War Room

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (James 5:16b)

I was blessed to share Touching Hearts Ministries with a couple of new ladies last week. As I gave them a tour of our space, I was keenly aware of the embarrassment that I felt when we stopped at the doorway marked, “WAR ROOM”. The beautiful sign that held its position over the doorway charmed them. As I opened the closed door, I quickly began to explain the dark, cluttered, stacked high room. “We are limited on storage space for extra chairs and furniture when setting up our space in different ways. So we are using this as storage room right now.”

As I spoke the words I was saddened.

It was later that night that the “War Room” came to my mind and I sensed the Lord’s grief. He showed me this was a problem with our ministry and our lives. The Christian movie, “War Room” made the words on the doorway sign very popular, but was it true?

Had it become a decoration instead of a declaration?

In this case it was not a true representation. Just because we desired it to be, cleaned the space, added a Bible, notebook, sticky notes and hung the sign did not make it a War Room in reality. No warring was going on in that room. It was dark, cluttered and closed to prayer.

Many of our lives are in the same condition. We acknowledge that we have a desire and need to pray but are we praying? We quickly spout off the words of wanting to be a prayer warrior, but are we dressed for battle? It is not what we say we are going to do that changes anything; it is what we do. We might even label a room in our hearts as prayer, but more often than not, it is only a banner over the doorway.

Today while cleaning our ministry space for a new season, I asked that the sign be removed and put over the main entrance to our worship room. We must become a house of prayer. Our world, our state, our city, our churches, our families need someone to take seriously the call to pray.

Prayer is the highest and most holy privilege and responsibility that Jesus left us with. We join Him in His ever-eternal intercession at the right hand of the throne of God. Prayer is so powerful and even the enemy knows it so he tricks us into piling our lives high with stuff. He longs to draw us into deeper darkness and eventually close the door to prayer. He even deceives us into believing we have a powerful room called prayer. But when hard times strike, do we war or do we retreat behind a closed door of despair?

Oh, my sisters and brothers let us be deceived no longer! Be encouraged with Paul’s words of encouragement:

May we be fervent in prayer! It produces much. He answers. He intervenes. He turns as we pray in His name and according to His will.

God longs to give us His heart that we might join the Son in interceding for His will. We must be still and hear the Father’s heart that we may pray His prayers. If we aren’t praying His will, we are praying soulish prayers which are really just a bundle of words about what we want.

Lord, give us your heart, that we might pray in power! Teach us to war for the Kingdom of God! Raise us up to be Warriors of God! Thank you for this incredible privilege.