Four Friends and a Hole In the Roof

Four Friends and a Hole In the Roof

by Al Durrance

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I was asked to talk really on the World Prayer Broadcast. That was the little initials I had down at the bottom of the page when they said, “Can you do this?” And I said, “I don’t know. But I know somebody that can.” And I was going to make a talk one time and said, “How do You want me to prepare this talk, Lord?” He says, “I don’t want you to prepare the talk. I want you to prepare yourself. And I’ll give the talk.” And I said, “I like that. That’s the best way I can do it.” But one of the things that happened to me last year was they asked me if I would serve on the Prayer and Dreaming Committee. Well, I didn’t know what that was. And I didn’t know how early they had to get up. So I said, “Yes, I’ll do that, I think.” And the first thing he talked to me about was the World Prayer Broadcast. And I don’t know about you all, but I’ve seen World Prayer Broadcast since 1970. And I never really had understood them. They were sort of things, something that we did because Glenn Clark did it years ago. And we just parked them at the end and somebody planned it.

And then somebody else got up and they said, “Will you do this? Will you do that? Will you do this?” And so we did it. And that was it. But it didn’t make any sense to me very much, until I began to talk about it and listen to the Lord about it. And it does begin to make sense. And then I began to think about it in terms of the camp. What it is, the culmination of our prayer life in a camp. It is that place in which we build ourselves into that instrument of God that has come together from the various pieces and we’re put together as a whole. And then we pray. And then we hold up the world for God to touch. And we hold it up with a tremendous flow that’s not there when we start out. And so I think one of the things that we need to do, and I’ll share a little bit about each one of these things. Last summer I had a chance to try this out. I was up at Winnipesaukee. And I said, “I’d like for y’all, would you mind trying something for me?” And they didn’t understand what I was talking about. And so I said, “Well, first thing we do is we ask the prayer groups to get together and decide what it is the Lord is asking them to offer up.”

Well, okay. And we had about, oh, 16 prayer groups up there, I think. And so we began, and they began to find things. And what amazed me when it came out was they didn’t all have the same thing. Each one of them had something different. Now, every prayer group in that camp had its prayer offering for the World Prayer Broadcast. And the neatest one was the little bitty ones like this that Georgie Gamble had. And they were up there holding on to her skirt as she was praying for the children in China, particularly the little babies that were up for adoption because there was one in the camp. And that was what the children wanted to pray for. And I think it’s because it was what the Lord put on their heart to pray for. It wasn’t something that somebody decided this would be nice. It was something that brought out of them and through them. And I was amazed when the next group got up there about that high. They prayed for teachers and for the school system and for education. I was absolutely dumbfounded. But I think… I’m sure that’s not what I thought about. That’s not what I would have given them to pray for. I would have had something more profound like Kosovo, except I don’t think it was running at the time.

And so what they did, they did that. And they stood together. And they, as a body, offered that prayer, which was their offering of God to them. And there was more than just someone offering a prayer for them. There was more than just a bunch of people around there. And it was delightful to me to see the children and the little babies, the little children, in on the prayer broadcast, participating fully, completely into it because it was theirs.

And I remember years ago, I was in… We were going, driving down through East Carolina, the coastal plain of Carolina, North Carolina. And they were in a drought. And the cornfields were turning brown around the edges. And if anybody lives around corn country, you know that doesn’t make healthy corn. And so we decided that we would suggest to that camp that they have a prayer focus. And that what we were praying for was rain. In East Carolina, there was a drought there. That’s where we were. What do we do? Well, I think if I read the scriptures right, Jesus Christ is the intercessor for the world, isn’t He? And I think I read that somewhere.

And then, who is His body, though? Oh, oh, we’re His body, aren’t we? Then through whom does He intercede? Through us. Why are we here? We’re here because He needs a body. If He’s going to manifest Himself through people, He needs us to do that with. I remember dealing with death. I was listening to the reading today in the memorial service for 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians that we shall all be changed. We’ll all be transformed. And I read that years ago. And then I read 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. It says the same kind of thing. Last day, a little Pharisaic view of resurrection. It’s what it is. Everybody sleeps until the last day, and then everybody’s going to be raised up and judged. And then something happened to Paul somewhere in the meantime. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was when he got stoned in Lystra. He really got killed. And when he got back up on his feet, he wrote the second letter to the Corinthians. Let me tell you. Wow. “I know a guy that was caught up into the third heaven, whether in the body or out of the body.” Man, I don’t know that. But let me tell you something. It ain’t nothing you can talk about with our language because we haven’t got the language to cover it.

