back and were repairing the temple, many non-Jews wanted to follow the one true God.

And so they set up a court of the Gentiles, which was a place for those who were non-Jews to come and hear the gospel and worship and be a part of the sacrifice.

So this is that outer court.

But as the years went by and as the generations had passed by, the Jews figured out, well, this is actually a better place than ever to sell our doves and our cattle and our sheep for sacrifices.

And so instead of it being a place that had been dedicated as the court of the Gentiles, that's what he means: prayer for all nations.

In other words, a place where the nations can come, the Perizzites and the Jebusites and the Canaanites, they could come and learn about the one true God.

They had replaced it as a marketplace.

And so they're buying and they're selling and they're making a lot of dough.

They're making a lot of money there.

And so the best businessmen in the world are still Jews.

And any Jew sees an opportunity to make a dollar, they will do that.

And so they were doing so even thousands of years ago.

And so they had set this thing up.

Jesus knows what the purpose of the court of the Gentiles was meant to be.

And he's angry because they've made it a marketplace.

They've made it a place to make lucre, to make money when it was a place to evangelize all nations.

And so the church, as we know it at that time, had become a house of consumers and business instead of a house of disciples and intercessors.

And men and women, Jesus weeps today for the church.

Because the church in America has become a business.

It is primarily a business.

We are primarily driven more as an organization than an organism.

We are driven often by the bottom line.

We make decisions based on the bottom line.

Do we have enough money for this?

Do we have enough money for that?

How's, you know, it's about bucks and butts.

It's often about butts and bucks.

How big is the church and how much money is coming in?

Now, is organization important?

Of course it is.

But organization in the church always should follow organism.

The spiritual power of the church should be primary.

Organization is following behind and picking up and guiding systems so that the organism can continue to be powerful.

Because you've, you know, you've been in places where there's no organization and it's chaos.

God calls us to organization, but not primary.

Not primary.

And so this court of the Gentiles, which was meant to be an organism of the power of the gospel, the word and the spirit being released with signs and wonders, had become a place where it was just a marketplace.

And Jesus is ticked.

And I believe Jesus is weeping over the church today.

Jesus weeps over the church today because we've let organization overtake organism.

And so he cries out.

And in one passage, because we believe there's two times that Jesus actually cleared the temple in Jerusalem at the beginning of his ministry, near the end of his ministry.

In the second time that he comes through with a whip and begins to drive the money change.

Because nothing changed the first time.

So they went, oh, and everybody like freaked out and they go after Jesus and he escapes in the crowd, but it didn't change anything.

And so when he comes back to Jerusalem, it's the same as it was before.

And so he comes in.

In that passage, they quote from the Old Testament, they say, the zeal of the Lord, the passion of the Lord has consumed him.

Jesus is consumed with a passion and a fire for the Lord.

So Jesus' heart is the heart of God.

Don't miss this.

Don't miss the passion just to hear the message.

So when he speaks of the fact that my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves, this is said passionately, zealously, like we were last Sunday afternoon.

I don't know about your house, but I know about my house.

And it was not a group of people that were just sitting there like we are right now, dutifully just watching the TV set.

Oh, he scored a touchdown.

Yay.

We were, if you're, I mean, if you're really from Colorado, if you love our state, you were out of control.

Right, Chad?

No comment over here.

I told Chad he's never, ever invited into my home again.

No, I'd say one of my second favorite, third favorite teams is the Kansas City Chiefs because of your quarterback.

I love that guy.

But not when they meet the Broncos.

So don't miss the zeal here.

Don't miss the passion here.

What are you zealous about?

What are you in your own life passionate about?

What gets you up in the morning?

What do you find yourself thinking about, dwelling on?

What makes you angry?

I'll tell you for me, it's not prayer.

And many times it's not the Lord.

I hate to say.

What is it though?

God gave us our emotions.

And I know this that as we draw closer to the flame, we get burned.

And when we get closer to the flame, we start to feel the heat.

And Jesus, more than any other human being, because he was a human being and God was the closest to the things of the Lord.

So this is a picture of the heart of God.

And so as we go into 24-hour prayer, let's be honest.

And let's just be honest and say, we're not as zealous as God would want us to be.

