Welcome and Why...

January 7, 2011

Dear friends,

This is a follow-up letter to what I shared on Saturday. I do feel an urgency like never before.

There are numerous opportunities and obstacles that each of us face daily. This is an invitation to run and gain strength for the journey as a team and not just individually.

I believe that as the Simple Church Network, “Who We Are” is larger and deeper than a meeting at a given time and place. It is my burden that we are connected beneath the surface. To lay a simple track that we can be strengthened and encouraged to know that while we may be laboring alone we are not alone.

It is within this framework that I desire to form a 24/7 prayer network based on the book of Nehemiah. The concept of each responsible for their portion of a wall. With 15 min. increments, I believe it would take 2,520 time slots to cover the 168 hours in a week. (I know some of you like numbers)

I am so excited about this. As you may know this prayer concept for me dates back some 15 years ago to my own call. No fancy gadgetry to start. Just a response email or letter and big poster board to see the wheel and the names. I believe intercession based on Lord's Prayer is a format to pray through during your committed time.

"Then I said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, “The work is extensive and spread out, and we are widely separated from each other along the wall. Whenever you hear the sounds of the trumpet join us there. Our God will fight for us!" Nehemiah.4:19

So I am blowing the trumpet. We need a coordinated deliberate prayer strategy to go further. Further and to go beyond where we have been. To go into the future of endless possibilities.

Prayer is the release of potential energy. A praying people cannot be stopped.

"So we continued the work with half the men holding spears, from the first light of dawn till the stars came out. At that time I also said to the people, "Have every man and his helper stay inside Jerusalem at night so they can serve us as guards by night and workmen by day."

"So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their heart"

That is the key; God has prepared the hearts of those to labor in prayer.

Has God burdened your heart? Do you hear his call?

Be faithful unto Him. Know this that He will never let those that wait on Him be ashamed.

My own testimony, about fifteen years ago, I was married and had a very very sick child.

We were living in Germantown with crack vials and drivebys as part of our life.

WE had no money. In fact I remember counting 100 pennies out every Sunday to go to the corner A-Plus to buy bag of Lay’s chips. Our house was a “forever in repair handy man special.” In fact our house was an allergen nightmare.

I was depressed and wore a green bathrobe most of the time. Sometimes never getting dressed. I had reached a place of disillusionment and hopelessness.

We were in ministry. Don was away for a Promise Keepers retreat, when he left a box (even then he always had tapes and boxes) filled with a prayer program by Dick Eastman. Over those three days I watched every tape. I heard God’s call. Jeremiah 33:3: “Call unto me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things that you do not know.”

What impressed me the most was those words were written from the confinement of a jail. Here I was myself imprisoned. Then God turned my heart to Job 42. God turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.

By the end of the weekend I took off my robe. Cleared out a space in a cold, unheated closet. And sanctified it as “The Gap.” I asked the Lord for a clock that rang every hour that I could pray during the day. I found a used one in trading times. I needed $50.00. I had $15.00.

That afternoon on taking Taylor to dance, I found a black purse with no ID outside the building. It had $35.00 in it. I bought the clock.

So here we are seventeen years later.

Was Taylor healed? Yes

Did we move? Yes

Did God provide yes. But all those “answers” pale in comparison to the real discovery. What I did not realize was that prison had a drop floor. A Drop floor into the most Amazing journey ever.

Friends, we are many. We may be scattered. But we have come to the gates for such a time as this. Let us look to the hills from whence comes our help. Our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates! And be lifted up, ye everlasting doors that the King of Glory may come in.

Who is this King of Glory?

The Lord of hosts, He is the King of Glory!

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thanks so much for your time,

Shelle Graves