Venue Space C – Focus on Truth

Prayer Strategies

Strategy #1

“You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”  John 8:32  NIV

This is your focus for Space C in the venue.  There are 24 seats there.

There are three key words.

Know.

Truth.

Free.

Let’s start this process with the word KNOW.  It is not cognitive knowledge.  And it can’t really be experiential knowledge, before you have experienced it.

I am not a Greek scholar, but I envision the word as a dynamic bridge between two worlds.

Think of birthing.  You can read about it until the cows come home and achieve a measure of knowledge ABOUT birthing.  And a male OB can deliver 1,000 babies and know more than a mother of three knows ABOUT the range of possibilities in the experience.

But a mother of one or a dozen can look back on the birthing experience having lived it, and she knows something no non-birther can ever know.

But on the way to the mother’s having that level of knowledge, there has to be the birthing experience.  Hers is common to all women, and common to none.  It is her unique experience and no one has lived it the way she did.

As you know, I loath sausage factory Christianity.  I am a connoisseur of THE JOURNEY.  And if I am a connoisseur of The Journey, God is the docent of the Museum of Journeys.  He knows all umpteen billion journeys that He has watched over assiduously.

In order to prepare your spirits for this very important assignment, please look at your life and make a list of the “conversion events” where what you “knew” thoroughly, cognitively, became an experiential reality.

MAKE A WRITTEN LIST of bullet points that can remind you later in the heat of the battle.

And it doesn’t have to be events as dramatic as birthing.

One of the people in this group has received several small acts of dignity from me.  They “knew” what dignity was long before ever hearing of me.  But each of the little events, caused dignity to have a bit more flavor and color and texture and weight.

Immerse yourself in the memory of the process God used to move you from head knowledge to an imprinting kind of experience of truth.

Savor it.

And then begin to pray for the land, the building, the furniture, the atmosphere, and for me, that the experience that God wants each person sitting in Space C to have will be barrier free.

Remember that this is going to be a “foreign language” to the building and the land.  That space has been used for fun, for cognitive data transfer, for worse purposes, but rarely for human beings to have a profoundly transformational encounter with the True and Living God.

So we have to take out the trash AND build a fortress of righteousness.

Strategy #2

I want to continue the theme of knowing truth for another season of prayer.

This time I am attaching my working list of Biblical people.  Please save it in a place where you can print out additional copies as we go through this journey of intercession.

For this first pass, look for the low hanging fruit.  Who are the people who had a massive, profound experience with God that caused some truth to come ALIVE in their hearts?

My all time favorite, as you well know, is Gomer who had a heart transplant so she could receive, experience, walk in, luxuriant love.  One big, big, big deal.

But there are sundry other examples.  Take Elisha after Elijah’s exit.  He walked back to the Jordan, with ALL THE YOUNG PROPHETS WATCHING HIM, wondering at the core of his being whether the transfer of power took place.  He did his very best imitation of Elijah, rolling up Elijah’s mantle, striking the river like he saw the boss do an hour before as he desperately cried out, “Where is the LORD God of Elijah?”

Imagine the damage to his street cred, if that had failed, and he had to swim the Jordan to get back to the school of prophets to take up his position as their fearless leader.  A lot at stake here.

Two things happened.  The river parted.  And Elisha NEVER again asked where the God of Elijah was, since he was sure that he knew, that he knew that the impartation had taken place.

Gomer.  Private.

Elisha.  Live streamed to Facebook in the most exposed way possible.

Then there is Esther who had less than no interest in being the heroine of the nation.  But she discovered she had it in her to experience (twice) the life and death bucking of palace protocol with a psychopathic king.

Make your own list.  The first objective is to sensitize your heart to all the different journeys people have.  Esther never parted the Jordan, and Paul never raised anyone from the dead after he was dead.

Once your mental grids are wider and sizzling with the energy of possibilities, press in with passion for Space C, asking God to take each individual through the unique transformation from cognitive knowledge of something to experiential knowledge of THAT truth that they need.

Take a moment and write down which Biblical person you chose and what kind of transformation sparkled for you from their life.

Click here to download "Bible Women and Men" list as a PDF file.

Strategy #3

One of the biggest problems with embracing new truth, is old truth.

The old truth of the Mosaic Law was what kept too many people from embracing the new truth of the Kingdom of God.

Every person coming to this event knows a lot of truth already.  And that truth can be used by the devil to sow doubts or by the Holy Spirit to confirm the things I am sharing.

For this season of prayer, please major on Isaiah 55:8ff.

There is a huge amount of inert truth in people’s minds, as they walk into the room.  This can be activated.

Think of the gospel record of how many times the apostles heard and remembered something that Jesus said, but they did not actively register it as relevant until some incident later, “melted the snow bank” and it became living water to them.

Pray into that for everyone seated in Space C.  Ask the Holy Spirit to bring up truths that have already been deposited in their minds, and activate those truths in ways that will cause them to embrace the new truths that will set them free.

Copyright by Arthur Burk