Still Need new Cooks by the end of February

by Richard Long,

  Knowing that there are about 400 people, (mostly friends of NHOP) who read this blog every week, many of you daily, we want to ask you a special favour.   You may be our best way to find our next cooks.  The Lord provided a wonderful couple, Dave and Moira Day Erdman to pinch in for 6 weeks.  They leave the first week of March.  So we are looking for either short term or long term cooks for the Spring or for a longer term here at NHOP.

We pay a small honourarium and have a brand new furnished apartment onsite.  The kind of people who join us at NHOP are usually the kind who see what they are doing as “missionary” service. 

If you know of somene who fits the bill, please ask them to pray and then give us a call at our office: 613-789-4907.  Thanks!

Reminder: National School of Intercession Edmonton – Feb.25-27

We are excited about the opportunity to partner again with Cityscape Prayer Ministries on another National School of Intercession in Edmonton coming up in just a couple of weeks time from Feb. 25-27.

The early-bird deadline is tomorrow!

For all the details please go to our website. 

Great speakers, great practical participatory times, worship, prayer and new friendships.

We would love to see you there if you live in the greater Edmonton area!

“Restoring the Moravian Fire” – James Goll

 Below is an excerpt from the first chapter of  James Goll’s new book “The  Lost Art of Intercession”. 

Three Strands of Truth

What did the Believers at Herrnhut have that we don’t have today? Long before I ever set foot in the Czech Republic (formerly part of Czechoslovakia) for the first time, I had read books and articles describing the Christian community commonly called the Moravians. Their story is intertwined with the lives and ministries of some of the most important church leaders in the Great Awakenings and revivals that transformed Western society in the eighteenth century. I learned that God gave them “three strands” around which they wove their lives, and these strands helped the Moravians become world-changers:

1. They had relational unity, spiritual community, and sacrificial living.

 2. The power of their persistent prayer produced a divine passion and zeal for missionary outreach to the lost. Many of them even sold themselves into slavery in places like Surinam in South America just so they could carry the light of the Gospel into closed societies. The Moravians were the first missionaries to the slaves of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands; they went to strange places called Lapland and Greenland and to many places in Africa. 

3. The third strand was described by a motto that they lived by: “No one works unless someone prays.” This took the form of a corporate commitment to sustained prayer and ministry to the Lord. This prayer went on unbroken for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of each year for over 100 years!

 The Moravians’ over-100-year prayer vigil and global missionary exploits marked one of the purest moves of the Spirit in Church history, and it radically changed the expression of Christianity in their age. Many leaders today feel that virtually every great missionary endeavor of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—regardless of denominational affiliation—was in a very real sense part of the fruit of the Moravians’ sacrificial service and prophetic intercessory prayer. Their influence continues to be felt even in our day. The Lord is clearly planning to increase that influence once again. 

There’s much more on James Goll’s Encounter Network website.

Pray for Jack Layton

by Richard Long,

   It took a lot of courage for the Honourable Jack Layton to go public yesterday with the news that he is being treated for prostate cancer.  Mr. Layton is the leader of the New Democratic Party.  Always flamboyant and strong in his views, we listen for his voice at every Question Period because we know he will make it interesting.  He’s going to make his fight with cancer an interesting battle as well.

   We were glad to hear the other party leaders speak well of him and mention that they are keeping him in their thoughts and prayers.

Let us do the same.  Pray also for his wife Olivia Chow (also an M.P. and also a cancer survivor) and his family.

Latest Prayer Bulletin from the VOPN

by Richard Long

There are now over 350 intercessors praying for the Olympics using the regular prayer bulletins we send out.

Below is an excerpt from this week’s edition …

Prayer for the Ministry Teams:

1.       The team that has been doing 24-7 worship in Whistler are still praying for a breakthrough for a good place.  Let’s pray for an amazing provision, and also strong protection over them, as they have experienced a lot of spiritual warfare in the last little while.

