Happy New Year!

Greetings from LivingStone House of Prayer! There's never been a better time to be an intercessory missionary, and I thank you once again for supporting the vision of night and day prayer for the city of Newport News and for our nation. Six days a week, twelve hours a day, the LHOP staff and volunteers gather in our prayer room to respond to the Lord's call on our lives to stand before Him as priests.

I believe that as we love and praise our King and agree with Him in intercession, things are happening. Enemies are fleeing, evil schemes are being exposed, and the Kingdom of God is advancing. He is ruling in the midst of His enemies (Psalm 110:2), and we are speeding toward the day when His reign will be manifest in all its fullness. Come, Lord Jesus!
 
Highlights from 2011

One of our main goals as a house of prayer is to build a God-hungry, Jesus-loving community that intercedes together. Over the course of this year, God has graciously increased our number of staff and volunteers. We are up to eight full-time and part-time staff, with two former interns working through our Ministry Transition Program into a staff position. In an average week, over seventy individuals come to pray in our prayer room.  In addition to an increase in numbers, I'm seeing an increased zeal in the hearts of those people for the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19).

In my last update, I requested prayer for two programs we hosted over the summer: Camp David for high school students and the Pilgrimage Internship for post high school adults. Both initiatives were enormously successful. Twenty-five students from as far away as Greensboro, NC and Fort Mill, SC attended Camp David, led by full-time missionary Andrew McDade. Using the life of David as a template, Andrew challenged students to seek God wholeheartedly for their entire lives and to have a "one thing" orientation (Psalm 27:4) in all that they do.

The Pilgrimage Internship was directed by full-time missionary Joshua Tombley and attended by four young ladies, who spent nine weeks living here at the monastery. Between many hours in the prayer room each week and a full class load, they stayed very spiritually engaged with the Lord. The success of this program is that the interns left hungry for God and are continuing to pursue Him. Several of them are very committed to the ministry of intercession at LHOP.

On August 14, in conjunction with The Response prayer gathering in Texas, LHOP hosted a day of prayer and fasting, which included a packed-house, multi-church prayer meeting in the morning, followed by a solemn assembly in the evening. The Bible gives a very clear prescription for a nation gone astray; "Turn to me with all your heart; with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning....consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; gather the people....Let the priests, who minister to the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar; let them say, 'Spare Your people, O Lord..." (Joel 2:12-17, excerpted).  We sensed the Lord's prompting to host such a day of prayer. He is faithful to hear from heaven when we cry out to Him.

In November we hosted our fourth annual Ascent Conference, shifting our target audience from high schoolers to post high school young adults. The conference is turning out to be a real catalyst for a new season for LHOP.  God led us to have a main session concerning His heart for Israel, taught by Randy Martinez of the Fredericksburg Prayer Furnace, and He followed through by powerfully and profoundly encountering practically all 175 people present.  It's difficult to describe just how real His presence was during the ministry time after the teaching. His zeal for Israel was clearly on display. Our intercession for Israel since then has been at a new level of urgency, resolve, and clarity. We continue to seek Him for ways in which we can "build a highway" between LHOP and the Holy Land and for practical ways that we can minister to the Jewish people.

The Lord continues to forge a unique relationship between LHOP and student believers at Christopher Newport University (CNU). Since The Ascent, we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of students committed to joining us in corporate intercession. Imagine over 20 students crying out to God in our little prayer room!  In fact, we have committed to running a shuttle from campus to the prayer room on Monday and Tuesday nights. (We need a van!) These students are looking to LHOP staff for discipleship, shepherding, and teaching. I've never been around a more sincere group of sold out followers of Jesus. God is using them to bring revival to CNU!

Before we turn to 2012, I'd like to make mention of a state-wide prayer initiative called 24-7 Virginia, of which LHOP has been a part. The goal of 24-7 Virginia is to cover every hour of every day in the Commonwealth with prayer gatherings of three or more people. This prayer effort is in response to a significant prophetic dream in which continuous, night and day prayer spared lives and brought revival; failure to do so cost lives. (Click this link  for complete details, including the dream.) LHOP participates in 24-7 VA by hosting two monthly all-night prayer meetings on the first Sunday and Tuesday of each month. Usually around twelve diehard intercessors show up. These are powerfully significant times of intercession; I urge you to consider joining us.

On the Horizon at LHOP

I sense that 2012 is going to be a pivotal year in the life of LHOP. Throughout 2011, the Lord has been unfolding a clearer picture of our future as a prayer ministry. As we round the corner into this year, we are entering a season of bringing more definition to who we are and what we do, combining elements common to other prayer rooms with our own DNA to formulate our unique vision. Through prophetic dreams and impressions received in prayer, He has been speaking clearly about specific prayer mandates, which will allow us to pray in a more strategic way with increased confidence and hope, especially regarding our nation and Israel. He has brought strength to our core programs (Camp David, The Pilgrimage, The Ascent, Night Watch), as well as to our central ministry of daily, corporate worship and intercession. Furthermore, He has shown us that getting trained and training others in the field of crisis preparation and response is a critical component of our ministry (more below).

