Prayer
The vision of FIRE's prayer ministry is to help facilitate a "culture of devotion,"
modeled after the church in Antioch in Acts 11 and 13. It was "while they were ministering
to the Lord and fasting [that] the Holy Spirit said..." We, too, seek to become
a true house of prayer as a lifestyle, and also as an intentional strategy. We accomplish
this through times of equipping for prayer, scheduled prayer meetings, corporate
meetings devoted to crying out in worship and intercession, and encouraging our
home groups to devote time to special prayer every month.
We are passionate about prayer because we're passionate about the Lord. He is the
object of our devotion, and our love for Him is the fuel of our prayers. So our
goal is to instill a vision deeply in the heart of our whole congregation to make
prayer their supreme priority until it is a lifestyle. Our reason for this, primarily,
is because it is our scriptural mandate from Jesus Himself: "My house shall be called
a house of prayer for all nations" (Mark 11:17; Isa 56:7; see also John 2:13-17).
We are a royal priesthood, and we want to live up to that graciously-given identity.
But fervent prayer is also FIRE's distinct heritage, having been birthed out of
the Brownsville Revival. The foundation, heart, and soul of that revival was the
Brownsville church's radical intercession for divine visitation and souls that preceded
the revival, and continued to support it to the end. Fervent prayer is in our spiritual
DNA. It's part of our identity, and we know that God does not move outside of its
sphere of influence. Finally, when God first birthed FIRE in Pensacola, good friends
of our ministry who were also devoted intercessors told us prophetically that "God
would not allow anything you do to succeed if it is not birthed and bathed in prayer."
So with our mandate for revival and revolution, as well as a word like that, we
have no choice but to "devote ourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving"
(Col 4:2)! Please join us.