I heard a speaker many years ago say this: you can be as close to God as you want to be.

What a profound statement.

Really, a nationally prophetically gifted guy that just went through hell and back with the way he was treated in the church.

But I'll never forget that.

He was speaking at the Anaheim Vineyard, and he said, You can be as close to God as you want to be.

And here was the context.

This guy, probably one of those anointed prophetic men at the time, this would be in the early 90s, late 80s, early 90s, and people would come up to him and they wanted a word from God.

And they wanted him to give up, they wanted him to lay hands on, give him a word from God.

And he got so tired of it that he finally just took his Bible.

This one lady was just harassing him.

And he just said, You want a word from God?

I will give you 66 books that have a word of the Lord for you.

And just gave her the Bible.

And then she said, Oh, well, thank you, and then ran off with his Bible.

He never saw it again.

So, men and women, we at the road can be as close to God as we desire to be.

I want to give you three thoughts on prayer.

What I believe are what Jesus meant about a house of prayer, being a house of prayer, being a church that's a house of prayer.

First is this.

I believe prayer, first of all, is intimacy.

At its core, prayer is a love, intimacy with God.

It's where we come, and I and I do differentiate.

I you know, I've listened to uh Michael W.

Smith, I've listened to other uh worship artists kind of talk about worship prayer as prayer worship.

And I and I like that.

I mean, it is true that we pray sometimes in our worship, but I do make a distinction.

I do believe that worship is worship, and worship is a focus on the Lord through song, through a lifestyle, through the way we live our lives with integrity.

That's all worship.

But when I speak of song worship, I see that as distinct from prayer.

That's why we call it harp and bowl.

When we come in, we're gonna worship, and it is a part of our prayers to worship, but it does say that it's like incense, the prayers of the saints.

It doesn't say the worship of the saints.

And so worship is different.

So prayer is when we're communicating in our own words to the Lord and then listening for his voice.

Prayer is our communication with Jesus, our communication in the Spirit with our own words, not reciting prayers.

I think reciting prayers has its place, but I'm not, I'm not primarily focused on that right now because that tends to be too religious for me.

But, and I'm not against it.

So don't hear me, I'm not against it.

I'm just saying that prayer at the intimate level is your words speaking to the Lord, crying out to him, calling out to him.

You know why I say that?

Because I compare it to marriage.

Can you imagine getting up in the morning and Liz is there, and then I tell her, Liz, I love you, and I've always loved you since the first day we got married.

And then would you read this part here?

She goes, Yes, me too.

Thank you.

And then I go.

And because of that, I confess to you that all that I have is yours.

Okay, then could you could you read that part?

I mean, I I'm not against.

Those kind of prayers.

But remember, remember that most of the recited prayers and prayers that came that way are from the ancient church.

And it was done because people were illiterate.

People were illiterate at that time.

And so they memorized those prayers because they didn't know how to pray, and there was so much ignorance because so few had the Bible in their own vernacular.

It was in Latin in most of the church at that time.

In the Roman church, it was in Latin, and it was in Greek in the Eastern Church.

That's how they learn.

Well, this we have English Bibles, gang.

Most of us can read here.

So we don't have to have that.

Rather, how are you doing in your intimacy with Jesus?

Because nobody can take away your prayer time except you.

It could be in a car as you're driving to work.

It could be kneeling down beside your bed.

It could be in your office.

It could be taking that prayer walk during, it could be any time during the day.

Nobody but you can take away that special time in your 24-hour day.

So first of all, prayer is intimacy.

It's you sharing your heart with the Lord, and then it's also listening.

Now, this isn't a this isn't a seminar on prayer, so I'm not going to go into the detail of that.

But it's you also hearing from God.

And I believe the main way we hear from God is from his word.

So secondly, prayer, first of all, prayer is a love, intimate relationship.

But second, and don't miss this, it's really important, because this is largely what we're gonna do in our 24-hour war room.

Prayer is contending in the spirit for the coming of the kingdom of God.

So first it's intimacy, but don't stop there.

It's contending in the spirit for the coming of the kingdom of God.

We are commanded by Jesus, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

That's contending, folks.