It’s that glorious. And then the last letter he wrote was to the Philippians. He said, “You know, I don’t know whether to die and go be with the Lord or to stay here and be with you all.” You didn’t know he was from South Tarsus, did you?

“But far better to die and be with the Lord. Been there, done that. Didn’t have T-shirts. But for your sake, I’ll stay.” And what he was saying to me when I read that is the only reason for being on this planet right now, you and me, is we have something to give to someone else that will express the love of God or we have something to receive that they need to give and cannot love until somebody receives it. This is why hugs are good in CFO. Because this is the way we communicate love. And that’s why we’re here. It’s the only purpose for being on this earth. Now, if you don’t think that, just think about what we’re going to be in. If you don’t want to go into the kingdom, then forget the whole thing. Hang it up. You’re heading the wrong direction. But if you do, then let’s be His body now. That’s why we’re here. And if we’re going to do that, then we need to intercede for the world. Now, one of the things that the Lord showed me about prayer and prayer function was, He showed me a pipe. Don’t ask me. A water pipe. And He says, “To the extent that water flows through that pipe, you are the same kind of a conduit for prayer power to flow through as you begin to pray.”

And there’s a real problem with it. If you have a water pipe that’s one inch in diameter, you’ve got scale on the inside, what happens? You’ve got turbulence? That’s difficult. You’ve got sediment in it? That’s difficult. What do you have to do? You’ve got to clean the pipe? Well, that’s one of the things that we do when we go to confession, to clean the pipe. We say, “Lord, I’m dirty.” He says, “I can tell.” I said, “Well, You do something about it?” He says, “Sure, I’ll clean you up.” That’s what it’s about. Then, the thing that He showed me was that if you have, say, 10 people in a prayer group, you have a pipe that has a one inch diameter, and you get .785 square inches. And that’s your volume flow. If you get 10, then you’ve got 7.85. Now, if you can get them into one accord, and you take each one of those and take the circumference of that pipe and stretch it around and make one big pipe out of it, if we get into one accord, then what happens? You get 78.5. Ten times as much when we come into one accord as we have without that. It’s not a question of doing the same thing in the same place at the same time.

It’s a question of doing it together. Father, I like to… One of my great illustrations for intercessory prayer is the four that brought the paralytic to Jesus on the stretcher. You remember that story? You can almost see them as they walk in there. They walk up, and they’ve been carrying this guy for a mile. And they look up there in this crowd, and they can’t see Jesus. And they look down at this guy, and they look up there again and says, “How are we going to get this guy to Jesus?” And one of them says, “I don’t know, but I carried him up here. He’s going to have to walk back.”

So another one said, “Hey, I got an idea. I got an idea. Let’s take him up on the roof. I bet you there’s nobody behind Jesus and we can drop him down there and even see him. That’ll do, won’t it?” “Yeah, that’ll do. Let’s go.” And can you imagine if they could have gotten that guy there if they hadn’t been in one accord? One of them wants to go up the back side of the house. One of them wants to climb up the other side of the house. They’d never have gotten him there. But they were not discord. They were of one accord. And they came together. They had intention of taking him up there. They got him up there. They dug a hole in the roof. And what did they do? They let him down. And Jesus turned and saw their faith. He turned and saw their faith. Whose? The intercessors. The ones that carried him there. And hopefully the guy that was paralytic also. And He says, “Son, be of good cheer. Your sins are forgiven you.” You saw the other people around there. “Oh, what’s this guy doing? He’s blaspheming. Absolutely. Nobody can forgive sins but God. What are we going to do about this?” And Jesus knew what they were thinking.

He said, “Well, what’s easier to say? ‘Your sins are forgiven’? ‘Arise, take up your pallet and go home’?” He says, “Get your bed out of here. And get out of the living room. I’m busy. And go on home.” He said, “But fix the roof before you go.” That’s probably not in your text. But that’s okay. I’m preparing mine for publication next week.