2.       The Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) group sent out a special request for protection and provision for their many artists.  Specifically they ask us to pray for the wife of one of the artists who is suffering with depression.  She feels like this is an attack as it has come upon her just as her husband is preparing to come and serve in the More Than Gold (MTG) endeavour. Also they ask us to pray for Stephanie (who is arranging a visual arts venue for CAPA in the downtown Eastside) and has felt very under attack.  In fact, she has just lost her place to live.  Let’s continue to hold Russ & Sandi Rosen up in our prayers as they coordinate this huge effort of hundreds of artists.

3.       Let’s continue to pray that the local churches would come out and support the CAPA events ….not only the free concerts, but that the Christians would “catch the vision” and would support the ticketed concerts as well.

4.       Pray for the 48 prayer leaders who are coming to a North American Prayer Summit from the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.  Pray for ease of travel, for good health, and for a great synergy as they meet at Barnabas Family Ministries on Keats Island from Feb. 10-14.  Isn’t God good in sending in these wonderful prayer leaders at the front end of this prayer campaign?  Pray for Sara Maynard the local host, and Murray Dodds the Canadian host as they facilitate the meetings.

5.       Please uphold the formation team who have been working to bring about the International Prayer Centre on Keats Island.  Pray for Rob Bentall, Pete Carlson, Dave Carson, Greg Duskin, Evelyn Erickson, Michael Gray, Jon Raibley and myself – Richard Long.  We have all had some major spiritual attacks over the last few weeks, either on facilities, computer equipment, communications, serious health issues, and family members.  We are all up for the battle, but we need protection from needless casualties.  We are asking you to pray for us specifically that we would be “hidden” from the enemy during these crucial next 3 weeks or so.

6.       Pray for Athletes in Action as they marshal over 100 workers into the midst of things this coming week.  They will be speaking at youth outreaches, helping the homeless, and in general sharing the love of Christ with everyone we come in contact with during the Olympics. Also seven of their chaplains are involved in the official chaplaincy work under David Wells.  Pray for Kari Yli-Renko the National Director and his core team: Graham Roxburgh, Doug Pollock, Cheryl Jantzen, and Monica Kay. (We will bring more specific prayer requests from AiA to your attention during the actual Olympic dates.)

 If you are interested in joining the Vancouver Olympic Prayer Network please send a note to me at richard@nhop.ca.  We will send you the prayer updates only for the next 3 weeks.

Olympic Style Praying

by Richard Long,

I’m guessing that a lot of my preacher colleagues will be using the opportunity of the Olympic Games to do some preaching from the several different allusions that Paul in his writings makes to them.  Here in the text below, Paul, who knew that Corinth gloried in their own Corinthian Games, used the analogy to encourage a strong and determined focus for the way we should live our Christian lives.

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (ESV)

May we pray with that same discipline and steady aim.  May the opportunity to host the Winter Olympics remind us as Canadians of this important lesson that Paul was trying to teach.

Does this mean war? by Peter Grieg

Here’s an excellent article on spiritual warfare by the founder of 24-7 Prayer.

Does this mean war? by Peter Grieg

Feb. 1, 2010

‘To clasp the hands in prayer,’ wrote the Swiss Theologian Karl Barth, ‘is the beginning of an uprising’. The uprising begins, of course, in us. Sudden miracles may happen ‘out there’ in my bank account, or on the cancer ward or even in the corridors of power, but more often they happen slowly ‘in here’, in my thinking and motivation as I wrestle with the implications of Christ as Lord. When I clasp the hands in prayer, things change firstly because I myself get changed.