If you watched boxing, I grew up in the South, and we used to watch boxing at the forum out of LA, and my brother and I would watch these boxing matches, and then we'd go and beat each other up in the living room, in the uh den.

And one time we were we were at it, and my brother took a swing at me, and I we have we had gloves on.

Okay, we were wearing gloves.

And I ducked and he hit the aquarium.

50 gallons.

Boom! All over the floor, kissy fish, uh, angel fish flopping everywhere, and we had a cat.

And like$150 worth of fish were eaten up in like five minutes.

That was not a good day for mom and David.

Why did you duck?

Well, he's gonna hit me, Mom.

Oh, that's a good point.

So, boxing, we talk about a contender.

So, what's a contender?

Someone who's contending, someone who's battling.

So that's battling prayer.

And when we go into the war room, you may not know how, but you might be the hour we're praying on business.

And in business, we're praying for God to raise up godly men who are entrepreneurs, that they would be raised up so that they make an impact in the business world.

And we're gonna contend for that.

And maybe you pick the hour, it's on government, and we're gonna be praying for.

We just lost um one of our Supreme Court justices today who died, uh, um, Scalia.

And so, and so we're praying for wisdom on that, and we're praying for the election, and we're praying for our mayor, and we're praying for our governor.

So you see what I'm saying?

It's contending.

We don't do enough of that.

Church, we don't, who else is gonna do it but us?

Why doesn't Congress pray?

Because they're Congress.

Why don't we see more prayer in the military?

Because they're defending our nation.

I was guiding a military hunt today with four young men.

I don't think anybody was over 35 in that group, and I was guiding them on a pheasant hunt, and the four guys represented nine, nine overseas tours and four in combat, and one had a purple heart.

And then I said, when I always have my time when I take them, we go on the hunt, we come back, we have lunch together, and then I say, Let me tell you a little bit about me.

And they're like, and I go, I've been married 31 years, I have seven children.

Wrapped attention.

And then I start telling them about you gotta have the Lord.

You gotta have the Lord in your life.

And I said, How many of you guys have prayed?

Everybody's hands go up, because these guys have been in combat.

So the church is called to pray more than any other institution in the world.

And if we don't pray, I believe, and I don't, I'm not talking about salvation.

You guys know me well enough to know that I believe in a loving, grace-filled God, but I'm just looking at the scriptures and I think Jesus gets angry.

I think he gets angry at the church when we don't pray.

And I wonder, I wonder sometimes, Liz and I talk about this all the time, I wonder what God would do in the whole family if we were more contenders in prayer.

Financially, with our kids, in the church, in our health.

I mean, we're so quick to just run to a doctor.

Well, we're not really, but there was a time where I mean you run to doctors for everything, you know?

Right?

Or at least you go into that medicine shelf, right?

To begin, and I'm not saying, I'm not, by the way, I think doctors are cool.

They really do.

Um, but what I'm saying is we run to the natural route rather than the supernatural route too quickly.

And so, to be men and women that go to God and ask God for miracles and believe God for healing and believe God to do stuff in our businesses, what would God do if we went after the Lord that way?

So it's it's contending.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

So first it's intimacy.

Second, it's contending, and then thirdly, the scriptures say, the New Testament tells us, prayer is building up our holy faith as we focus our prayers.

And so Jude 120 says, but you beloved, building yourself up on your most holy faith, praying in the Spirit.

So, so prayer builds your faith, church.

You say, Well, I don't have enough faith for that.

Pray.

Ask God in prayer to increase your faith.

Ask God in prayer to get increase your faith for situations in your business, for situations in your family.

You see, when when we pray, the scriptures say he actually builds up your inner man.

He builds up your inner woman.

He makes you a warrior when you pray.

He builds you up.

You're not a warrior going in, you can be a warrior coming out.

You may not be a warrior going in, but you'll be a warrior as you pray.

And that only comes through practice.

That only comes through momentum.

And so, and so, you know, you look at some of the situation in our nation right now and where we're at.

We're living off the fumes of the saints that went before us that really prayed and contended.

We're living off the momentum of the past.

Our fathers, our forefathers before us who sacrificed so much to make this such a free nation.

We have to take the mantle again.

It's a relay race, gang.

It's a relay race.