As we begin to walk through that, then if we can do two or three things in the camps, I think that we begin to see how we can bring into reality: a World Prayer Broadcast is a summation of the camp’s prayer life. We begin to grow together. If we get into the prayer groups, we begin to grow together. That’s what we were practicing this afternoon. How do we get to know each other, so that we can be with one another, to share with one another, to pray for one another? And I don’t know how to get closer to anybody in any way than to pray for them. You got an enemy? You don’t know what to do with them? Pray for them. You can’t forgive them? Ask God to forgive through you so you can get in on His. That’s one of the ways to clean the pipe. Now, the other thing that we can say about this. If we’re going to build a pipe, if we’re going to take the ten in the prayer group and make one pipe out of it so that the flow can be ten times the same flow, then we’re talking about something different. And so we say, “Lord, will You clean out the scale?” “Yeah? You going to give it to me?”

“I don’t know. It’s pretty bad, Lord.” “That’s okay.” “So I can handle it.” I say, “Well, I’m willing to forgive all those people.” “I don’t want to, Lord.” “No, I want to.” “I don’t feel like it, Lord.” He said, “I didn’t ask if you felt like it. Are you willing?”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” “No way. You don’t have any control of your feelings.” “You do have some control of your feelings. Are you willing to forgive?” “I can’t.” “I didn’t ask if you could. That’s irrelevant. Are you willing? That’s all you have to be. Are you willing?” I say, “Yeah.” He says, “Good.” Then He can begin to work through us to turn loose the junk. I don’t know. Have you ever had somebody that you carry around up here?

Somebody you hadn’t forgiven? You carry the resentment and the stuff up there. You get like this. You need a chiropractor. Or you carry them in here. You need Maalox. But you need something because you’ve got something you don’t need. You know how to put them down? You forgive them. And then you can put them down. And you can put them over there under the cross.

And you find out what freedom is because you have forgiven. And I don’t know what it does for them, but I know what it does for me. And I know that it cleans the pipe so that He can use it. And He can pour more through that. And so as we get to working through that, you give up resentment. You give up doubt. You give up the uncertainty. You give up the anxiety. You give up the pain. You give up the kind of stuff that you need to give up. And that’s what the healing is. That’s what we pray for one another in a prayer group. We pray for one another in a prayer group to draw us closer together and to allow Him to get into the midst of us so that He can make us one body. And then we multiply. We don’t just add. We multiply the capacity of that pipe for the flow of prayer power into the world. Now, I believe, and this is something that’s surely speculative, you’ll have to try to find it out. Now, we had a prayer broadcast at Virginia Tidewater this year. And when we were up at Winnipesaukee, we had a neat rhythm that went with it. And I’ll try to sing it for you. It goes…

Oh, how lovely is the singing, is the singing, When the bells of peace are ringing, peace are ringing, shalom. Shalom.

What an excellent ending and summary of a prayer broadcast. And so we did that. We’ve been doing it. We practiced it that week. But the summation is we’re going to release for the world the peace of God through us into that prayer broadcast, to broadcast into the four corners of the world, that the belt of prayer for peace around the world might be made manifest. Now, we couldn’t do that, though, in Virginia Tidewater. We didn’t have enough people. And so we did very similar things. We had a… somebody had a globe, a blow-up globe. I think Jenny had brought it with her from California. And so she said, “Do you want to do that?” And I found out what a terrorist does. I blew up the world.

And when we prayed, we passed that around. So the prayer group would gather. And they would hold that. And they all held that up. Everybody in one group would hold that up. And they would pray what God had given to them in their group to pray so there would be unity. Now, I believe if we have a common prayer goal, a common prayer purpose, a common prayer objective in the camp, then it pulls the whole camp together. And just like… I didn’t finish telling you about what happened in East Carolina. That Eastern Carolina camp, we prayed that night that when we opened it up, we said, “This is what our prayer is going to be this week.” Everybody there knew it. We needed it. That night, it rained. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. But it was enough rain to wet the area. Now, we didn’t get any more. But when we left that place, there was a constant 10-day soft rain that refurbished and recirculated the land. So I think if we have these things, if these are the things that we need, ask the Lord. That’s a counseling job, isn’t it? Ask the Lord. What are we here for? How do we hold You up? How do we release this power that You’ve given to us so that it will be used by You in the world that Your will might be done?

Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. It’s not a question of getting God to do our thing. It’s a question of, “Lord, what do You want?” I think this is what Glenn Clark said, if you want to go back to that. I know it’s what Jesus said. He says, “What we’re looking for is for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven.” Not trying to get Him to modify it. He’s going to love us. He can’t do anything else because that’s the nature of God. He’s going to love us. What we want to do is, “Lord, how do we receive that love that it manifests in the healing of the land?” I think I read somewhere we have to repent. Oh, well. We can do that too if you want to. Usually if we go through a camp, we’re a little bit closer to Him than when we start, when we end than when we start. And so we’re bringing this camp together through prayer, through the intention of bringing the camp itself to God, bringing the people and the prayer groups to God, bringing the nature of the thing that we have set apart and said this is what we need now in this place and this camp is a part of the body of Christ to intercede for this particular part of the land.

