So, during our midnight intercession set tonight, I’m pretty sure that Ms Leah Chandler was praying for me. Well, she was praying for the church in Kansas City… but as she prayed it felt like she had been eavesdropping on my conversations with God. Or at least my conversations with Amanda… or my reading blog. I haven’t had a prayer hit me like this in a long time.

I would tell you how many times I have listened to that prayer on the webstream… but it would be moderately embarrassing, and I stopped counting anyway.

See… this is what happens when you pray the word. You find people in the midst of their deepest struggles and give them strength, courage, and hope.

Leah’s prayer was good. So good that I decided to type it up (and the antiphonal stuff that the singers were doing). All of the bold font is Leah… the choruses are italicized. It doesn’t really matter. They were all praying together.

Here it is:

I’m going to continue praying for the church in this city out of 2 Thessalonians 3.

Pray for us that the word of the Lord would run swiftly and be glorified, just as it is with you, for the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from the evil one. Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.

Lord, I pray, that today Your light indeed would break in. That it would be like a hedge, like a fire, all around the hearts of every Christian, every believer in this city. Lord I ask that the evil one would not have access to Your bride in this city. Lord, that he would not be able to come and steal the truth from their hearts. Lord, that the word that has been planted within their hearts would be guarded. Lord, I pray that nothing would come and snuff out the truth that is within the hearts of the believers in this city. Let Your word be a hedge around them. That they’d be guarded from the evil one. Guarded and established in the word of God. Lord, that they would stand firm against the attacks and the schemes of the enemy. Lord, I pray that Your bride would rise up and take a stand with the sword of the word of God in her hand and use it as a weapon. For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but is against principalities of darkness and every wicked force of this world. Lord, let Your bride arise with the word in her heart. With the word in her mouth, speaking it against the strongholds over this city. Lord, I ask that you would guard Your bride. Guard her and establish her from the evil one in this city, I pray in Jesus’ name.

Come guard Your bride from the evil one

Having done all, just stand

Guard us with Your word

With Your word in our hearts. With Your word in our mouths.

Would you put your word in our hearts.

That we would stand firm, with the word of the Lord

With truth in our hearts.

That having done all things, we would stand

We would stand

That we would stand
With the word of the Lord
And Your truth in our hearts
Oh, guard us from the evil one.

Release Your truth. Hedge us, God. Come, God. That we would stand. The truth in our hearts. Guard us God. Let your truth bind us up and hedge us in. Establish us, God.

I just declare over this city, “The Lord is faithful. The Lord, your God, is faithful. He is a strong tower. His name is a strong tower, a mighty fortress.”

Lord, I pray that your bride in this city would run into the strong tower of Your name and find refuge and security in the strength of your name, in the power of Your word. Lord, that we would not be tossed to and fro by the winds, by trials and tribulations, but that we would stand in the confidence of Your name and who You are. I declare over this city, “The lord is faithful. The Lord God is faithful. Faithful to those who say yes to the king of kings and the lord of lords. Those who are marked with the blood of Jesus have a strong tower, run into the strong tower of the name of Jesus Christ.” I declare over this city, “The lord is faithful.”

Let us run into your name and be saved.

A mighty fortress is the lord.

Faithful and true

We find our hope in you, oh God

We find our hope in you

Strong tower

We find out strength in you

We place our trust in you, Lord

All our trust, God. You are able to guard us.

A mighty fortress is the lord, our God

You are able to keep us. This is who You are. We trust you, God. You’re able to keep us. Able to guard us. This is who You are. You are faithful. Mighty God.

A mighty fortress is the lord, our God
(You’re faithful and true)

I love what we do.

As a NightWatch community, we are taking yet another step in consecrating our time of prayer before the Lord.

A year and a half ago, we did a thing that we called 90 Days of Consecration. The like-mindedness and eager participation of the entire NightWatch community, when our leadership called us to this consecration, was astonishing. And the 90 days had a profound, lasting impact on our community.

As a part of the 90 days of consecration, we removed all talking from the prayer room, with the exception of communication necessarily to run the prayer meeting.

Around the clock at IHOP, there is a general rule of limiting conversations to 30 seconds. While it’s a nice idea, these typically turn into a string of “30-second” conversations and you will see a lot of talking in the prayer room. (And it really is amazing how distracting a 30-second conversation can really be.)

