Pastors, believers in Colorado Springs : This is for YOU! : Dutch Sheets

After some thoughts, I’ll post a CRITICAL email I received from Dutch Sheets Ministries.

Do you live in or near Colorado Springs? I can’t see how any believer would have the choice NOT to connect with Freedom Church!

You may remember a recent post I had inquiring about revival and the house of prayer movement in Colorado Springs. This is a significant answer!

It’s absolutely CRITICAL that the city church of Colorado Springs and those of our nation BACKTRACKS and starts over at square one. We see in Acts 2 that it started not with teaching services, evangelism strategies, small groups or children’s programs– it started with raw prayer! It continued with raw prayer! For hours a day, continually, always! We need the Holy Spirit to burn in our hearts, in our churches and in our cities!

I’m about to preach here in Detroit today on Four Fires. I’ll share the idea more fully later, but the first fire is a personal fire– we must pray passionately as individuals and facilitate the extreme burning of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives. We must wake up in the morning, brush our teeth, eat our Wheaties and CATCH ON FIRE! That’s our primary job every day!

Then, for those who have caught fire individually, the expected primary activity in our Sunday service will be the pursuit of a corporate fire. Sunday and every day of the week will be devoted to the primary activity of deep, zealous prayer that leads to encounters, prophecy, brokenness, empowering and Kingdom advance. Churches will most likely be moving away from the pattern of dropping our kids off in children’s ministry, worshiping for 30–45 minutes and then listening to a sermon and heading out the door to grab the kids and head to lunch.

SUNDAY SERVICES and others throughout the week will be devoted primarily to PRAYER and the revelation of God via prophecy, encounter and Holy Spirit delivered truths from the Word of God. Cries, groans, rejoicing, dancing, intercession, visions, supernatural stengthening and piercing prophetic declarations from the Word will become normal in our churches again.

In THAT ENVIRONMENT we will see the ministries of teaching, counseling, youth ministry and other important focuses become appropriately initiated and empowered. But ONLY in that environment!

Remember, biblically we don’t see the local church, but we do see the city church. Now, God absolutley does work through the ministry of the local church, but we will see exponentinal effectiveness when local churches structurally and strategically merge on many different levels with the other local churches of the city. An extreme reformation and city-wide church reorganization must come.

It’s important to identify city church leaders, movements and stirrings. For example, it would make sense for every pastor and believer in Lakeland, Florida to participate significantly on a weekly basis with Ignited Church and the Todd Bentley revival. It’s a city church function.

Here’s a great quote from Steve Gray from his book Strike the Match:

I believe it’s good and right to labor for the Kingdom of God. Yet, I cannot help but wonder if the labor we are doing is really effective… Until useless fires are finally put out, congregations need to shut down all their “religious” activities. Someone needs to be brave enough to stop the busyness, streamline the programs and reorient our prayer. Someone needs to stand up and say, “We are closing this thing down until we have the genuine presence of God.”

Yes! This is it! I wrote about this idea in my book 20 Elements of Revival. We can’t pretend to have what it takes to teach well, develop small groups well, evangelize well and function well without going through the biblical process. Shut it all down and pray! Seek the face of God! Every member of every church! We need God’s presence!

Malachi 1:10 “Oh that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar.”

Exodus 33:15 “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here”

And now, here’s the email from Dutch Sheets:

Greetings!

Last week at a conference here in Colorado Springs, the presence of the Lord came in a most remarkable way. It happened again in our service this past Sunday. It is always difficult, if not impossible, to convey to those not present the true depth of meetings like these. Rather than try, I will simply state that I have been in many deep and powerful moves of God, but have never been in anything stronger. (We had leaders from the Brownsville Revival present who stated the same).

In these gatherings the word of the Lord released over and over was that in recent years the glory of the Lord had departed from Colorado Springs and now the glory has returned. The Lord then said that just as Obed-Edom hosted the ark of His presence for three months (II Samuel 6:11) and then it was sent to Jerusalem for the whole nation, that we are to honor, host, and guard the glory of His presence for 90 days (through September 13), after which it will go to the entire nation.

We see this in the light of our intercessory calling for the nation, not as elitists who because of our spirituality get to partake first. I also want to quickly and clearly say that I’m not implying that we are the only place this will occur– there may be others. I am, however, saying that this is not just the typical presence of the Lord that comes into a good meeting. This is very different. There is such a holiness to what is present. I feel somewhat like Obed-Edom must have felt– like I’m guarding the Ark.

My real purpose in writing, however, is to ask for help. The assignment given to us Sunday morning from the prophet, Sam Brassfield, was that we host His glory 24/7 for 90 days. Therefore, at His clear command, we have begun 24/7 worship– some prayer, but mostly worship. We are radically reshaping everything in order to host Him and have been able to cover all 24 hours up to this point, though we are not a mega-church. Actually, even mega-churches cannot sustain 24/7 prayer, however, we are committed to this even if it ends up being only this house, but I feel that God will send us many presence-hungry people who will help us for a day, a week or whatever time frame He leads.

Please know that these 90 days will not consist of preaching and teaching– we are simply hosting His presence. Even though there are larger gatherings each evening from 6:00 until-? the format is still simply worship. If you would like to join us, you may contact the Freedom Church office at 719-548-8226 or go to www.freedomchurchcs.org for possible hotel discount information and directions to our location.

Finally, I ask for your prayers as we launch into this huge assignment. Though it is an incredible privilege, it is also stretching us greatly. Thanks.