And so we we've been given this mantle in the 21st century, and I'm calling it a flame of prayer.

A flame of prayer that's intimacy, it's contending, and it builds up your faith.

And we're called to that.

And it's an exciting thing.

So you guys know the story.

We we recently covered it in Matthew 17, 17, where Jesus comes, he's been transfigured on the mountain.

He comes back, his disciples have been trying to cast out that demon.

They can't cast out the demon, and then Jesus comes and he casts out the demon.

But if you if you remember what Jesus says, I think it's it's enlightening.

Not only to the fact that he says this kind only comes out through fasting and prayer, so that means there's demons, you guys.

Listen, there's demons that cannot leave your family, will not leave your life, will not leave your marriage unless you'll fast and pray and break the power of the oppressor over your home or your family or your business.

Some of you are in financial dire straits.

You're doing, listen, you're doing everything right.

You're doing everything right as far as your business.

I'm not saying, I'm not saying everybody here is.

I'm just saying, some of you are, you're doing everything right.

But actually, there's a demonic stronghold over this area of your life, and if you'll fast, if I ask God to fast and pray, it'll break the power of that demon, and suddenly blessings will pour into your life.

There's no other explanation for Matthew 17, that passage.

But here's what Jesus says when he comes back.

He goes, So you say, Look, we've been trying to cast out this demon, we can't get out.

And then Jesus answered and said, Oh, faithless and perverse generation.

This is loving Jesus.

This is Sunday school Jesus, who looks like a surfer boy from LA.

You know, with his beautiful surfer hair, and he's holding a lamb.

Staff.

Let all the children come to me.

You know, little kids, all different colors, you know, all on his lap.

This is Jesus.

This is what he actually said.

Oh, faithless and perverse generation.

How would you like if Jesus came in and he said to the road, you guys are faithless and you're perverse?

He said it to his disciples.

He doesn't have a lot of followers right now.

In Matthew 17, everybody's ditching him.

He's only got like 12 guys, and we already know what one of them's like.

So he's really only got 11.

Wouldn't you be a little nicer to them?

This is all you've got, dude.

I mean, there's Boy Scout troops that are bigger than your group.

And you're gonna build a worldwide movement with this group, and then you're calling them faithless and perverse.

That's no way to win friends and influence people.

And then he says, How long am I gonna bear with you?

How long do I have to hang out with you guys?

You guys never get it.

Okay, bring him here to me.

He didn't say, bring him here to me.

He said, bring him here to me.

And then he cast out the demon.

And then he said, Why couldn't we do it?

And he says this in verse 20, because of your unbelief.

So, men and women, when we go into prayer, God really wants to increase our faith.

And something's going to happen in two weeks.

When we go into 24-hour war room, you may come for just one hour and that's it.

Or you're going to be a part of the corporate and you're going to do one hour and you're going to come back to the next corporate on Sunday.

And God's going to build up your faith.

And here's what I want you to do.

I'm going to I'm going to challenge all of us in the one hour of prayer.

It's what we're going to do it.

Is that there's going to be the worship, and then we're going to have time where it's just the music's playing, and you're going to spend time with the Lord.

And when you come into that prayer room, and we're going to pray over that room, it's going to be anointed by the Lord.

When you come in here, God's going to speak some stuff to some of you guys.

You're going to go, oh no, God spoke to me.

God speaks.

I don't forget one time we were in this prayer thing we were doing, and uh, and and I came walking out of this one room, and this kid came up to me.

She must have been about 16, and she said, God speaks.

And I said, Yeah, he speaks.

No, he speaks.

I heard his voice and he told me, and she started telling me the stuff he told her.

I was like, whoa.

Some stuff she's going to do at school.

And she went and did it.

And God showed up.

God's going to speak to you, men and women.

He's going to speak to you in powerful and amazing ways.

Well, the early church, when the early church was getting started, they caught the vision of prayer as primary.

Acts 1.14.

These all continue with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women.

Acts 2.1.

When the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

Acts 2.42.

And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers.

Acts chapter 3, verse 1.

Acts 3:1

Now Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer.

Acts 4.31.

And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken.

Wouldn't that be hot?

That'd be so hot.