But the uprising does not end with me. It would be a pretty lousy uprising if it could be contained within my rib cage. I’ve often seen great boulders of rock shattered by mere trickles of water that entered cracks and simply froze. In a similar way the unlikeliest force on earth – mere prayer – has the power to destroy the sorts of strongholds identified by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6:18. The way it does this, however, is not nearly as metaphysical as this metaphor makes it sound, so let me give a different example…

I received an email recently, inviting me to take part in an ‘exercise of focused global consciousness’ which was aiming to change a situation of great suffering. The request was well intentioned but New Age understandings of prayer are doomed to change little and challenge nothing because the power of prayer is not in the act but in the object; it’s in the name of Jesus. Without Christ, prayer is mere meditation. With him it can engender transformation. The early Christians understood that bowing the knee to the anointed King Jesus was to defy Caesar’s delusions of divinity. They knew that it was a simple matter of allegiance to one Lord that meant dangerous defiance to another – a political act that could cost their lives in the coliseum. When we bow the knee to Jesus in prayer we are not just engaging in an esoteric religious exercise; we are conspiring with an exiled King to depose a Dictator.  ‘Prayer is subversive activity’, says Rodney Clapp, Associate Editor of Christianity Today (not a magazine generally associated with revolution and counter-cultural conspiracy). ‘It involves,’ he explains, ‘a more or less open act of defiance against any claim by the current regime’.

Read the rest of the article here …

 

The Keats Island International Prayer Centre is in the news

by Richard Long,

Here’s what’s on the front page of the More Than Gold website today.

GET SET…

Are you ready? We are. Come join the fun!

BUT FIRST ~ Read what the Vancouver Sun recently wrote about More Than Gold:

…”More Than Gold, for instance, is sponsoring an “International Prayer Centre” on Keats Island, just north of Vancouver, where Christians are urged to gather to pray that “God’s purpose” be fulfilled during the Games.

While cynics might dismiss these Christian activities as inappropriate efforts to proselytize during the Olympics, much of the Christian programming appears to reflect a straightforward attempt to be a helpful, thoughtful presence during the Games. Like many overwhelmed Canadians, Metro Vancouver Christians are trying to hold the competing values of the Olympics -which include winning, excellence, profit-making and international friendliness -in some sort of rough balance.

As such, many local Christians are seizing on the Games as a chance to both enjoy a gigantic communal event and to remind anyone who cares to listen there are more important things in life than sports.”

Read the full Vancouver Sun article here …

Prayer-Walk Israel

An announcement was sent out today to all our newsletter subscribers, describing a very exciting initiative coming up in 2 months time.

“Pass through, pass through the gates!

Prepare the way for the people.

Build up, build up the highway!

Remove the stones.

Raise a banner for the nations.”

 Isa.62:10

   It seems that everywhere you turn these days you are hearing that there’s a growing sense of acceleration of God’s purposes. Many Christian leaders are preaching that we have entered into the ‘Signs of the Times’ that Jesus referred to around his Second Coming. In different ways in Canada we believe we are ‘touching’ things for God’s purposes that are massive in light of the days we are living. We are sensing that God is identifying and removing the obstacles or stones that have blocked his will from being done in our land and is raising up a company of believers who will strategically pray for such a time as this.                                       

Rob at the Western Gate in January 2010

   Recently God has confirmed to me it is now time to Prayer-Walk Israel. Over these past ten years I have been waiting for the release from the Lord regarding the right timing for such a walk. The speed at which God is now moving this forward is astounding! Upon sharing this assignment with those whom we have walked with for the past 12 years, there was an absolute agreement that now is the time. I found myself in Israel the first week in January with a friend to scout out the land.  We were able to meet with ministry leaders in Israel and I was able to share the intent for this prayer walk. There was a unanimous amen and blessing from these leaders for the timing of this prayer assignment.

Read the rest of the announcement here …

Prayer for an Upside Down View of the World – Adrian Plass

Prayer for an Upside Down View of the World – Adrian Plass

  Lord Jesus, sometimes we need a lesson in perspective and focus, of the topsy-turvy way in which you view the world, the first coming last and the last coming first.  It frightens us to see how easily we can move away from that understanding and begin to measure the worth of people and activities according to the way of the world.

  Give us an eye test, Lord, all those of us who need it.  Remind us that you see things, and especially people, in your own very compassionate and creative way.  Sharpen our focus, Lord, so that we don’t waste time and energy on irrelevancies.  Amen

 taken from the book - Jesus, Safe, Tender, Extreme by Adrian Plass