The Vision for Vanguard - Jan. '08 -
I had been asking the Lord for weeks what the vision was for Vanguard.
I knew I was going back to the school of my alumni for more than just academics. As important as theology classes and a degree may be, I knew there was more to it than that, something even more important than good grades, open career doors, and acquired knowledge.
As I neared Christmas of ’07, a month before I would move to Southern California, a phrase popped into my mind – “messengers of fire.” The phrase is from Psalm 104:4: God “makes His angels spirits, His servants [or messengers] a flame of fire.” The reference is particularly speaking of the angels that are closest to God’s throne that are filled with His fire to do His will, but the Lord breathed on this verse and gave it a new context – bondservants of Christ that are filled with the fire of His Spirit. I began to ask the Lord that He would raise up messengers of fire from the dorms and classrooms of Vanguard that would eventually be sent to the four corners of the earth. Humble servants, endued with power in the place of prayer and fasting, cut asunder with God’s mercy and zeal for the nations of the world.
A couple weeks later I had the awesome opportunity of taking a road trip of over fifteen hundred miles with a group of friends to the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. As I sat in the prayer room on a Friday night I heard the Lord speak clearly to my heart about His plans and strategy for Vanguard…
He said, It is My dream to raise up a House of Prayer that goes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, fed by teachers of the Word, sustained by anointed musicians, filled with hungry 20-year olds, that will result in a Moravian Missions Movement that sends out messengers of fire to the four corners of the earth. I was jolted. I was inspired. I wrote it down in my journal, and I have carried it in my heart ever since.
I believe that our school has a particular anointing for international missions. This is clear when one looks at some of the people that have come out of this place. Heidi Baker and Floyd McClung are just a couple that easily come to mind; take a look at the northern wall of the Great Commission Room and you will see many others that have left the mark of the Kingdom in the nations of the world. However, true missionary work is not birthed out of motivational speeches to “Go”, guilt-producing exhortations or humanistic sympathy. It’s easy to go on a three week mission’s trip to Asia or Africa on the strength of one altar call buzz or simply in the passion of one’s empathy for the underprivileged of the earth. But that is not how the apostolic gospel goes forth with power and love from another age. Only by grasping the heart of God in the place of corporate worship and intercession can we receive the anointing that is necessary to give our lives to the people groups of the earth. Messengers of fire are formed in the place of prayer.
Interestingly enough, when Jesus told the apostles that the “harvest is truly plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Matthew 9:37), He did not tell them to go out there and do something about it. We use that verse often as a kick in the pants to go out and do more community service and evangelism. His prescription was quite different. He said, “Therefore pray…” He knew that true laborers of the Gospel are only produced when we encounter God Himself in the place of worship, intercession, and immersion in the Word of God. In the same way, at the end of the book of Luke the resurrected Jesus gives them the command to “tarry in the city until you are endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). Without prayer and the accompanying anointing of the Spirit we lose vision, heart, and strategic direction and we either wallow in compromise and apathy or we run frivolously to and fro in frantic service and good works to ease our troubled consciences. Yet if we obey the mandates of Jesus to “therefore pray” and “tarry in the city” we receive His heart, His will, and His power to carry out the Great Commission in a supernatural way. Indeed, this is why God is restoring David’s tabernacle of prayer and worship in this hour of history.
Amos 9:11 carries one of the most essential prophecies for the generation of the return of the Lord. In it, the Lord promises to “raise up the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down...” The tabernacle of David was the worship and prayer ministry that went 24/7 in his era. Levite priests sang prophetic songs of worship and cried out to God fervently in intercession around the clock. This was the furnace and fuel of everything that King David did. He warred for the Promised Land, he administrated the affairs of a nation, and he skillfully wrote songs and poetry, but at the center of it all, He worshipped before the Lord. We see this in his fundamental heart cry in Psalm 27:4: “One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.” David’s one desire was to seek the Lord in prayer, and in the most successful and prosperous generation in Israel’s history the entire kingdom was based out of a 24/7 prayer ministry. And in case we were wondering, the New Testament affirms that this is still God’s highest will for the church by quoting Amos 9:11 in the Apostle James’ speech in Acts 15:16-17. The only difference is that now the “tabernacle of David” is anywhere and everywhere that believers are united in worship and prayer in the name of Christ and in the power of the Spirit.
God is orchestrating a prayer movement that is sweeping across the nations of the earth with a crescendo of power and in building anticipation of His return. Jesus declared this with vehement force in Mark 11:17 when He overturned the tables and looked the temple-goers square in the face and said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” More than just a rebuke for that generation, it was a prophecy for our generation. God’s house, the church, will be known as a house of prayer for all nations once again.
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