It's like we had an earthquake here.

Because we're believing God and we're praying that way.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.

They spoke the word of God with both.

Matter of fact, by Acts 6, here's the way the apostles, the pastors, defined their job description.

And in our in our Constitution, I place this as my primary responsibility as the pastor teacher of the road.

Acts 6, 3 through 4.

Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation.

He's talking about the deacons, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business, but we will give but we, that's the apostles, the pastors of the church in Jerusalem, we will give ourselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the word.

That is my main responsibility here is to be a man of prayer and a man of the word.

If I neglect that, I neglect the most important things that moves this church forward.

I must be a man of prayer and a man of the word.

In the 16th century, about a hundred years after the Reformation, so Martin Luther had brought the Reformation.

He had nailed 90 theses to the 95 theses to the Wittenberg door.

And there was this great revolution, a break from the Catholic Church.

Lutheranism came out of that, and then the Reformation moved over into the Scandinavian countries, and that became classically the Reformed Church, which became largely Presbyterianism.

By about 75 to 100 years, that Reformation had waned.

And so another movement grew up called the Pietist Movement.

And what the Pietist movement was, was Lutherans who wanted to go after the Lord in prayer and passion, intimacy with him, almost like a Middle Ages sort of charismatic word and spirit kind of movement had occurred.

And in the way things had happened in Europe is that the nation states that had developed, which were becoming Germany and France and Italy and places like that, began to have enclaves that were either Roman Catholic or they were Lutheran or Protestant.

And so there's this group of pietists, they're German Lutherans, that are being persecuted by Catholics and Lutherans.

So like they're really into Jesus stuff.

Have you ever noticed if you get it's okay to be religious as long as you don't get too much into it?

See, I grew up Lutheran.

I was a drug baby.

I was drugged to church, you know, from a very small child.

And so I was in the church nine months before I was born.

I was baptized at six weeks old, and I was confirmed at 16 years old.

And so I was, if you cut me, I bled Lutheran.

But in college, I came to know Jesus, not just Lutheranism.

And by the way, many Christians in the Lutheran church, I'm not saying that.

All denominations have lots of Christians in them.

So I love all the denominations, and I really do.

All the traditions are really cool.

I dig them.

But I'm just talking about me.

So I come to know the Lord, I come back, I start telling everybody about it, especially mom and dad, Pastor Joe Holt, my dad.

And he thinks I've joined a cult.

So he, you didn't have the internet back then, but he's doing research, he's making phone calls.

What is this group called?

Campus Crusade for Christ.

And we're having arguments over infant baptism and believers' baptism.

It was a mess for a while.

So it's okay to be religious, it's not okay to be zealous.

Right?

So that's what's happening.

So these guys are running from the law, they're running from the church, and they they hear that there's a guy named Nicholas, believe me, they used to name people these names.

Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf.

I mean, have you heard have you heard the names before football games?

Kind of in that category.

Ma Sharita, somebody, a Smith.

Okay, so this is Nicholas Lewitt von Zinzendorf.

And he's a wealthy German who really loves the Lord.

And he, and back then, what you did if you were noble is you bought cities.

So he bought a town and he named it Hernhut, which means the Lord's watch.

And he wanted it to be a place where this group of Lutherans and Pietists could come, and they were called Moravians because they were from Moravia.

And so the Moravians came, and in the summer of 1727, a great revival broke out, and the Moravians began to confess their sins and reconcile with all these issues and problems of disunity that they had within their group.

And on August 5th, they started their first night watch.

And what that meant is on August 5th, they came together and they just waited on the Lord and they cried out to God.

And the days that followed were marked by a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit, even among the children, which manifested in emotional, ecstatic prayer and singing and worship.

On August 13th, 1727, these corporate meetings came to a climax, and the entire community, which had been called together for the celebration of Holy Communion, came together in brokenness and tears.

Several groups began to call themselves bands and had them already started doing night watch prayer meetings.

Now Count Zinzendorf joins them as they worship the Lord.

And in one of these corporate prayer meetings, Count Zinzendorf felt the Holy Spirit highlighting Leviticus 6.13 to him.

Jot that down.

Leviticus 6.13, because this is important for some of you who come out of mainline denominations.

