Apprentice 2 Jesus

Refreshing Prayer

This weekend our church held a prayer retreat. This is our second year doing this and I find them so refreshing. We have no agenda. It’s corporate prayer, worship and waiting on God. We don’t know where we are headed in a particular hour. While it can sound a little scary not having an agenda, or even boring because we don’t know what’s next, it’s simply refreshing.

We had intense times of worship. There were focused times of intercession as we lifted specific needs before the Lord. We also waited on the Lord for prophetic words.

The underlying text that came to us was Isaiah 61. Different people in our prayer group had this passage come to them in prayer over the past several weeks. This was a passage the Lord put on my heart when I was challenged to “name my year.”

Specifically, I was challenged by v. 7. “Instead of your shame, you will receive a double portion.” The Lord spoke to my heart about moving into the reality of asking…truly asking. As I’ve said before, “The nature of the Kingdom is to ASK.”

My challenge is to take up this reality of Christ in me. I have an inheritance in Christ and I have the rights of the double portion. ASK.

In our prayer retreat we had a sense of the Lord’s delight over us. Not for what we’ve done. He delights over us because we are HIS. It was a joyous sense of his presence.

We all need regular times of turning aside for awhile. We need to gain our bearings and hear from the Lord again. I am thankful for a group of people who took that time this weekend!