We have increased our number of live, two-hour prayer sets to fifteen per week, spread among eleven different worship leaders. We've seen a growing number of people attend each of our key intercession sets for our nation, the ending of abortion, Israel, and the student generation (Christopher Newport University, in particular). Just a few weeks ago I went through our database and identified roughly 75 people who are fully committed to coming to the prayer room regularly, most of whom pray with us 2 or more hours every week.

What does all this mean? It means that LHOP is maturing and that 2012 is an important year. Here's a glimpse of some of what I will be tackling this year to position us for continued growth:

• Establishing LHOP as its own non-stock corporation and securing its own 501(c)(3) status (we currently are a ministry of Hope Community Church)

• Moving the prayer room to the Cornerstone building (still at 28 Harpersville) to allow for future growth

• Increasing faithfulness in prayer of staff and volunteers through the Sacred Trust

• Expanding our giving base by hosting a fundraising banquet

• Fleshing out our governance documents to prepare for continued growth

• Learning together through all-staff Bible study

• Equipping more staff by sending them to Crisis Response International's Disaster Relief Training

• Forming a Crisis Response Unit through Crisis Response International

• Growing our staff to 10 and our volunteer base to 100

• Integrating CNU students and marketplace volunteers into fully staffed prayer sets

• Building community through shared meals

• Development of 2 more fully staffed intercession sets

Crisis Preparation and Response

For several years a number of local church families have been making preparations for natural disasters and/or economic collapse. Credible prophetic voices have been trumpeting warnings concerning our nation - that America needs to repent regarding several key issues, especially the shedding of innocent blood through the practice of abortion. I believe that we are on the verge of some serious shaking and corporate discipline from the Lord. What will that discipline look like and how should the people of God prepare for it and respond to it?

The book of Joel paints a picture of God's judgments on a nation. He clearly uses economic crisis, natural disaster, and military invasion as means to get the attention of His people and to provoke repentance. Amos 3:6b says, "If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it?"

Recently I've been prompted by the Lord to step up my family preparation efforts. However, my preparation goals have shifted, thanks to an organization called Crisis Response International (criout.com). For the saints of God, preparation is not exclusively about self-preservation, it's about having a "self" ready to be poured out in the midst of crisis. I am now committed to being spiritually, mentally and physically prepared for crisis so that I can be available to minister to people in need.

Furthermore, I believe the Lord is calling LHOP to take a role in equipping the body of Christ to respond redemptively to crisis and to be ready, as mercy missionaries, to do the work of the Kingdom. On January 14, 2012, we hosted our first Crisis Preparation and Response Training, with Chuck Reber of Shiloh House of Prayer and Crisis Response Unit, Hurricane, WV. We were planning for a small, in-house training of 25 people; however, with virtually no advertising, the training exploded to around 75 people, most of whom were present for all 10 hours of sessions. I believe this response is indicative of the Lord's favor upon our efforts to get prepared.  More trainings are on the way! If you would like to receive email updates regarding future trainings, please contact me.

Prayer Room Changes

As many of you know, we will soon be relocating the prayer room to a different location on campus. Though we love our current prayer room, we need to move it for a couple of key reasons: 1) we support the efforts of Hope and Rivers Cross to see the monastery return to its monastic roots, providing a public prayer chapel for silent prayer and the other contemplative disciplines and 2) we believe the our future as a ministry is in the Cornerstone building, where there's potential for the future acquisition of a larger prayer room (we max out the current one every Tuesday night).

Key dates regarding our move:

Feb 11 - all campus workday, including reinstallation of pews in prayer chapel

Feb 22-25 - prayer room closes Wednesday at noon and remains closed Thursday and Friday for the big move

Feb 26 - new prayer room opens to the public

Final Remarks

We are living in a season of unprecedented geopolitical turmoil worldwide. Last year is documented as the worst year for natural disasters in recorded history. Our own nation is on the verge of economic collapse and continues down the slippery slope of permissiveness toward sin. I urge you to soberly consider what in the world is going on. In light of it all, one could easily lose hope.

Scripture depicts a God who is rich in mercy and who loves to pour it out (Ephesians 2:4). He loves to relent from sending calamity, "according to the multitude of His mercies" (Psalm 106:45). However, His mercy is conditional. He draws lines and make demands, much like parents with their children. He requires true repentance.

I had a dream a while ago that gives me hope as an intercessor. In the dream I was visiting "the" national monument (which doesn't exist in the natural). It was as if all our current monuments had come together in one location. This monument, a bowling ball-sized white stone mounted on a pedestal, represented all that we cherish about our nation. People were gathered in a grandstand to reverently observe the monument. Someone had vandalized it, however, and it was covered in a slimy, sticky, tar-like substance. I stepped forward and began to wipe it clean with a white cloth. In the dream, I was amazed at how easily I was able to clean it.  A friend of mine, who is an historian, was filming the whole thing.

I believe the dream is communicating an important principle: the solution for our nation is not complicated. It's fasting, prayer, and true repentance - the lifestyle of the intercessory missionary, which I represent in the dream. Our nation will come clean, but it will happen according to God's very simple prescription. If His people will align themselves in partnership with Him, the results will make history.

I encourage you to seek the Lord with all your heart. Now is the time to know Jesus and to count the cost of abiding in Him daily.

Sincerely,

Chris Carter

Director