After the 90 days had ended, we decided to permanently institute the no-talking rule. The truth was, we really liked what it did to the feel of the NightWatch. I truly am stunned by what this did to create a more sacred place for prayer… further enabling us to do what we are here to do.

For the next two months, we have been invited to a voluntary “Silent Siege”. From midnight to 6 AM, they have encouraged us to make it a time of silence, before the Lord. We still sing and pray in the prayer room, and communication necessary to lead the meeting will still happen. But what we are now working to eliminate are the conversations just outside of the prayer room, in the lobby, bathroom, and halls (and the groups of people that tend to gather in front of the building).

There are a lot of little phrases that we are holding as somewhat of a banner over this new consecration, but one of the simplest and clearest of them is: “Silent night, holy night.”

I believe that this consecration (or fast, which you could call it) is going to be a really significant season for our NightWatch community. As we consecrate our time of standing on the wall (all NightWatch staff are asked to keep 36 of their 48 service and prayer hours between midnight to 6 AM, 6 nights a week) we are focusing in on praying for the upcoming elections and the ending of abortion, among other things. (I am perhaps too tired right now to be blogging well about what it is that we are doing.)

When Stuart brought the idea before us, he asked those who wanted to commit to this silent siege to stand up. Virtually everyone in the room was standing. Again, I am overwhelmingly encouraged. We really do go further when we are acting as a community. Unity and like-mindedness are priceless.

The invitation came on Saturday night and we began the Silent Siege tonight. My general reaction to the change: this is a really good thing. I am excited and really do have a lot of anticipation concerning the next several weeks. Specific reaction to one aspect of the experience: riding in the car (from one prayer room to the other) with your boyfriend and a friend IN TOTAL SILENCE is VERY interesting.

Personally, I am both excited and frightened, as we head into this. On one hand, I’m borderline giddy, on the other, I’m terrified. I cannot argue that this thing is not divinely orchestrated. But that is not purely a comforting thought at this moment.

But THAT is a subject for another post.

It is becoming increasingly evident that I bit off more than I could chew this year. And now I feel like I have two choices:

One – spit it back out, as disgusting, disappointing, and shameful as it may be.

Two – completely choke on it.

Between the prayer room, the bookstore, and the Daniel Academy… I have committed to too many things. I have cut back as much as I could in all of it, and it still isn’t working.

I woke up feeling really sick today. Tired and weak. Not quite like I’m getting a cold, but like one COULD be right around the corner. In any case, my body was completely wiped out. And THEN I realized that I actually won’t be getting my day off tomorrow or the next day because of the conference.

So, I called in and asked for the day off. Because my boss is amazing (and super gracious), she granted the request. When all was said and done, though, I ended up working for about three hours today. But I WAS able to go back to sleep for a couple of hours after I made that call. (When I did show up at the bookstore today, people kept commenting on how wretched I looked. “Are you getting sick?”)

And then I realized that I had completely missed a meeting for the Daniel Academy this morning. As horrible as my irresponsibility is, it’s probably a good thing that I forgot. My body wouldn’t have been able to take it.

I’ve already cut back on the prayer room. I made the painful decision to go from full-time to operations staff, siginficantly decreasing my prayer room hours. On the bright side, this means that I am actually capable of keeping my sacred trust again. And, switching back to partial nights has greatly increased the amount of sleep I get each night. (And has also significantly aided in my ability to keep my sacred trust. I have yet to miss a set since the switch… since I have little chance of accidentally sleeping through them, now.) And, I’ve even cut back a few hours in the bookstore.

Anyway… I’m at the end of my rope. (Don’t worry, I won’t draw this analogy out like I did the first one.)

In any case… I need to get out of something. And it’s not the bookstore. And it’s not IHOP.

I sent a very difficult email tonight to see if there is any way to get out of my teaching contract. It was so hard to do. And it could go very badly. But I just can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want to hate life. I don’t want to be inconsistent, unfaithful, and irresponsible with everything that I have committed to because my commitments and responsibilities are more than I can manage.

The reason I am awake right now is because of that email, pleading for a way out. I just got done writing and sending it.

I’ve been thinking about sending that email since August. Pretty much every day, actually. (Even as I have been growing to love my students more and more and have become increasingly comfortable with teaching the class.)

Pray for favor. Pray for provision. Pray for a solution that works for all involved. Pray that I don’t wake up really sick tomorrow morning.