Thesis # 4: “The New Apostolic Epoch By: Douglas Small
Sunday, March 31, 2019
“But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.” Matthew 6:6 – NLT
The Sunday church experience has too often become a substitute for daily, personal God-encounters in prayer. The majority of people who are to comprise a house of prayer are not praying, except as they pray on the go, and this is most often about personal needs. Prayer is far too casual. God is reduced to a servant. Prayer commandeers Him to meet our needs. True intimacy demands privacy. (P. Douglas Small, The New Apostolic Epoch, Page 22)
Prayer: by Pastor Dennis Langford
Lord, today is the beginning of a brand new week! Thank you for this week that is stretching before me. Thank you because you are already out there where we I going. You will meet me each day as time marches on, carrying me along with it. Remind me, first thing each morning, how important it is to pray, to call upon your name, to trust you for the best outcome possible as each new day dawns. Lord, spending that time with You will make me a better person! Daily prayer will keep me in step with your will for my live. I give you permission to bring me face to face with own prayerlessness should I fail to take time to pray.
My world needs me to intercede for the intervention of Your power and Presence to come upon it’s people who are being swept away by a current of lawlessness and ungodliness. O God, in the Name of Jesus Christ, please come and change the tide of evil by pouring out the True Spirit of righteousness. These are surely the evil times you spoke of when evil men and those who seduce others to be and do evil are increasing in alarming numbers, boldness and exploits! I petition you to stop them and raise them up with this generation, with the Word of God on their lips and the Spirit of God in their hearts. Let the Word of God be spoken in power and with great conviction. Let the Holy Spirit fall with great conviction upon this generation. Raise up firebrands, those filled with the boldness to speak the Word of truth in the midst of a crooked and perverse people. Give them a fearlessness like that of John the Baptist and Elijah. May the perseverance of Daniel keep them for the time of their ministry.
And Lord, I am here because you have planted me in the moment and place where I am. I humble myself before You, surrendering to your will. Come Holy Spirit and fill my heart with an anointing that releases me for the work assignment you have called me too. Don’t let us miss my day of opportunity! Don’t pass me by, but visit me in this dreadful day of iniquity and blatant sin. Give me a heart of love to love those who are unloveable. Give me grace to go where others refuse to go and do what others refuse to do.
Lord, increase my attention span to 24/7, my prayer life to maximum prayer alert, and full capacity output. Change my perspective – however you have to do it – to understand and see prayer in a different manner. Not as a duty, but a powerfully productive discipline! Not just as a discipline, but also as a delightful experience! And not just as a delight, but also as an exercise of dependent effort which releases me into Your will and the power of God into and upon our world!
Father, it is good to call upon you in the Name of your Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ. I look forward, with anticipation, for a move of saving, healing, delivering grace in these last days of earth. Grant me the petitions I ask of You, for without You I can do nothing! Amen!
