Barriers to Intimacy with God, Part IV David Hino
Jun 12 2007 01:02PM
This is the final section of the series of articles "Barriers to Intimacy with God." You will need to read the first three sections to understand this final section. You can archive past articles by hitting the archive button. Our pre-celebration worship services are on Saturday night, 7:00 p.m. at Light and Life Christian Fellowship, 5951 Downey Ave., Long Beach, CA. We are having some amazing times together. I speak on "Healing" for the next two weeks. If you would like a word formated copy of these four articles and I will send it to you via email. Next week, I will update you on the church plant and in two weeks, I am having Jon Honda share a written testimony of some of the deep insights he shared at our service on June 2, 2007.
Part IV: Protocol in Ministry Time
At The Light, our services interactive. We allow the Holy Spirit to guide our worship service and ministry time. Generally, we start with prayer and worship, and then move into a teaching time with topics that have practical applications. Because we desire for people’s lives to be radically changed – we allow time for ministry. To help in the process of healing and as a follow-up to the three previous articles, I felt it is important to establish a protocol (prayer guideline) on how to most effectively move into the area of ministry that quickly moves into meeting the person’s prayer requests and honors God as He moves supernaturally.When you move into ministry, please follow the following protocol. Bear in mind, these are guidelines and are not hard fast rules. Prayer Protocol
1. Keep your time with the recipient brief. Reserve your desire to have a social getting-to-know-you-moment after you have move on. Spending too much time in social discussion will likely be a distraction to the prayer and ministry. Move into prayer as quickly as you can.
2. Quickly move into prayer. Our desire is to allow God to reveal. A detailed knowledge of the problem is not important for you to pray. God will reveal the specifics that are important. Knowing less allows for a word of knowledge that can bring deep spiritual insight of God’s love and transformation. Here’s an example of how you move into prayer. Ask what the person’s need is. As soon as you get the gist, interrupt with a comment like “Hmm, I see, let’s go to God in prayer.” Then quickly move into your prayer.
3. Allow your emotions be led and under the control of the Holy Spirit. Don’t get too emotionally wrapped up in the circumstances or the story, since this may hinder you from hearing from the Lord and lessens the impact of the ministry time. (Romans 8:26).
4. Keep the focus on the recipient. This is their moment. So, please don’t share your personal stories. It is tempting for team members to tell their personal stories if they have gone through similar experiences as the recipient, but often this is not helpful. On some occasions, God may lead you to share, but keep it short.
5. Keep the focus on prayer – not on counseling. Avoid the temptation to make this a counseling session. So spend your time with the person in prayer, and in counseling.
6. Keep any explanations about what you are doing brief. Theological explanations and discussions will likely hinder the flow of the Holy Spirit.
7. Strive to keep your prayers to the need of the prayer request. Avoid the temptation to pray for everything under the sun. Shorter prayers are usually better. If you say long prayers, the recipient may get lost in all the words and lose the impact of what God is trying to do.
8. When there are two or more prayers – allow the designated leader to pray. Don’t turn the session into a prayer meeting. Let the leader led in prayer and he/she will direct others to pray. Intercessors should be praying quietly.
9. Allow for silence. Don’t be afraid of silence. If you sense God speaking to them, wait quietly.
10. Check in with the person often. Ask him/her how they are doing? Often their answers will give direction to what God wants to do next.
11. Respectfully command ungodly spirits to be quiet. If any ungodly spirits are manifested command them to be quiet. Don’t cast things out of people even if you believe that you have this discernment. The discernment of the demonic does not automatically mean that God is giving permission to cast out demons. Inner healing is the starting point to any deliverance ministry – when inner healing takes place the demonic leaves.
12. Do what God is telling you to do. Don’t feel that you have to “fix” everything in the person. Some people take many prayer sessions to see results.
13. Encourage people to stay with their current medical advice. Don’t disregard counseling and medication. Christian counseling and prayer is a powerful combination.
14. Allow God to continuing ministering. Don’t allow the person to become over dependent on you after the session is over.
15. Allow God to do the work. Avoid the temptation to make their problem yours. Worrying about their problems later is not a form of compassion. Do pray a cleansing and protection prayer for the team after the session.
© The Light. 2007, all rights reserved. The Light Christian Fellowship, Long Beach, California.
Article written by David Hino. You may copy, email or otherwise share this article in its entirety, so long as you keep this copyright notice intact. Reprints or any portion are not to be sold or used in derivative works - printed, audio, or video for sale without the express permission of David Hino, or the The Light Christian Fellowship. The Light – www.lightcf.org – Signal Hill, California. |
