Tag: Foreveronething

What I’m Reading: Longhairs Rising

On By CaitlynIn What I'm Reading2 Comments

(Full disclosure: I love to recommend resources to help you in your journey, and when I do I use Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase something through my links, I may receive a small commission. But if there’s a resource you want, I encourage you to get it wherever works best for you!)

Continuing my What I’m Reading series, this week I’ve been getting into Longhairs Rising by Dean Briggs. I feel like God kind of dropped it into my lap when I was at the Onething conference in Kansas City in the last few days of December. I was browsing the bookstore when I heard two people behind me talking.

“Hmm, interesting, it looks like it’s about the Nazirites,” a guy said.

Immediately, my head whipped around to see him handing a thin book back to a woman, then he walked away.

“Excuse me,” I asked the woman. “Where did you pick up that book? I heard you guys talking about Nazirites and I had to find out.”

“Oh, it was on that table near the front,” she said, pointing. “But you know what? You take this one. I’ll grab another copy.”

I accepted the book from her and started flipping through it, getting more and more excited. It was only $9 and the only book I bought the entire conference.

If the word Nazirite is new to you, you’re probably very confused right now. The Nazirites were individuals in the Bible who had taken a vow of special consecration to the Lord. Anyone could do it, and it could be for a limited time or lifelong. Well-known Nazirites include Samson and John the Baptist. According to Numbers 6:1-21, Nazirites made three main vows:

  1. Abstain from wine and all grape-derived foods
  2. Abstain from cutting their hair
  3. Abstain from going near a dead body, even that of a family member

This idea of the Nazirites means a lot to me because close to ten years ago, when I was in college, I first read a powerful booklet by Lou Engle called Nazirite DNA. (I did a What I’m Reading post on Nazirite DNA a year ago.) That little 38-page book stirred up a desire in me to be wholly set apart for God, even to the point of giving up “lesser pleasures” that might distract me from pursuing Him wholeheartedly.

Longhairs Rising reads like a sequel to Nazirite DNA, diving deep into more of the heart motivation behind making such a radical vow. Dean’s premise is that it’s all about LOVE. As simple and obvious as that claim might seem, I was surprised by how powerfully it caught my heart.

“Love ultimately originates with God, from God… love overcomes all, even the fear of death itself. This kind of love, not legalism, fuels the Nazirite vow, which is precisely what makes a young Nazirite so dangerous on the earth.”

Longhairs Rising by Dean Briggs, page 7, emphasis added

It’s so easy to see such radical vows as excessive, even legalistic. Why would God care if I cut my hair or not? But if it’s a lavish response to the lavish love of God– that changes the equation. Whether or not a modern Nazirite chooses to grow their hair, the heart is the same: desire to be completely set apart in culturally-conspicuous ways, to be wholly given over to the love and purposes of God.

Ultimately, a Nazirite is “someone willing to die for love.” The more we pursue God, the more we become transformed into His likeness, until the Lamb who was slain has an army of lion-hearted lambs bearing witness to His love in radical, costly ways, up to and including their own death.

That’s what the Nazirite vow is about. It’s right next door to what others have called the “fasted lifestyle”, living a radically Sermon on the Mount life and choosing to die to self so that Christ would be formed in us.

This short book, only slightly longer than Nazirite DNA at 57 pages, is written with teens in mind, but was a huge encouragement to me at 28 to say YES again to the vision that caught my heart when I was 18ish. The loud, bold call to “become love” resonated in me (partly because Holy Spirit, partly because Dean is a really poetic and captivating writer!) and stirred my desire to restart the conversation with God about what it looks like to live wholly consecrated for the sake of love.

Find Longhairs Rising on Amazon

 

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What I’m Praying: Night Watch

On By CaitlynIn What I'm Praying

Today I’m continuing my every-other-Wednesday series What I’m Praying. (On the in between Wednesdays, expect to see posts on What I’m Reading.) The vision for this series is to share a peek into either the “prayer vibe” around our house of prayer, or what’s on my heart personally to pray.

Ever since a bunch of us got back from the Onething conference in Kansas City a few weeks ago, many of us have carried a stronger burden than usual for what we call the “night watch”. On the first evening of the conference, the session ended up being all about honouring those who serve the Lord as worshippers and intercessors in the night, literally flipping their schedule upside down for months or years at a time to keep the “fire on the altar” (Leviticus 6:13) in 24/7 prayer rooms while the rest of the world sleeps.

God began stirring up a holy jealousy in us that we would have a night watch in our city, and we carried that passion home and have made it a central prayer topic in many of our prayer meetings.

The foundation of night watch is found in the heavenly throne room scene in Revelation 4:

“And the four living creatures… day and night they never cease to say, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!'”
(Revelation 4:8)

This is the picture that the tabernacle of David was patterned after, with priests on duty around the clock worshipping God. In fact, the second shortest chapter of the Bible, with only three verses, was written out of the place of David’s night watch:

“Come, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD, who stand by night in the house of the LORD!
Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the LORD!
May the LORD bless you from Zion, he who made heaven and earth!”
(Psam 134:1-3)

(Check out the video above at 30:50 for a prophetic song based on this passage!)

The reality is that Jesus is actually worthy of unceasing worship. For all of who He is and all that He’s done, as the Creator of the cosmos, the Lamb who was slain, the most beautiful Man to ever live, the infinitely good and kind Bridegroom, King, and Judge– He deeply, intrinsically deserves the fullest praise we can give Him.

Allen Hood likes to say that we give Him 24/7 because we can’t give Him 25/8.

Let’s be a people who continuously push the boundary, saying “How can I give you more of what You deserve? How can I love, serve, and worship you more?” Of course, this is never out of legalism, as though His love and favour depends on us trying as hard as we can– but once we catch a glimpse of His matchless beauty and feel the weight of his love and delight, our hearts overflow with love in return that expresses itself in increasingly radical ways. Like flipping our schedule upside down to praise Him all night long.

Here at The Prayer Room, we are all eager to launch our night watch, but we will only do it when we can do it sustainably. This has been our ministry model since day one: when we add a set to our schedule at a certain time, we add it on every day of the week, and we do not come off of it no matter what. Whenever we begin inching our way through the night toward 24/7 (first 11pm-1am, then 1-3am, then 3-5am), we will count the cost very soberly and make sure that our days are solid enough to survive some of us transitioning to the nights.

God, burn this passion on the hearts of Your people, to see Jesus be worshipped in our city literally day and night. Let us not rest until we give You what You deserve. Bring people to fill our prayer room during the daytime hours so that we can responsibly reassign people to carry the nights. Have Your glory here!

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