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!