And so we say, “Okay, Lord. We’ll do that.” And the prayer groups will pray for this every day. It doesn’t take a long time to pray for something. It takes intent. It takes will. And the thing that He’s concerned about is, what is your will? Are you willing? If you’re willing, I don’t care what your words are. If you’re willing, I don’t care how hard you strain. I don’t care if you get two people to agree. It helps if you do. But if you’re willing, He’s able. And He will begin to put together that channel of His grace that He seeks to use to reach out to touch and heal a broken world. That’s what it’s about. It’s manifesting His love through the power of prayer. And I get the impression sometimes, I don’t know what you think prayer is, but I get the impression sometimes that prayer is sort of our invitation to God that opens the door for Him to step in.

He won’t come. He can’t impose Himself. Without an invitation, I think it’s our invitation to Him. “Lord, will You do this?” And if He says yes, then we begin to see things and He begins to pray. We begin to pray in different ways. We begin to pray as we’re led and we begin to ask for those things that He wants to give.

But until we begin, until we enter into it, until we’re willing to be made whole. One, reconcile to Him so we can know Him. I think this is what we were saying this afternoon. Maria was talking about asking. Listen. Listen.

And so we begin in a prayer group to come together to seek Him more than anything else. Excuse me. I’m used to prayer groups. I would ask the question. But I would say that the elements that you’re talking about in prayer labs are in a prayer group. It says, I’m going, we’re here to get to know one another and love one another. I may have never seen you before. To get to know one another and love one another. Because He loves us. To seek what He wants. And pray ultimately, the prayer that we pray is, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing else. And then we come together at the end of a week where the love of God, and you’ve seen this over and over in CFOs, where the love of God is manifest in every breath we take. And we don’t want to go home because we like the environment by that time. And I’m going to go out of this. And then I know that between here and home, I’m going to have difficulty already.

And we say, “Okay, Lord, we’re going to offer this opportunity to You to use us while we’re in this shape, to touch Your world.” And we come into the prayer broadcast. And let each group have its voice. It’s the person to articulate the prayer. And let that group stand together as one pipe. One pipe for flow. And let the group stand in the circle as one pipe for flow. And acknowledge the prayers. And release to God the opportunity, the invitation to reach out and touch and heal a world that’s destroying itself, by bringing His peace, which passes understanding, into the hearts and minds of the people. I used to drive to church in the morning. In Ocala. And there was a gospel program on. And I was always listening to it. It says, “There won’t be peace on earth until there’s peace in the hearts of men.” And there won’t. And we can begin with us. But as we begin with us and offer ourselves to Him, then we become a belt of prayer around the world. And we can offer to God that which we can’t do in any other way. It’s not something you can start at the end of the week. It’s something we begin with. It’s something we begin with. What is CFO?

What did it start with? An experimental prayer workshop. What was it for? To bring peace to the world because the world didn’t know it. And no one was doing that. And we were commissioned to do that. To take peace to the world for which Christ died, by bringing Christ into that place. And so I think if we will consider that as you start your camp. Ask your council ring. I keep getting lost in my acronyms. But ask the council ring. What do we need? What’s the greatest need that we see here? What’s the common need that we see here? Maybe it’s for CFO. Maybe it’s for the renewal of CFO. Maybe it’s for CFO to find that touch that He’s looking for us to have, and speaking to us so that we can walk where He wants us to walk. Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe that’s the common focus that draws us all together at the close of the camp. And we are back to offer to God those prayers that He has called us to pray. And I’ve run over time. And Lord, I thank You for the opportunity to talk about You. And I ask that You speak to us now. And let us know Your presence. And draw us together now, Lord.

That we might not simply be the addition of one plus one plus one plus one, but we might become totally one in unity. In the unity and bond of Your peace and Your love. That we might be that instrument of prayer. That channel for Your grace. That the world needs. And that we might make You known through that prayer. Inviting You into every nook and cranny and corner of the universe which You have created. Thank You, Lord Jesus. Thank You, Father. Thank You, Holy Spirit. Amen.