Here's what it says Fire shall be kept burning continually on the altar.

It is never to go out.

How many of you came out of churches where when you walked into the sanctuary, anytime during the week, not just on Sunday, but anytime during the week, there was a large, usually like a chain coming down with a perpetual lighted candle.

Some of you remember that?

In the Lutheran church, we had that.

That's what that comes from, is that passage.

This idea of, it's the idea of the presence of the Lord always there.

Well, for Zinzendorf, he took that to mean a word from the Lord that there would be a move of God where 24 hours of the day, seven days a week, there would be worship and prayer going up to the Lord.

Continually.

That would be the flame.

And so a team was put together of 24 men and 24 women, each one of them praying one hour a day together, a man and a woman together, coming together.

So it was 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and for the next 100 years.

And what was birthed was one of the greatest prayer, worship movements, and missionary movements the world has ever seen.

And so, men and women, we're talking about one night of coming together, and I'd say we're testing God in this.

And here's what I'd like you to do for the next two weeks is you would take out your journal each day and say, Lord, is there something that you want to do in my life during the war room?

That when I go in with intimacy with you and I contend, is it my marriage?

Is it my relationship with you?

My personal relationship with you?

Is it my prayer life?

Is it my Bible study life?

Is it my business?

Is it my porn?

Is it my anger?

Is it my shame?

Is it my envy?

Some of us are walking with such a burden of shame, and the Lord wants to start to break it off and set us free.

Because there'll be time for that at each of the prayer times, a time for you to personally deal with stuff in your life.

And then we're going to contend for our nation and we're going to contend for our city.

We're going to contend for God to do a great work.

So here are the seven mountains of influence.

We're going to pray over these seven mountains during the 24 hours of prayer.

I think we have a PowerPoint of that.

So the seven mountains of influence that were uh I think it was Abraham Kuyper, former Prime Minister of Norway, I believe, or no, of Holland.

And he talked about the seven mountains of influence that that move society and culture forward.

The church, we'll have an hour, three times, because there's three times seven, twenty one hours.

And so three times we'll pray for the church, family and marriage, education, business, media, arts, and entertainment, and I would probably throw in sports and that, military, and then government.

And what we'll do in a typical hour in the war room is 15 minutes of worship, 15 minutes of listening to the Lord, and then 30 minutes of intercession and worship during that hour.

So here's what I want you to do.

I've got a book.

You guys know that Dick Eastman is one of my mentors, and he is an overseer for the road.

And he and I were on the phone this week, and I said, Dick, can I get a hundred copies of your book?

And he says, It's yours.

And so we picked it up, and it's all free.

It was given to us by Every Home for Christ.

They're going to be out there in the lobby.

Take this and use it.

It's a 31-day journey in prayer.

It's awesome.

And it's got the seven mountains of influence and all the stuff.

This was written years ago.

But Dick meant it to be a place for a church like us that's really committed to becoming a warring church, a an intercessing church, a church that believes God for miracles.

So those are until it's first come, first serve, but they're just yours.

Just take them.

And there's a hundred of them out there.

And then Pam, Pam Doyon, Pam Stan.

Pam is back here in the back.

She'll be at a table back there, and you can sign up.

And there's also a way to get it online.

And that's coming through the e-blast.

It's coming through emails and stuff like that.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Steve Holt.

We pray that you've been blessed by the message today.

Our hope is to make wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

And that's why we teach the Word of God verse by verse, scripture by scripture, and precept upon precept.

We're excited about all the things God is doing in the lives of our faithful listeners.

We understand that there are many trials and tribulations in this world, and we'd love to be able to pray for you as you encounter difficult times.

Please drop us a note and let us know how we can pray for you.

Write us at The Road, DO Box 88485, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80908.

If you've been blessed by this message, please let us know as well.

Again, the address is The Road.

DO Box 88485, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80908.

If you're in the area, please stop on by and join us at The Road.

We meet at Chapel Hills Church, located at 2025 Parliament Drive, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80920.

You can find out about our service times and more about the road by going to our website at theroad.org.

That's theroad.org.

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As always, we covet your prayers.

Thanks again for tuning in today.

And be sure to catch us again next time for another edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Hope.