NOTE: The Lord led our little House of Prayer into 180 days of intensive “Seeking His Face” in January of 2020. On March 7, 2020 we wrote the following – only days before the Lord put 195 nations on the earth in lock-down-mode. Ultimately, our story, the plague of COVID and the other subsequent tumultuous events that have shaken the church over the last 24 months was made into our book “Seek My Face: A Guide to Praying Through the Judgments of the Lord”.

We’d be happy to send you a free PDF of the manuscript, or the print edition. Email us here: xaris4u@yahoo.com

He’s SO gracious, beloved. He’s still calling us to respond to His alarm – but the hour IS turning… You can feel it, can’t you???

MARCH 7, 2020
Kathy, myself and our friends connected w All Nations HOPSW are currently on our 69th day of 180 days of #SEEKMYFACE2020. “Seek My face” (Psalm 27:8) is the Lord’s exhortation to those who are living in a “time of trouble” (Psalm 27:5).

We’re also on day 6 of a 40-day fast. Some have assessed that this 40-day fast is one of the largest, most internationally diverse and focused fasts called in the Church’s 2000 year history. That doesn’t make it better. It’s just sobering to consider that this many believers are currently seeing the need to cry out in our poverty and hunger for the Lord’s sovereign intervention in our world, and our nation.

Typically, Kathy and I spend 5 to 6 hours each day praying and exalting Jesus here at our All Nations Prayer Room in the mountains of Arizona. For the 180 days (until June 30, 2020) we have added 5 additional hours of prayer to our weekly schedule. In the midst of the 40-day fast, we are now adding 7 more hours of private prayer!

I’ve seen enough life to know that we are indeed in a “time of trouble”, unlike anything our nation and Church has faced in my lifetime. I’m also old enough to think in a few years I’ll be standing before the Lord, and in that moment I will have wanted to respond to His exhortation to “seek His face” for myself, my family, and my nation, with a wholehearted spirit.

Occasionally over these days of consecration, we’ve experienced times of ecstatic exhilaration in the Lord (Halleluia! Last Tuesday evening with a dozen+ in our little prayer room, was one of those evenings…) But mostly, the hours of prayer, beholding, worshipping, listening, journaling and travailing are arduous for my flesh. They are very bland, weak and unexceptional.

One of the unique joys of engaging in this level of intense prayer, is doing it with my beautiful wife. The depth of “oneness” that we share in prayer is a source of uber-strength like nothing else in my life, marriage and ministry. To share words of revelation, dreams, warfare and reward in ministry TOGETHER is… well, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

For the last two weeks we’ve been experiencing some incredible warfare on many levels. As we’ve been “inquiring” about the nature of this marked increase of spiritual contention we have both come to the conclusion that it relates to two things that the Lord has called us to soberly and intentionally pray for in our own lives, and in our region/nation:

1. Letting the Holy Spirit bring down the (Jonah 2:8) idols on the high-places in our heart. The high places being the places that our flesh has no capacity to reach on its own. Our flesh normally doesn’t even know the idols are there; like the stuff on the top shelf in your closet. We just can’t see it. We need the Lord’s gracious insight to reach up and show us what’s rotting in the closet of our hearts. This is exruciatingly counter-intuitive work – listening in the spirit to the Spirit, instead of taking cues from our flesh in our flesh.

2. The second issue the Lord is calling us to intercede for is intimately connected with the first. He’s giving us greater sobriety about the nature of His coming presence in our nation. It will, as Joel describes, be “great AND terrible”. (Joel 2:11) The Lord’s wind will uproot institutions AND issues. But He will do so primarily on account of crises in the individual heart, rather than discrepancies over ideological arguments. What do I mean by this? This means the Lord is deeply invested in establishing His Bride in the authentic integrity of her heart, not merely measuring her according to the “correctness” of her (political, social, economic, doctrinal etc.) convictions.

“Rend your hearts and not your garments.” (Joel 2:13)

Beloved, we (the evangelical, Bible-professing, Spirit-filled, praying believers) are massively unprepared for the level of uprooting in our hearts that’s about to take place.

I bless you with the Lord’s close, intimate grace in this hour. He is ready to give His people insight as we inquire, behold Him, and cultivate ears that listen beyond our flesh (and all the noise in our culture), into His Spirit.

Prepare His Bride, Holy Spirit!

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