Beyond The Basics

I had a dream over the weekend.

Stay with me here.

In the dream, my wife and I along with my parents went to Kansas City where we met Mike Bickle. Later, my dad and I decided to go to the Forerunner Christian Fellowship service later that evening (If you’re not aware, FCF is the church that is partnered with the International House of Prayer).

When we arrived, my dad told me had had to go do something and he would be right back. So I stayed around the entrance and just kinda hung out and looked around until he returned.

Just then, Mike Bickle burst out of his office and stormed out toward the entrance yelling, “This is demonic! This is not of the Lord!” Seconds later, another man burst out of Mike’s office and followed him, trying to talk to him. I don’t remember what the man was saying but essentially he was telling Mike the things he was doing were not godly and not right.

The two men argued in front of me at the entrance and Mike looked at me and continued to repeat, “This is demonic!”

I looked back at him and said calmly, “Mike, no its not.”

“Yes it is! This is demonic! This is straight from Satan!” He responded, absolutely enraged.

“Mike. No. It’s not demonic. This is from the Lord,” I again replied, very calmly.

Just then, I understood the phrase that Mike never understood: “You could have been resting in prayer, but you were too busy building an international ministry.”

I can’t remember if I said that phrase to Mike in the dream or if I just understood that’s what Mike had missed all these years. But I woke up right after that, and I knew the dream is a warning.

I’ve been over several times what’s going on at the International House Of Prayer between blog posts and the podcast so I won’t recap it here. As someone who never spent more than a few days at IHOPKC at a time but had been profoundly impacted by their ministry and had held leadership positions in the greater prayer movement around the country, I have been deeply grieving for the victims of both Mike and the ministry at large, for the lack of true repentance from anyone in leadership there, and on a more personal level, the loss of trust in many of the Bible teachers I have previously looked up to. The last several months have been a long process of trying to determine what was from the Lord and what wasn’t, as well as determine what were the ways in which I was deceived.

That’s a difficult admission, right there. To admit that I was deceived. That alone may take years to work through.

That’s the context in which I received this dream. But here’s the thing: this dream was not about or for Mike Bickle. I mean, how would I even tell it to him? I don’t know the guy. And would he even listen to me? If course he wouldn’t.

That would be ridiculous.

No, this dream was not for Mike or even about Mike. I believe this dream is a warning to me and to anyone else who has a ministry, especially one like the podcast that I’m trying to grow. And this is the warning:

I could be resting in prayer, but if I’m more focused on building an international ministry I will end up just like Mike or anyone else in ministry whose heart has been hardened who is calling the word of the Lord demonic.

OK, that’s terrifying.

One of the things the prayer movement started by IHOPKC did in my life is it gave me permission to compartmentalize prayer. I could call myself a prayer guy because I went to the prayer meetings and led worship and hung out with all the other prayer guys. But what does my prayer life look like when no one is looking? Do I have to go to the “house of prayer” to pray or have I made myself a house of prayer?

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:5-6)

Sure, I’ll get up in the morning and read my Bible and even study. Sometimes I will pray in the morning. But I don’t make it a lifestyle. I don’t think about prayer much. But I had convinced myself that because I went to all the prayer meetings, I was a prayer guy. Instead I have been standing and praying on the street corners so that I might be seen by others without going into my room, shutting the door and praying in secret.

Listen to me. I’m not saying we shouldn’t hold prayer meetings or even work towards establishing night and day prayer as the body of Christ. But if that is our primary goal, like it was for me, then we are building our own ministries and forgetting to rest in prayer in our rooms in secret and if we don’t repent, we will find ourselves in a very dangerous position spiritually. Prayer meetings should be an extension of our secret prayer life, not the foundation.

One thing that wasn’t taught much at IHOPKC was how to pray continually when you have a full time job, a side business that takes up a lot of time and doesn’t make much money, and a wife and two young kids. So I’m open to suggestions. If you want to leave a comment then hopefully it will be helpful to anyone else who might be struggling with the same thing.

Lord, have mercy on us for disobeying your word and for valuing public prayer over prayer in secret. Teach us how to pray in secret. Teach us how to rest in prayer rather than sounding like banging gongs as we think we are heard because of our many words.