dorm Archives - Fragrance Arise

Continuing my What I’m Praying series, here’s the story on the current prayer topic at The Prayer Room, where I serve on full-time missionary staff.

A year and a half ago, we sold the dorm house that had been housing some of our community. The foundation was bad, among other issues, and it was desperately time for a new building. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get a loan to purchase a new dorm (such as a duplex or quadplex), so the money from the sale sat in savings.

As time went on, and our finances got worse and worse, we kept needing to dip into our dorm savings to keep afloat. We were going into “debt” to ourselves as we borrowed from the dorm fund. We were also in substantial credit card debt.

Throughout our history our finances have never been normal; God doesn’t let our money operate by normal financial wisdom principles. (Dave Ramsey would be so confused!) God seems to like to let us get in a hole and then He will suddenly, miraculously bail us out. It’s happened over and over and has been part of how He has built faith into our DNA. So as a community, we began pressing in for God to give us $25,000 to get us out of debt, but months passed and breakthrough didn’t come.

As the leadership team talked and prayed, we came to feel that maybe God wasn’t planning to bail us out of debt with a large chunk of money this time, as He’s done before. There was, however, some prophetic swirl on the idea of God outright giving us a dorm building. We began feeling stirred to do something ridiculous, radical, and upside-down… instead of continuing to pray for God to give us $25,000, we would GIVE away $25,000.

We wrote a check to some dear friends of ours who have been pioneering a house of prayer in Galveston, TX, for a couple of years. This drained what we had left in savings and basically accelerated the process of us being backed into a corner. No cushion. All faith. We are officially left with only one option… God’s deliverance.

So as of this past Saturday, our rapid fire topic which we pray in the prayer room every two hours is this: for God to give us a dorm building by June 1 (in time for our summer IHOPU externs) and also to give us additional monthly partners to build our finances. We are consistently in the hole financially, and this $25,000 gift to our friends left us with NO backup plan. We really need people to step up to commit to give to TPR monthly, even $5 or $10.

This dorm will be such a huge blessing. It has been such a pain in our hearts these past two years that when one of the single young adults in our community wants to be more involved at TPR and needs housing, we don’t have anything to offer them. Also, when we try to recruit students from IHOPU to come serve with us, we don’t know what kind of housing to promise them and must have faith that God will provide for those who say yes. He always has, but many of our families who could possibly squeeze an extra person into their house have already done so.

When we get the dorm, be it a duplex, quadplex, or even a small apartment building, I plan to move in and serve as the house leader. As much as I love my home and roommates now, I’m looking forward to living with younger ones who are committed to pursuing Jesus together, linking arms to build His house. We are going to build an AWESOME culture of community and prayer from the ground up and it’s going to be glorious.

The past few days, as we’ve been praying for God to give us a dorm and more monthly partners, there’s been a real stirring of fresh faith. We’re praying with more boldness and strength, with confidence that God loves our hearts to give generously and rely completely on Him. There’s something about radical trust that moves His heart! At this point, He’s literally our only hope, so we’re going to keep pressing in until He meets us with a breakthrough.

God, please provide a dorm and monthly partners for The Prayer Room. These are things we really need, and we know You will be faithful to take care of us and build Your house. All our trust is in You.

If you want to be part of the answer to this prayer, you can set up a recurring gift (seriously, $5 monthly gifts add up!!) at tprdfw.com

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The annual The Prayer Room staff retreat is our highlight of the year. We rent a huge house on a beautiful property about an hour away in Rainbow, TX, and we spend the weekend playing games, vision casting/discussing, and generally enjoying each other’s company. One of the beautiful strengths of TPR is the close-knit family feel of the community, and the annual staff retreat is a big part of fostering that. This was my third staff retreat in a row! (Check out 2015 and 2016.)

During our living room sessions, we discussed taking ourselves seriously as a house of prayer before the Lord and how rare and precious it is that He has given us the grace to sustain daily prayer for 12 years! As of last month, we passed 45,000 hours total of live prayer since our inception in 2005! That’s a culmination of five years of incense arising from our prayer room!

One discussion that really provoked and excited me was our Saturday night talk about what we could each do to make The Prayer Room better 1% at a time. We dreamed together and then made action plans to establish those plans. “What can we do to get the cords behind the sound booth more out of the way?” “I know a way to do that. Done.” “What else could we do to recruit worship leaders?” “We could make small flyers to put on our welcome desk directing people to our website.” “I can design and print some up. Done.” We talked about stepping it up, individually and as a staff, to be more proactive about our responsibilities and “raise the water level” of prayer and worship engagement in our prayer room. At the end of the day, all the clever admin solutions we come up with are about strengthening the atmosphere of prayer and worship that happens 18 hours a day in our prayer room.

I love this staff so much and am so grateful that I get to build the house of prayer with such a family!

Livermore Update

On October 31, we finally finished selling the house on Livermore Dr. that has served as our dorm for the past several years! Originally, this house was purchased to be the prayer room when the meetings outgrew Brad’s living room. When we moved into a storefront space on Pioneer Pkwy., Livermore became remodeled as a guys’ side/girls’ side dorm building. This is where I lived in 2015 on my externship. The house has some significant structural issues and we were losing money on it for months, and we’re so glad to turn the keys over to someone who can turn it into something useful to them so we can move on to a better dorm situation.

Now, we’re looking for one or more duplexes (or even a fourplex, if we can find one) where we can house externs, interns, staff, and guest speakers as needed. I was asked to move in as house manager, and after weeks of prayer and consideration, I said yes. It will be much cheaper rent and it will be an opportunity to live with and serve other staff (my current roommates both left staff to go back to school earlier this year). I’m praying that the dorm would be a consecrated place where we can provoke each other in love and pursue Jesus together. It’s going to be an exciting transition!

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Fragrance Arise

Tag: dorm

What I’m Praying: Crazy Supernatural Provision for a Dorm and Finances

TPR Staff Retreat 2017!

Livermore Update